by Emmet Fox

What do you think of the nature of God? What do you think God is like? That is the most important question in the whole world because your idea of God will determine your whole life. From the very marrow of your bones right down to the farthest place your influence goes, all is determined ultimately by your real belief about the nature of God.

If you say, The truth is that it is so hazy I don't know what I think about God -- and that is true of many people -- then it will leave your life hazy, drifting, and undetermined. It is your conception of God that makes your whole life. It makes you what you are. It makes your health, your appearance, your home, your business. It makes the kind of friends and enemies you have and the kind of people you meet. Of all the important things that should be taken care of, the one thing that really matters is your idea of God, because that determines everything.

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)

Your idea of God is not the name you give to God. It does not matter what you call God. These are only names. The real name of God for you is your idea of God; not mine, not the one your father or mother taught you, not the local minister's idea, but your own honest and real idea of God. That will govern your whole life. That is the name of God for you, and you cannot have it in vain.

The question is sometimes asked, "Do you believe in God?" But that question and its answer can have no meaning until you say what kind of God you believe in. Then it has a meaning. The only intelligent question is what kind of God do you believe in, because everybody believes in some God, even those who do not like the word. And you cannot believe in any kind of God without getting the result of that.

Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

If you believe that God is good; God is love; God has all power; God is intelligence; all the conditions of your life will steadily improve. Some conditions will clear up much sooner than others. Some people will demonstrate harmony and well-being sooner than others. These things are only a matter of degree. But when you really believe that God is all these things, as unquestioningly, as unemotionally as you believe in the soundness of the George Washington Bridge when you cross it in a car, then everything will begin to come right.

You cannot take the name of God in vain. You cannot do it. Whatever your idea of God is, whatever idea you really believe in, that will be expressed in your life. A limited God will be limited, a cruel God will react to you cruelly and without love. You will suffer the results of that. If you believe in a weak God, you will suffer the consequences of weakness. If you believe in a human God, you will have all the trouble you would have if a human being really could run this universe.

However, if you believe that God is spirit, and think what spirit means, and if you believe that God is love, and intelligence, and life, and wisdom, and think what these things mean, and really believe it, you will get the results of that kind of God. Your conditions will improve as the days and weeks go by. You will go from strength to strength. Your health, your surroundings, and your understanding will increase and multiply -- "Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away" -- because you cannot take the name of God in vain.

Emmet Fox (1886-1951)

Remember that words do not become true because you affirm them. That is the common confusion about the practice of affirmative prayer, that if you speak words of Truth over and over, you impress them on the subconscious mind and thus they become true for you. They do not become true because you affirm them. You affirm them because they are true. You are synchronizing your consciousness with the reality of the Truth.

Eric Butterworth

Do not be afraid; only believe.

Mark 5:36

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