Rise of the Mega-Pastor

The book and movie The Secret are very much inspired by the Wallace Wattles book The Science of Getting Rich. In fact this is the book that Rhonda reports being given by her daughter that started everything off for her. (The cover page shot in the movie shows a different book, which is Secret of The Ages by Robert Collier).

I wish to address the following passage from The Science of Getting Rich:

"What is now needed is a demonstration of the science of life from the pulpit. We want preachers who can not only tell us how, but who in their own persons will show us how. We need the preacher who will himself be rich, healthy, great, and beloved, to teach us how to attain to these things; and when he comes he will find a numerous and loyal following."

Mr. Wattles wrote this 100 years ago. If he were alive today, I think he would visit Houston, point to Lakewood Church, and say: See! I told you so!

If you are one of the five people in America who have not heard of Lakewood Church or Pastor Joel Osteen, it is a non-denominational church following similar theology and methods as an Assembly of God church would. Pastor Osteen draws crowds of several tens of thousands every weekend, filling up the former Compaq Center, where the Houston Rockets used to play basketball. At the rate they are growing it seems that the currently unused 60,000 seat Astrodome might be the church's next location. The television audience is numbered in the millions.

To put things in a little perspective, I estimate that about 3-4 million people have had the opportunity to see the DVD movie The Secret. Pastor Osteen reaches twice that many people directly every single week. I do not know the numbers for the book.

And yet several other pastors and leaders from other churches level much criticism for Lakewood Church being really light on doctrine or even repentence, which is scarcely mentioned. In my mind Pastor Osteen is more a motivational speaker than a Pastor, but having grown up as the son of the former Pastor of Lakewood church it was natural for him to follow in his father's footsteps.

And yet to attend motivational seminars that are half as good as what is presented at Lakewood costs several hundred dollars. At Lakewood, the services and the parking are free. The church brings in millions upon millions of dollars from donations from the congregation and from the TV audience, which is quite interesting because the do not show collection on the TV program, and they never ask for money on the TV version (a great plan given what some TV preachers have done in the past).

So, why is this Pastor so popular?

Because his message describes a loving God who is always working to bring better things into our lives. All of his sermons discuss different ways that we block Him from doing that, and how we can stop blocking Him. It is a refreshing change of pace from those who preach that God is uncaring or uninterested in the details of a single persons life, or the message that true spirituality is obtained through poverty and lack.

As information comes to light in this age about the Law of Attraction, we can begin to understand how it was us, and not God, who caused most of what we are complaining about to happen to us. This is an important distinction!

If our afflictions are sent to us by God, then we would be absolutely powerless to do anything about them at all except for muddle through, and pray to the God who sent them to take them away. Does this seem like a disconnect to anyone?

What if instead we attracted them ourself? True or Not, this is a more empowering idea. You see if God is the cause of your afflictions, then i do not know how you do anything different than live your entire life as a victim. The God in this thought universe is the God of Justice, brimstone and damnation.

If instead you attracted them yourself via the Law of Attraction, then guess what? You can do something about it! Given we are taught that God helps those who help themselves, it is apparent that we were meant to do something about it ourselves. The God of this thought universe is the mentor, the loving father, the advocate. The one who wants to bless us with more than we can imagine, but also the one who knows when we are ready to handle something.

Pastor Osteen does exactly what Wallace Wattles said 100 years ago, and he certainly does not lack for a following.

Here is another item to consider. The success of Pastor Osteen is but an example of the success that every human being can attract once they get in line with the Universe and start using the talents that they were blessed with. Combine that with some marketing work to find the right audience, and a similar success story can belong to anyone else who seeks it.

And we should all seek it. How would you like to go to different cities and towns and have hundreds of people line up all telling you that you have so inspired them, that their life is so much better now since they have come to know you. Talk about a virtuous circle, here is the case of someone living in the magic of life.

All of us are meant to do the same, no matter how much we ignore it.

