Driving to work Monday morning, Jo Ann felt great. She had spent the weekend at the “Living Prosperously and Successfully” retreat and was filled with hopeful ideas. In fact, she was still thinking about how a “prosperity consciousness” could change her life when she found the note from her boss: “Jo Ann, please come see me first thing.”

She knocked on his door. “Come in,” he said. “Have a seat.”

“This won't take long,” he went on. “The thing is, we appreciate everything you've done for us in the past 10 years, but we're downsizing, and your position has been eliminated. Given your excellent performance, we'll give you a six-month compensation package—”

She was no longer listening. Something from the retreat flashed through her head—“Charles Fillmore said, ‘The Father's desire for us is unlimited good.'” Well, apparently that's not working for me, she thought.

And then her mind was off to the races: I've done my job well. Don't they appreciate me? I'm fired? How will I take care of the children? How much do I have in savings and how long will it last? What bills are due? Prosperity? Can I even cover rent and groceries? Why didn't I see this coming? What if my car breaks down? What if one of the kids gets sick? I can't believe this. I've devoted myself to this company and now I'm out? Why? What's next?

She drove home, sick with worry.

The next morning, she phoned her minister and explained Monday's events. “If God's desire for me is unlimited good,” she asked as she burst into tears, “why is this happening?”

If you were her minister, how would you respond?

Sometimes unexpected and unpleasant events in our lives send us reeling, and keeping our minds focused on prosperous thoughts seems particularly difficult. At times like these, what we need is a way to navigate the emotional debris and cast anchor in the calm.

That's what prayer will do.
 

Prayers of gratitude generate a positive and hopeful attitude. Your mind and heart begin to hope, and in hoping, faith is born anew. A solid prosperity consciousness does not mean you will not find yourself with life's challenges. It means you will manage these challenges with positive, responsible and practical methods that are created through prayer and envisioning. Your affirmative prayers might be followed by a time of silence. It is during this silence that you might receive a thought, an idea. That idea may be the foundation for new-found prosperity. As you focus on this new idea, set an intention in your mind. This intention is a spiritual thought. As you affirm God as your source of supply, let your imagination run free. Affirm that there are other channels of income and supply. Envision those channels opening up to you now. Setting your intention creates a foundation for developing and implementing a plan of action that is practical and spiritual.

—Imelda Shanklin, Unity Weekly, 1926
 

What did Jo Ann's minister do? She prayed with Jo Ann, thanking God for the extraordinary blessings of Jo Ann's family, her well-honed skills, and the exciting adventure unfolding in her life. She affirmed her release into a new prosperity of possibilities and offered the assurance of God's continuing presence—“not merely around you,” she told her, “but in you.” In the days that followed, Jo Ann's personal prayer practice led her to a calmer frame of mind. A blossoming prosperity consciousness followed.

You, too, can meet the challenges of life with prayer and keep prosperity sharply in focus. Pray in gratitude, set an intention and believe that the ideas coming from your prayers are the vehicles through which God expresses a desire for our abundant good. Prayerful intent creates prosperous ideas in you.

These ideas are your passport to prosperity.

Be still. Be still. Be still.
God in the midst of you is substance.
God in the midst of you is love.
God in the midst of you is wisdom.
Let not your thoughts be given over to lack,
But let wisdom fill them with the substance and faith of God.

—Myrtle Fillmore
 

This article originally appeared in The Divine Flow of Abundance, a free booklet from Unity (no longer available in print). Click here for a current list of free inspirational materials from Unity.