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| What Use Is Prayer?
God already knows our needs, so what use is prayer?
You probably know that prayer is most effective at changing the one who
prays. But do you know…
- How it will change you?
- Why it is the most potent stimulus
to spiritual growth?
- What kind of answers you can
expect?
- And what kind of answers you are
not likely to get?
- What you can do to make prayer more
effective?
- What kind of results your prayers
for other people might have?
This extraction from the Introduction to the Prayer
Project will examine in conversational style the answers to these and
other questions about prayer.
Jesus promised us that if we would maintain a living
spiritual connection with him, we would bear abundant fruit. Prayer is
one of our primary connections with Jesus and a primary resource in our
ability to live the gospel.
Cultivating Divine
Values in Daily Life
Kaye Cooper
and Sharon Lanier
The Urantia Book teaches
that our lives should be lived so that values govern our attitudes and
behavior and so that spiritual ideals such as love, forgiveness,
tolerance, justice, and mercy are our first priority. So often in
everyday life our ideals are swamped by emotions such as irritation,
resentment, fear, depression, and anger.
“… you must come to that
place of spiritual advantage where you have really and truly developed
an actual interest in, and love for, those higher and more idealistic
forms of conduct which your mind is desirous of substituting for these
lower and less idealistic habits of behavior that you recognize as
temptation. You will in this way be delivered through spiritual
transformation…. There is mighty power in the expulsive energy of a new
and sincere spiritual affection.” Page 1738:4 (156:5.5)
Sharon and Kaye have
discovered and created Joyful Living techniques to transform negative
emotions into positive emotions that serve our spiritual ideals. This
workshop will deal with how to cultivate values and incorporate them
into your daily life. We will be dealing directly with God
consciousness—“The realization of the recognition of spiritual values is
an experience ….which we have elected to call God-consciousness.” Page
1130:5 (103:1.6)
(A second workshop builds
on this one—Falling in Love with the Higher Way.)
Falling in Love with the Higher Way
Kaye Cooper
and Sharon Lanier
Cosmic morality centers on the
gift of our experience to the Supreme. The negative emotions that so
often contaminate our lives make poor gifts. Join us to discover how to
deal with those negative emotions. In this workshop we get to the
process of spiritually transforming specific negative emotions into
higher spiritual emotions based on true values.
“… you must come to that place of
spiritual advantage where you have really and truly developed an actual
interest in, and love for, those higher and more idealistic forms of
conduct which your mind is desirous of substituting for these lower and
less idealistic habits of behavior that you recognize as temptation.
You will in this way be delivered through spiritual
transformation….There is mighty power in the expulsive energy of a new
and sincere spiritual affection.” Page 1738:4 (156:5.5)
Whether it is anger rising in an
ordinary life conflict, regrets about realizing that you just blew it
emotionally, or long-standing painful emotions that crop up every time
you think about a particular person or event—all of these can be
transformed into positive emotions and at the same time supply the fuel
for your personal spiritual growth. Come try out some of the Joyful
Living techniques.
(Cultivating Divine Values in
Daily Life is a precursor to this workshop, but it is not a requirement.
So if you did not attend the first workshop, join us for this one.)
The Urantia Book for Beginners
The Urantia Book reminds us that we are teachers as well as students. As teachers we can inspire, and one of the ways to do this is by verbalizing clearly, unambiguously, and passionately why The Urantia Book is important to us. Can we clearly tell others the new meanings we have discovered? Can we articulate the book's major concepts? Are we able to reconcile what we learn with current knowledge and explain this synthesis? Are we aware that The Urantia Book not only confirms the principles and values by which to live our lives but also provides us with a clear framework for developing the capacities to live instinctively these timeless principles, even during challenging situations?
In this workshop, Sheila Keene-Lund will first share what is of most value to her in The Urantia Book and how her book Heaven Is Not the Last Stop is structured to reflect this. After a short session of questions and answers participants will take the lead in identifying, organizing, and presenting their own experiences with The Urantia Book.
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