Seek The Kingdom

Neville Goddard 03-29-1968

That which is most profoundly spiritual is in reality most directly practical. We are told: “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ for your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all of these things shall be yours as well.” Here is a priority. Your heavenly Father knows you have to eat, drink, and clothe yourself, and they will all be yours if you will but put first things first; and the first thing is to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, for God is in his kingdom and when you find the kingdom you find God.

While reading a book you may be aware of the phone ringing or someone entering the room. Although your attention is on the book, it does not exclude these events, which are marginal. So if, when you hear the story of the kingdom and how to enter it, your attention remains there, your heavenly Father will care for all of your marginal needs as you modify your concepts concerning God’s plan of salvation.

My parents (along with multiple millions of others) believed their children must be baptized in order to be saved, and they took me before the baptismal, where I was baptized in the name of Christ before I was aware of it. They, like hundreds of millions, have lived and died never changing that concept. But scripture read correctly tells us to “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” That Abraham believed and his belief was accounted unto him for righteousness, so now you see what righteousness is. Righteousness in not a belief among beliefs, but the belief. You must find out what the belief is really is. I know from experience that the belief is that I will be born from above and receive God’s gift of himself through his Son calling me “Father”. Having heard this from me, are you convinced to the point where you can, in the immediate present, modify your concept of Jesus? To the degree your belief in God has been modified will you find corresponding changes in your outer world, for you are always living in and thinking from a body of beliefs. You can believe you are healthy, wealthy, successful, or a failure, and to the degree you accept this belief will you express the state. But fundamentally, what is your concept of God, for only as you seek his kingdom will you discover that God and his kingdom are one.

From this platform I teach that I and my Father are one. Being one, my Father can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. What is there in you that can’t even be near? Imagination! You cannot separate yourself from imagination. You can’t claim: “I am” and point to it as something on the outside. It is impossible to separate yourself from the sense of being, so in the sense of I AMness, you are imagining. If this sense of oneness is your Father, do you really believe in him? If so, to what extent does your confession in words conform to your deep, deep conviction?

Matthew makes this statement: “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.

Think not I came to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. To set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, for a man’s foes are those of his own household.”

In this statement, Matthew is not speaking of any physical conflict, but the conflict of the spirit. He is telling you that your foes are spiritual, all within your own household. Not the house other individuals share with you, but your spiritual house called the kingdom of heaven.

Now, as this new concept presents itself like a sunburst, will you accept it? Being new, it is now in conflict with what you formerly believed. This is new wine which is not yet fermented, and if accepted cannot be put into the old skins (the old beliefs), for if you place unfermented wine in an old skin it will burst. There must be a new belief to think from. Will you accept the fact that your own wonderful human imagination is He whom the world calls God? Will you accept this idea and allow it to ferment? Acknowledge your true self and live in that belief? Or will you say: “It’s easier to live with my wife (or husband) if I don’t confess it. I tried, but it upsets the household, so we continue to go to the same church and do the same things we have always done in the outer world.”