Joseph

To Earn, or Not to Spend! That is the Question.

If you are like me, in your past you were taught the following:

You must spend less than you earn.

This statement is of course 100% correct! It is also the worst kind of *lack* thinking. Did you notice that they did not say this once in the movie The Secret ??

Whoa! You say, I learned that from the financial books that I read! --- I know. So did I.

Let me be clear that it is not a sin to think this way. Also 99% of the world thinks this way.

. . . but . . .

God does not think this way. And believing this, we find we now need to pay attention.

Lack thinking will prevent us from living in the magic of life; but we are not required to live in the magic of life, it's only if we want to!

Lack thinking will encourage the Universe to manifest financial issues for us; but we are not required to have financial issues, it's only if we *want* them.

And for those of you who say "but I have financial issues and I do NOT want them!" ----- There you go again, focusing on what you do not want. You are attracting it.

OK, you say, if "spend less than you earn" is lack thinking, what should you say instead?

I am sooooooo glad that you asked!

Are you ready ???

Make more than you spend.

It's really just that simple. Think about it. Focus of statement one is "spend less". Focus of statement two is "make more". Notice the implicit statements as well . . .
1. Spend less than you earn (Your income is limited so you must be sure to not test it).
2. Make more than you spend (Your income is unlimited, you can decide how much you want).

I must thank Robert Kiyosaki for the following, which is further proof of this:
Poor Dad Always Said: I cannot afford it. (Shuts the brain down)
Rich Dad Always Said: How can I afford it? (Gives the brain some creating to do)

Neither had the money to afford it at the beginning. Its not even about whether we have the money at the beginning . . . it's about whether we think lack, or think abundance.

And while that is easy to write, it is a little tougher to do if we have not practiced. The following should help.

We must listen to ourselves. What we speak is powerful. Are we speaking lack? We must stop immediately!

An experiment. Think of a money amount right now that if you had that much in the bank you would be set for life. How does that feel? Now compare: Multiply that amount that you just thought about by 1000, and get a new amount. Now how does it feel having this new amount? If it feels worse, or if you are now in any way afraid, then you have some issues with money that need to be cleared up.

Do not forget yourself! If there was fear in your experiment, was that possibly because you know that having money of that magnitude really enhances who and what you already are, and you are just not 100% sure that who and what you are is where it should be yet?

Now for the kicker . . . . .

When you think of "money", do you respond with A. Love? or B. Fear?

Maybe you are thinking of the scripture that says "for the love of money is the root of all evil". And because of that, you now have a fear of loving money. Is it any wonder we are all messed up on this one?

May I suggest that having feelings of love around money, and "loving money", are two completely different things? Being evil is the root of all evil. Having money only determines how widespread that evil would be. "Loving money" means not loving people, and THAT is the problem the scripture seeks to address, and it gets progressively worse the more money there is. Sometimes this problem is called "pride". One slays it with Gratitude.

But we must seek to have feelings of love around money; like we feel like we trust it, we can count on it to be there for us, it won't let us down. We can count on it to grow for us and manifest more than we need.

Your bills? All opportunities to express appreciation in the form of money. The balance on your last bank statement? The Past. Put the feelings of love around money, and it will start to show respect to you.

Money loves to come where it is welcomed, and it is welcomed by value. Find a way to provide more.

Joseph

Think and Speak Your Way to Prosperity

In my mind, the entire purpose of the movie The Secret is to help us to begin to think a little differently about a few things in our lives; and the movie also talks about how adding speaking to that increases its power.

Close to 98% of us grow up learning and especially hearing lack thinking most of the time. If we did not hear it from our own parents, then we heard it from several other sources. Someone who grew up without all of this is fortunate indeed.

For the rest of us, there are some things that we need to get clear in our mind in order to overcome the lack thinking, and so that we may begin the prosperity speaking. The prosperity that we seek will follow only after we have learned the language of prosperity and spoken it for a while. We will not be able to speak it until we get it entrenched into our thoughts.

