1. Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you be this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this:
Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there.
For He has come, and He is asking this.
2. How do you make the choice? How easily it is explained! You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you. And what you choose is what you think is real. Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power. And the light of Christ in you is given charge of everything you do. For you have brought your weakness unto Him, and He has given you His strength instead.
3. Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, “My brother, choose again.” He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altar unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from everything that hides His face from you. His Holiness is yours because He is the only power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His only Son.
4. The images you make cannot prevail against what God Himself would have you be. Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as another chance to choose again, and let Christ’s strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the face of Christ is powerless before His majesty and disappears before His holy sight. The saviors of the world, who see like Him, are merely those who choose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen apart from Him. They will redeem the world, for they are joined in all the power of the Will of God. And what they will is only what He wills.
5. Learn, then, the happy habit of response to all temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words:
I am as God created me. His Son can suffer nothing. And I am His Son.
Thus is Christ’s strength invited to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God and that can never fail. And thus are miracles as natural as fear and agony appeared to be before the choice for holiness was made. For in that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory alternatives laid by, and nothing left to interfere with truth.
6. You are as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see. What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptations to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun. A miracle has come to heal God’s Son and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release. Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your own identity as you will see it and believe it is.
7. Deny me not the little gift I ask, when in exchange I lay before your feet the peace of God, and power to bring this peace to everyone who wanders in the world uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. For it is given you to join with him, and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes and let him look upon the Christ in him.
8. My brothers in salvation, do not fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your own release. There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before. Yet this a vision in which you must share with everyone you see for otherwise you will behold it not. To give this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it be for you.
9. Let us be glad that we can walk the world and find so many chances to perceive another situation where God’s gift can once again be recognized as ours! And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone. And all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ appeared. Hear me, my brothers, hear and join with me, God has ordained I cannot call in vain, and in His certainty I rest content. For you will hear, and you will choose again. And in this choice is everyone made free.
10. I thank You Father for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons. My faith in them is Yours. I am as sure that they will come to me as You are sure of what they are and will forever be. They will accept the gift I offer them because You gave it me on their behalf. And as I would but do Your holy Will, so will they choose. And I give thanks for them. Salvation’s song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose and the end of hell is near.
11. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are. And as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell and giving thanks to You.
12. And now we say “Amen.” For Christ has come to dwell in the abode You set for Him before time was, in calm eternity. The journey closes, ending at the place where it began. No trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone. Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly and all creation recognizes You and knows You as the only Source it has. Clear in Your likeness does the light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in You. For we have reached where all of us are one and we are home, where You would have us be. [1]
Blessings and congratulations are due. We have come to the end of the Course text. Today spend as much time as you can with our text reading over this last section, praying for illumination of its beautiful meaning, asking Holy Spirit to guide and direct you to those who are ready to awaken and join the saviors of the world. Do not allow your carnal mind to sneer and jab at your dedication to return to the High Mind of Christ. This is our salvation. Our attempts to reach for the Christ within may be awkward and clumsy. We will make mistakes. We will say and do things that later we will be tempted to judge and grow discouraged. These are all opportunities for growth and development. Learn to look at your spiritual practice as a means to “choose again.” For this is what our life in flesh will be – a means to choose again and again and again.
Temptation lies in the form of accepting the status quo, of believing that there is no hope for a world that is not as God created it, to believe that we are divided and only some get to return to Heaven while the rest of us are too sinful and unworthy to ever hope of seeing God, let alone being called His Son. The temptation lies in dividing the Sonship into goats and sheep, into male and female, into chaff and wheat, into the good boy who stays at home and helps out dad and the one that runs off and takes up with whores and hoodlums. As we go within to find the Self that never dies, the outer realm is proved to be unreal – it cannot define us, it cannot determine our worth or tell us who and what we are, it cannot touch the reality of Christ within each living thing. The outer realm may have us at each other’s throats, but the Inner Kingdom is unaffected by such insanity – for there we are eternally one in spirit; unified forever as God’s Son, as God’s Creation, as God’s Kingdom.
Christ calls us to join Him in the salvation of the world. Return your mind and heart to oneness and to unity. Refuse to be tempted by the world and choose again the beautiful brotherhood we find in Sonship. If this all sounds like pie-in-the-sky rhetoric that will never hold up in your daily practice begin right where you are with the people, situations, and circumstances that surround you. This is your learning field, your mission field, your call to practice the Kingdom principles and choose again the way of return to God. View each living thing in your daily life as the sacred trust that God has given you and experience for yourself the heightened consciousness, the expansion of God’s Kingdom within, the loving, joyful, healing of relationships infused with the Divine.
As we journey on our spiritual path to God we shed our grievances, we shed our ranting and raving, we shed our perceptions of enmity, our habits of finding fault, backstabbing, and pointing fingers. We learn to rely not upon our human perceptions but on the mercy and grace of Christ within us, the Holy Spirit Who knows all things and sees all things with eyes of love. We cannot bring anything of this world Home with us. When this world has taught us everything we need to know, it no longer has any meaning to us. When it has convinced us that all alternatives to love and joy and peace end in hatred, sorrow, and war, that making lies is no replacement for honesty, communication, and communion, that preying upon creation is no substitute for loving it we are ready to go Home.
Joining with the saviors of the world is a beautiful invitation that Christ within calls forth in us. We choose again! As we share this message with one another, we are lifted out of the miry clay of despair and sense of hopelessness we would otherwise have in a world that offers no real hope of happiness, certainty, and safety. When we elect to join with Christ, the tiny, scattered threads of melody that now ring here and there across the stretch of time and space become one inclusive chorus of a world redeemed from hatred, brokenness, sin, and death. Rising in a song of gratitude and praise to God for delivering us from our own devices and divinations, we are not separated from those we love over mean little differences, spiteful judgments, and human mistakes. We are lifted out them. Our time in the world is over when everybody’s time in the world is over; nobody is left behind; nobody is denied all the opportunities they need to choose again. For our Father is Love and He created us in Love and for Love and to be Love like Himself.
Speaking of love, I loved going through this Course with you. There were many days I did not feel up to this task. There were days when I could not bear the sound of my own voice. There were days I went on rants against the world, resenting the circumstances and people who have taught me the most about my need for salvation and who and what I really am in Sonship and in Christ. There were days that my ego gave me pause and did its best to interfere in my spiritual path, making the world seem so real to me that to deny its reality seemed like insanity. And yet the daily devotional practice is a time of seeing beyond the world and what I see in that place is the realest thing, because it is my Home, the place where I belong, the place in which I not only find my own Being, but I find yours there with me. In that place is where the journey ends – right where it all began!
[1]A Course in Miracles. Chapter 31 The final vision viii. choose once again. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 
Well now this pretty much sums it up for “This Is How We Do It”😂🙌🙏💞