The question so many ask on the journey of life is when will I get there? Or am I there yet? To answer the question let us use a story as an example: The Wizard of Oz. In this classic, Dorothy ends up in the Land of Oz and she must go on a journey first to the Wizard to see if he can know a way that she can get back to her home in Kansas. Then second, after meeting with the wizard she must go on another journey to kill the wicked witch and bring back her broomstick to the Wizard so he will then grant her request to return to Kansas. What happens in the story is that she successfully puts the witch to death, returns to the Wizard with the broomstick and he, a Kansas native himself, decides to go back also and agrees to bring her with him via hot air balloon. Well, at the last minute she misses her balloon ride and thinks she is stuck in Oz the rest of her life when the good witch appears and tells her the secret of life. With the ruby slippers she was wearing she could have gone home any time. What is the moral of this story?
We are there, not we will get there someday, or how much longer before I get there.
What is there? There is overcoming the disease, overcoming the relationship struggle, overcoming the financial disaster, overcoming the three year long unemployment or just overcoming the need to get somewhere, anywhere other than where you are right now.
Coming to Terms with “Why Me”?
As the truth of the saying goes, “This is as good as it gets.” Coming to terms with suffering and learning how to live with a “this is as good as it gets” mind set may help overcome life’s challenges.
This brings up many questions:
1. How can this be as good as it gets when I am suffering and dying with cancer?
2. This cannot be as good as it gets when I have been out of work for three years, I have spent all my savings and am about to go on welfare?
3. My husband has left me and my four children for another woman. I have no money and no one to turn to. If this is as good as it gets, then my life is as good as over. How can this be?
To answer these questions, I will use some questions.
1. Where does suffering come from?
2. Where does cause and effect come from?
3. Where does good come from?
God’s Guidance
Suffering can be defined as a state of the mind, thinking that you want to or you need to be anywhere else other than where you are. The story of Job covers this topic in detail. After Job lost his wealth, lost his family and lost his health, he questioned his very existence saying “why was I even born?” Then, God shows up and asks Job “where were you when I created the heavens and the earth?” The story ends with Job humbly saying to God “I spoke of things I did not understand”. Basically, Job said “You are God and I spoke out of line to every question of why you allow certain things to occur”. Everything has a purpose in God’s plan for our lives and in the end Job received even more wealth, his family and his health.
Where does cause and effect come from? It comes from the physical realm. It comes from the mind. In this physical world, if I do this, I get that. This is how you have grown up and been trained. If I dedicate myself to success and put all my energy toward that, I will reap what I sow–success. Some of the richest people have continued to press forward despite great odds, great losses, great hardships, but in the end received what they knew was theirs for the taking–success.
In the spiritual realm, there is NO cause and effect. You no longer work to achieve anything or to get anywhere because you are already there. In the spiritual realm, time no longer exists. So everything is NOW. Even God’s name is NOW. His name is “I Am” not I was or I will be but I Am. What this all means to you is that when you rest in Him, you rest in what is, not what was or what will be.
In Heaven you will not be trying to achieve anything or be trying to be someone or get somewhere. You will already be all that you were created to be and you will live in that state of being.
Now, if you could imagine for a moment the Kingdom of Heaven coming to earth, the Kingdom of Heaven is actually within you. While you are on earth, you can access the truth of the statement “This is as good as it gets.”
To understand “This is as good as it gets” you must understand what good means. Good means God and God means good. There is no one good in their old human nature. Good only comes when we are one with God and then His goodness becomes our good.
So to say this is as good as it gets really means to say: This is as God as it gets. Another way the phrase it is God is fully in this moment. The question is–are you fully in the same present moment as He is, or are you living in the same moment He lives in?
God lives only in the infinite, eternal “I Am” present moment. He does not live in the past or the future. When even you find yourself trying to live in the past or the future you have stepped out of His presence and that is called suffering.
When you do not accept “What IS” then you suffer.
When you do not see Him behind everything that comes into your life, then you suffer.
Everything He allows into your life has a purpose, and the purpose is to transform you into His likeness and image. To bring you to live and walk more in the spiritual realm and less in the world-filled, ego-filled, flesh-filled, lie-filled old mind realm.
When the doctor says you have three months to live with this cancer, you must not live in the future–the three months but in the moment–where God the I AM lives.
Would you rather live 75 years in bondage to fear, death and the old mind or just one day fully in His Presence living life to the full, free from all fear, all bondage, and all the lies of the old mind?
What you will find is once you start living fully in the moments, they become so beautiful, so God, that you are no longer looking at time, no longer looking at the cancer, the relationship loss, the financial crisis but instead living life to the full as He intended you to. This is eternal life, this is heaven coming to earth, this is His Kingdom come.
Learn more about this powerful truth from the How to Know You are Healed Series.
