God Will Pay Your Debts
“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” In these words Jesus expressed an infallible law of mind, the law that one idea must be dissolved before another can take its place. If you have in your mind any thought that someone has wronged you, you cannot let in the cleansing power of Spirit and the richness of spiritual substance until you have cast out the thought of the wrong, have forgiven it fully. You may be wondering why you have failed to get spiritual illumination or to find the consciousness of spiritual substance. Perhaps the reason is here: a lack of room for the true thoughts because other thoughts fill your mind. If you are not receiving the spiritual understanding you feel you should have, you should search your mind carefully for unforgiving thoughts. “Thoughts are things” and occupy space in the mind realm. They have substance and form and may easily be taken as permanent by one not endowed with spiritual discernment. They bring forth fruit according to the seed planted in the mind, but they are not enduring unless founded in Spirit. Thoughts are alive and are endowed by the thinker with secondary thinking power; that is, the thought entity that the I AM forms assumes an ego and begins to think on its own account. Thoughts also think but only with the power you give to them.
Tell me what kind of thoughts you are holding about yourself and your neighbors, and I can tell you just what you may expect in the way of health, finances, and harmony in your home. Are you suspicious of your neighbors? You cannot love and trust in God if you hate and distrust men. The two ideas love and hate, or trust and mistrust, simply cannot both be present in your mind at one time, and when you are entertaining one, you may be sure the other is absent. Trust other people and use the power that you accumulate from that act to trust God. There is magic in it: it works wonders; love and trust are dynamic, vital powers. Are you accusing men of being thieves, and fear that they are going to take away from you something that is your own? With such a thought generating fear and even terror in your mind and filling your consciousness with darkness, where is there room for the Father’s light of protection? Rather build walls of love and substance around yourself. Send out swift, invisible messengers of love and trust for your protection. They are better guards than policemen or detectives.
Do not judge others as regards their guilt or innocence. Consider yourself and how you stand in the sight of the Father for having thoughts about another’s guilt. Begin your reform with yourself. That means much to one who enjoys an understanding of mind and its laws, though it may mean little to the ordinary individual. He who knows himself superficially, just his external personality, thinks he has reformed when he has conformed to the moral and governmental laws. He may even be filled with his own self-righteousness and daily lift up his voice to praise God that he is not as other men are, that he has forgiven men their transgressions. He looks on all men who do not conform to his ideas of morality and religion as being sinners and transgressors and thanks God for his own insight and keenness. But he is not at peace. Something seems lacking. God does not talk to him “face to face,” because the mind, where God and man meet, is darkened by the murky thought that other men are sinners. Our first work in any demonstration is to contact God, therefore we must forgive all men their transgressions. Through this forgiveness we cleanse our mind so that the Father can forgive us our own transgression.
Our forgiving “all men” includes ourselves. You must also forgive yourself. Let the finger of denial erase every sin of “falling short” that you have charged up against yourself. Pay you debt by saying to that part of yourself which you think has fallen short: “Thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee.” Then, “loose him, and let him go.” Treat sin as a mental transgression, instead of considering it as a moral deflection. Deny in thought all tendency to the error way and hold yourself firmly to the Christ Spirit, which is your divine self. Part company forever with “accusing conscience.” Those who have resolved to sin no more have nothing in common with guilt.
“Shall I be in debt as long as I hold debts against others?” We find this to be the law of mind: a thought of debt will produce debt. So long as you believe in debt you will go into debt and accumulate the burdens that follow that thought. Whoever has not forgiven all men their debts is likely to fall into debt himself. Does this mean that you should forgive receipted bills to all those who owe you: No. That would not be erasing the thought of debt from your mind. First deny in mind that any man or woman owes you anything. If necessary, go over your list of names separately and sincerely forgive the thought of debt which you have been attaching to each person named. More bills may be collected in this way than in any other, for many of these people will pay what they owe when you send them this forgiving thought.
Debt is a contradiction of the universal equilibrium, and there is no such thing as lack of equilibrium in all the universe. Therefore in Spirit and in Truth there is no debt. However, men hold on to a thought of debt, and this thought is responsible for a great deal of sorrow and hardship. The true disciple realizes his supply in the consciousness of omnipresent, universally possessed abundance. Spirit substance is impartial and owned in common, and no thought of debt can enter into it.
Written by Charles Fillmore, the founder of the new thought church Unity. From the book Prosperity.