By Edwene Gaines: There is a line from the play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee where a character is described as having always “looked for God too high up and too far away.”

I think that’s what so many of us do, in whatever religion or spiritual belief system we might have; we look for God too high up and too far away.

My belief is that God is right here in this moment, within us, surrounding us, embracing us, connecting us, and that the more awake and aware we are to God’s presence within and around us, the more joy, abundance, and vitality we will be able to experience in our own lives. The mystics call it “practicing the presence of God.” And to me, that is what life is all about.

Our challenge and our goal is not to try to fight and manipulate a universe that wants to withhold our good. Instead, it is to accept that the good is here and to give ourselves permission to receive it. My own experience is that this requires us to make some very profound and deep-seated changes within ourselves.

I believe that the presence and power of God is within each and every human being. We can choose to align with it and to embrace it, but we can’t do that until we adhere to the four spiritual laws.

… I believe that prosperity is your birthright, as a child of God. I believe that I it is your divine inheritance, bequeathed to you by divine right. Prosperity is the consciousness of God present everywhere. God wants you to be prosperous.

I am extremely excited that it is possible for people to wake up to their inherent divinity. And my excitement and enthusiasm about the “waking up to divinity” process is that it works for every single one of us, no matter what we may have done or chosen to believe in the past. I’m thrilled about the unlimited possibilities that we can unleash from inside ourselves.

Let’s conclude with a prayer to launch you on this important journey:

Father/Mother God, I invite the Holy Spirit to take charge of my journey to prosperity. I let go of all that has gone before, and I now begin anew. I am free and forgiven for all the mistakes I’ve made in the past. I open myself now to expressing a brand new magnificence. I open myself to the infinite possibilities that are mine to choose. I open myself to receiving all the goodness I can have and to all the greatness I can achieve. I invite the Holy Spirit to heal my body, to harmonize my emotions, to renew my mind. To fill me now with a mighty faith that empowers me and allows me to commit to be all that I came to be. Amen