We have had the delightful privilege of officiating at several beautiful weddings this summer, and each one is unique and special. One of the biggest issues the couple deals with in the wedding planning seems to have nothing to do with the ceremony. It involves who to invite! Have you ever turned down an invitation to attend someone’s wedding? It seems like a simple decision … but it can have an incredible spiritual impact!

In Matthew 22:2-14, that’s exactly what happened.  First, let us share an “updated” version! It all begins begins with, “The kingdom of heaven is like …:

A CEO Facebooked, Tweeted, and e-mailed wedding invitations for his son, then sent his staff to re-invite those he had already contacted online. That seems a little redundant, but that’s what he did. Despite the personally delivered second invitation, the guests refused to come.

So the CEO invited the guests a third time. He instructed the staff to tell the prospective guests that Emeril Agassi was preparing the meal and that it would be wonderful.

He reminded the guests that he had two big screen TVs, Wii games they could play, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, three saunas, four hot tubs, plenty of hor d overs, and enough drinks for everyone.

But the prospective guests still ignored the invitation.

Some of the guests said they were too busy. They had other things to do. Others were so irritated at the invitation that they went postal and killed the CEO’s staff. So the CEO hired the Russian mafia and had all of the guests assassinated who were responsible for killing his staff.

The CEO told his remaining staff to e-mail, Tweet, Skype, and Facebook as many people as they could and invite them to his son’s wedding. It didn’t matter who the people were. He just wanted people in seats at the wedding.

But when the CEO came in to see the guests, he noticed one of the guests was not wearing the proper black tie attire. So he approached the man and asked why he wasn’t properly dressed. The man was both surprised and speechless. Without further ado the CEO had the man handcuffed and thrown out of the banquet hall.

For many are invited, but few are chosen.

 Wow! That would be a wedding to remember! The thing is, this story, like many Bible stories, is not meant to be taken literally. Whenever a Biblical account seems bizarre or convoluted, you can bet your lottery ticket it is a signal to look for its deeper spiritual truth.

Look at how this story begins: “The kingdom of heaven is like…” and then the next 13 verses are filled with rudeness, violence, and murder. That’s not the kind of heaven we envision. How ‘bout you? Look, we’ve all been brought up in conventional religious traditions. We are all refugees from embedded theology. That’s why we’re drawn to this search for deeper Truth. We know there’s more to the Bible than the Bible we grew up with.

Killing your guests because they refused to come to your wedding. Please! And that’s what the kingdom of heaven is like? We don’t think so! In its literal version, this story is selling fear, self-righteous murder, and violence. In its literal version it reads like a breaking news segment on CNN.

Here’s another, more sane view, from a Spiritual perspective. This metaphysical snapshot should clear this story up very nicely :

• The kingdom of heaven represents the process of becoming one with the Christ Presence within us.
• The CEO or king, as the scripture reads, is God, the Eternal One, Divine Mind, the First Cause, or whatever name you use to describe the One Reality that is All That Is.
• The wedding invitation is the call to marry our human self with our Christ Self (the two shall be one – human self and divine self).
• The wedding banquet is the Unlimited, Omnipresent Substance which is readily available to us each-consecutive-moment-of-now.
• The servants(staff) are spiritual thoughts, ideas, and divine inclinations.
• The killing and murder represent our neglect, refusal, disinterest in, and failure to apply truth principles.
• Inviting anyone and everyone symbolizes our willingness and openness to change old habits and belief systems.
• The man improperly dressed represents our attempt to understand spiritual truths with a material consciousness.
• Binding the man’s hands and feet and tossing him into the darkness means that we are unable to do the work we have come here to do as long as we remain in the dark about our true nature.

In a nutshell, this story has this to say to us:

Becoming aware of our innate divinity is like this: The first thing we’ve got to understand is that the allness of God is in the eachness of us. We must realize that we have total and complete access to incredible abundance, unless we choose to deny our innate divinity and neglect to apply truth principles.

When we fail to apply Truth principles, we handcuff our spiritual growth and remain unaware of our incredible Christ potential. We remain in the dark.

