People think that strength comes from having muscles; but in fact, muscles come from strength. The development of a muscular physique takes commitment to exercise and inner persistence to follow a regimen for building muscles. That inner persistence is a strength of mind and will. Anyone who wants a muscular body can develop one, but only those who have inner strength will succeed.
In fact, everyone has inner strength, the power of persistence, even though not everyone uses that strength. It takes persistence to accomplish any objective, and any objective is possible if a person has enough persistence.
Strength is a gift of God, a faculty that is part of our spiritual nature. Charles Fillmore taught that the disciple Andrew represents the faculty of strength in the New Testament, mainly because the name “Andrew” means “strong man.” The New Testament doesn't tell us much about Andrew beyond the fact that he was a fisherman, brother of Peter (the “Rock” who represents faith), and one of Jesus' earliest disciples. In symbolic terms, strength is required to develop all the other faculties.
The faculties (Powers) are developed by persistent affirmation, concentration and receptivity to Spirit. Yet if you don't have persistence, how can you persistently affirm it? The dilemma is similar to the situation of the man who wanted to improve his memory but kept forgetting to sign up for the memory course. Or the woman who was going to take a time-management course to overcome her perpetual procrastination but who put off signing up until it was too late.
Persistent people, people who accomplish their objectives, persist because their objectives have great importance to them. They feel that what they are doing is more important than just about anything. They have purpose. Purpose, like persistence, is an idea within our souls.
If you want to experience and express more strength, you need to have some idea of an important purpose. In fact, you express your sense of purpose in the way you live. If you go to work every day to make money to pay bills, your purpose is to pay bills.
Perhaps your higher sense of purpose is to take care of your family.
Yet you may wish you had more persistence to fulfill some dream. … Get an idea of (the) higher purpose (behind) that dream, which makes the dream a means to the end of your higher, more important, more compelling purpose. In three little words, here is what I suggest: Work for God. What could be a higher, more compelling purpose than working for God.
As an example, let's suppose you want to learn to play the piano but just haven't been able to get motivated. You could adopt an idea such as “I want to play the piano to express the joy and beauty of God within me.” That would be working (or playing) for God. Signing up for piano lessons, practicing every day, persisting through the difficulties, would all be motivated by the idea “I'm working for God.”
A delightful process occurs when you take this approach to any task. You start getting a sense that you are doing something important, something meaningful beyond mere ego gratification. Then you begin to feel joy in even the most menial tasks. After time, you begin to feel and realize, “God is working though me.” Ultimately you realize, “I am God expressing.” Once you realize that you have inner strength, the power of persistence, nothing will seem as difficult to you, and your dreams can be realized.
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2005 issue of Unity Magazine®.
