A Course in Miracles Lesson Insights

To gain the most from A Course in Miracles Lesson Insights, we recommend that you
read the corresponding lesson in the Workbook of the Second or
Third Edition of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.
Click here to read or listen to this ACIM Workbook Lesson online.

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Listen to Lesson 166 Insights

ACIM Workbook Lesson 166 Insights

“I am entrusted with the gifts of God.”

Today’s lesson is asking us to exemplify what we are learning from the Course. To truly have the gifts the Course is offering us we must live them. It is not enough to just repeat the words that God has given me His joy and His Love. I need to accept His joy and be joyous. This is how I offer salvation to the world. This is how I offer joy to my brother — by demonstrating joy. I can only demonstrate joy when I align my will with God’s, when I remember His Will and mine are one and the same.

If I perceive myself attacked by a brother and respond with attack, I have made the world real and denied my Creator’s Will. His Will is to love and nothing else. The more I to take my thoughts of attack to the Holy Spirit to let them be transformed, the more I will live in peace and joy, and the more I will give the gifts of peace and joy. The transformation of my thoughts and beliefs comes in many ways, but the end result is that what I perceived as attack I have been led to see as a call for Love.

Sometimes I recognize the call for Love in another. Sometimes I recognize the call for Love in myself. And oftentimes I see it in both. The Holy Spirit always answers those calls for Love with Love. He reminds me that God created me in Love, has not changed His Mind about me, and so I already have the Love I seek. He reminds me that I am worthy because God has deemed me worthy. Sometimes the transformation of perception leads to an action or expression to a brother to help Him know that he is loved in a form that he can receive. Sometimes it is only a thought of Love in my mind that I can offer, but always, as I give the gift, I receive the gift. I feel the strength of Love in my heart grow.

Today let me recognize the Love I have and am. Let me freely give It so I may receive It’s blessing. Thus do I fulfill God’s trust in me that He has demonstrated by His gifts to me.

God’s gifts to me are His Love, His peace and His joy. God’s gift to me is true happiness. God’s gift to me is Heaven. Jesus tells us in earlier lessons that we are Heaven. We have been given Heaven. It is our only Identity. Our job now is to let go of wandering in the wilderness like the prodigal son. Our job is to accept our inheritance from our Father in Heaven and be willing to be led back to Heaven by the Holy Spirit.

We can tell if we are allowing ourselves to be led back to Heaven by the amount of peace, love and joy we let into our awareness. When we let peace, love and joy into our awareness, we feel it. We are one with these gifts. When we are one with these gifts, we spontaneously give these gifts of peace, love and joy. When we receive Love we give Love. Within the action of receiving is the action of giving. It is all one.

It is interesting to recognize that the most important thing we can give any brother is the gift of peace, the gift of Love, the gift of joy. In order to give these gifts, we must first receive them. And inherent in receiving them is giving them. So today my top priority is to give God’s peace, God’s Love and God’s joy to everyone, because God’s gifts are always all inclusive. I do this by being willing to receive God’s gifts.

My practice today is asking myself often, “Am I actively receiving God’s gifts of peace, love and joy right now?” If not, my job is to open my mind to the Holy Spirit and ask with desire. What I ask for in my heart of hearts I will receive. What a wonderful opportunity I have today — the practice of receiving the gifts of God and giving them away.

I have succeeded in making it a habit to ask Holy Spirit to take my thoughts of attack and transform them. Though I don’t always do it, I do it more often than not. It is making a huge difference in my life. I realized this morning that I almost never follow my request by asking for God’s Love and comfort. I am not asking for joy. I think this tells me that I am resisting my true Self and clinging instead to the self I made. I think the only way to change this is by a conscious decision to do so. I will spend today reminding myself that I want God’s gifts of peace love and joy and asking for them. I am sure that receiving them will increase my motivation.

It is essential I do this because I must have them so that I can give them away. This is my part in the salvation of the world. I think that unconsciously I was beginning to realize what I’ve been doing because lately it has been bothering me a lot that I am so seldom accepting these gifts from God. I’ve been talking to Holy Spirit about it, but somehow I’ve been thinking of them as rewards, nice but hardly necessary, and perhaps not deserved yet. I see it differently now and I thank God for this new vision.

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