But if we accept the divine invitation to be the best Christ we can be, we will be able to have anything we want on the banquet table — things like health, inner strength,        happiness, compassion,  inner peace, unconditional love,  self-confidence,  wisdom, joy, unlimited prosperity.

Every one of these “delicious dishes” can be yours. But you’ve got to show up at the wedding. You’ve got to accept the divine  invitation. You’ve got to enter the banquet hall prepared to accept your good.

In her book Dare to Believe, May Rowland, Director of Silent Unity for over 55 years said: “I remembered from the teachings of Charles Fillmore that Jesus Christ made a rent in the materialistic consciousness and showed us the way back to God, thus shortening the evolutionary period of our spiritual development by millions of years.”

You, too, can rent the veil of materialism and take your place at the banquet table of peace, abundance, and prosperity.

Imagine what a world we could create, imagine what your life could be, if each of us married our human self with our Christ Self, our True Self!

We could live happily ever after. Why not start right now ?

Everyone loves a good challenge, right? Well, step right up, because we have a hum-dinger of a challenge for you, if you think you can handle it! When you succeed with this challenge, you will experience an incredible leap in Consciousness, and discover a depth to your spirituality you’ve never imagined possible.

Are you interested? Here’s the deal: In his book, Prosperity, Charles Fillmore writes: “Never make an assertion, no matter how true it may look on the surface, that you would not want to see manifest in your life. For example, don’t say, money is scarce; the very statement will scare money away from you. Do not say times are hard; the very words will tighten your purse strings. Begin now to talk plenty, think plenty, and give thanks for plenty.”

So here’s the challenge! Try to go one full day following Charles’ advice! Refuse to speak any words of your mouth that you do not want to see manifested in your experience! Sound simple? Not as easy as we wish it would be! But a great awareness activity! The very day we created this challenge, we took it on ourselves. Not 30 minutes into it, Cher exclaimed, “Boy, I’m having a bad hair day!” Then we laughed and Cher added, “I sure don’t want THAT\That’s definitely not what I want to be manifested! Let me change that statement: I LOVE my hair, and I look great!”

Perhaps you\You might hear yourself say, “I can’t afford that.” Ooops – you don’t want that idea manifested! How about saying instead, “I choose to spend my money in a different way!”

You could be experiencing a health challenge, and you find yourself complaining about your pain. Take on the challenge, and change your languaging, because you surely don’t want pain manifested. Do not assert what you do not want to see in your life experience! Instead, claim “I am healing I am health I am the nature of God.”

This challenge really forces you to become very aware of the words you speak, which are actually your Subconscious Speaking! This will allow you rewrite the conversation! And switching the conversation alters awareness, which changes thoughts, which changes your manifested reality.

We invite you to take on the Fillmore Challenge, and experience a transformation in your spiritual growth, your abundant prosperity, and your joy!

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between change and stagnation. We prefer to straddle the fence as long as we can?”

We encourage you to leave behind the once-a-year mentality of New Year-ology, and become New You-ologists. We call this ‘new you process’ spiritual obstetrics. It means being reborn every single day. It means giving birth to the new you each day. It means turning resolutions into revolutions.

Resolutions that workhave five things in common. Personal transformation life coaches all over the world agree that resolutions which have a high success rate are those that:

• are meaningful to us;
• are consistent with our core values;
• resonate with who we want to be;
• hold some enjoyment and are rewarding for us;
• seem manageable and possible.

And there’s another benchmark which has made the list for the first time this year, coming in at #6:

• Resolutions that have a high success rate are those which have a spiritual component.

And we’d like to put in one last criteria as #7:

• Envision yourself achieving your resolutions, using every single one of your emotions and senses! Create the feeling that it is already real and you are experiencing it in action!

If you’ve already made New Year’s resolutions, match them against these seven success factors. If they fit, you are well on your way to turning resolutions into revolutions.

On the other hand, it there are areas that don’t match up, set new goals. You will increase your chances of success dramatically!