1. While you may have been a victim in the past, you now realize that you have more control of your circumstances then you ever thought possible, and that you have a clear choice in any matter as to whether you will be a victim. At first even if you still feel like a victim of something you will not add power to it by speaking or complaining about it!

2. You now understand clearly that we will obtain prosperity through creation, not competition. You will abandon all the false ideas that someone else has to lose for you to win. You must completely destroy within your own mind any idea that some dishonesty will be required on your part in order to succeed. It is the competition mindset that says that we must gain advantage over others in order to win; you now know that this is false doctrine.

3. As a follow up to the last item, you now understand that your prosperity comes from helping others find their prosperity, and that it comes quicker as you help more people.

4. You understand clearly that you are blessed with a talent of some kind that will allow you to be in the top 5% of your industry when you use it. How do you know what your talent is? You will find it by doing these three words: Follow Your Bliss. Spend you mental effort setting up a way for you to get paid for doing what you most love to do, and make sure that you get paid more for it as you help more people with it. Once this is done, then you are set up to succeed. Since it is hard to think prosperity if basic needs are not met, do not quit your current income until your new venture(s) have at least doubled it.

5. Do what you can to be around other people who speak prosperity. The group around the office water cooler may not be the best choice. If you do not have any good ideas as to how to accomplish this, I will give you one: Go attend a meeting put on by any Direct Sales/Network Marketing Company. You do not have to join the company to go. There will be people there who think and speak prosperity.

Sound like a lot to do? Does this sound hard? Here is what I think is hard: Forcing ourselves to live an unremarkable life takes a lot of mental effort! Some of us are just so used to it now that we no longer perceive the effort. Our soul longs for the magic of life, and we will surprise ourselves with what happens when we start moving in the right direction!

Last thought: Time will be required, and there will be some number of failures along the way. When you see them you will know them for the sign that they are, which is the sign that you are on the right path. How can we ever learn anything if we never fail? The answer is that we cannot, and if we never learn anything then our life cannot change.

I end with a recent Note From The Universe (Mike Dooley, tut.com): Fear, Joseph, can only be experienced when one pretends they're not in control.

I could say the same thing for doubt. Successful people know how to replace doubt and fear with love.

Joseph

Does Lack Thinking Make you Gain Weight?

The subject of lack thinking and what it is exactly is covered by Dr Michael Beckwith in The Secret. In short it is that may of us tend to have thought patterns that perceive lack; like there is never enough money, or never enough oil, or whatever it may be.

There are some who feel this way as it relates to food, and lack thinking with regard to food is a powerful way to increase ones body size.

I will give a specific example. I generally like the fast food resturant Chick-Fil-A for several reasons, and recently I ordered one of their chargrilled chicken salads. The salad comes with a pouch of croutons and another pouch of sunflower seed kernels. If you check the nutrition information you will find that the salad has 180 calories, the croutons 70 and the kernels 80, for a grand total of 330 calories, which is not a lot for someone on a 2000 calorie diet.

But then there is the salad dressing packet. . . . now sure you can get the non-fat dressing or go with no dressing; but what if your favorite happens to be Blue Cheese? The blue cheese dressing packet contains 375 calories by itself, more then the rest of the salad put together!

Now here is where lack thinking comes in. If one thinks this way they will automatically assume that the entire packet is barely enough or not quite enough to cover the salad, and they would thus use all of it without a second thought. Or worse they could just decide to not have their favorite dressing because they know they would never be able to burn that many calories off.

I do not like either of those choices. Here's a third. Use half of it. That adds 188 calories to the salad, and I found that half of the packet was enough to have enough dressing for the salad. Now the total is 330 + 188 = 518, which is still not a bad amount of calories for a 2000 calorie diet. I think I would skip the waffle fries, but that is just me :-)

If one has lack thinking when it comes to food, they will likely eat more than they need if an effort to fight off "not enough". It is time for some of us to change our thinking on this.

Joseph