Christian Laws of Attraction

By Carole McDonnell

There are definitely similarities and differences between the Law of Attraction and the Christian Faith Walk. As it is with the various currencies throughout the world, so it is with spiritual currencies, spiritual truths, and spiritual wisdom. Thieves never counterfeit bad or unreal things; they only counterfeit the good and the real.

The only way to truly discern the similarities and differences between the Law of Attraction and the Christian Faith Walk is to truly know the Bible. Not someone's interpretation of the Bible. Not some denominational doctrine. Not a trendy pop culture belief. The Bible.

This book is written to help Christians discern between the New Age Law of Attraction and the gospel of the kingdom of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carole McDonnell
• Release date: Oct 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393487395

Book preview

The Format of this Book

16 Thus saith the LORD , Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Jeremiah 6:16

20MY SON, ATTEND TO my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. 21Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. 22For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. 23Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Proverbs 4:20-23

VERSION:

I am using verses from the King James Version in this book because many Christians only trust the King James Version. I recommend that those who have only the KJV should also get other Bibles because very few of us speak fluent Shakespearean English.

FORMAT

One major stronghold I had to tackle while writing this book is the sad fact that we Christians often don’t trust each other. We are trained to believe that our fellow Christians may be doctrinally wrong or even in the midst of some rationalized sin. Because of this, we often listen to the insights of our Christian friends with one ear on the lookout for wrong doctrine. (We generally don’t do this with pastors of our denomination or with writers we know.) For this reason, I kept my opinions at a minimum. Instead, I decided to simply have the reader examine himself and his obedience to conditional promises.  

In order to help self-examination, I’ve filled this book with questions we should prayerfully ask ourselves. For example:

THIS BOOK OF THE LAW shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Joshua 1:8

Conditional Promise: You will make your way prosperous and you will have good success

Self-Examination: Do you meditate in God’s word day and night? Do you try to do everything written in God’s word?

BLESSED IS THE MAN that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Psalm 1:1

Conditional Blessing: You will bring forth your fruit in due season. Your leaf will not wither. Whatever you do will prosper.

Self-Examination: Do you take spiritual advice from ungodly people? Do you hang out with sinners? Do you sit among people who scorn God and religion? Do you delight in God’s law? Do you meditate in God’s word day and night?

IF A MAN THEREFORE purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work. 2 Timothy 2:21

Conditional Promise: You will be prepared for godly work.

Self-Examination: Have your purged yourself from vices

38 GIVE, AND IT SHALL be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.  Luke 6:38

Command: Give

Conditional Promise: Men shall give unto you

Self-Examination: Do you give? Do you give to the poor or to the rich? Do you give in order to be recognized? Do you tithe? Do you give in good measure?  Do you give joyously and cheerfully?

AND WE KNOW THAT ALL things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Gen 50:20

Declarations: All things work together for good to those who love God who are called to His purpose.

Explanation: Note the verses do not say that we are in control of our lives. The verses also do not say that God plans evil or micromanages our lives. The verses say that God will use what the world, our human wills, the flesh, and the devil have done to us in order to achieve good in our lives and in the world.

Some readers may wonder where I got some of my questions from for the various self-examinations. For the most part, the questions are an exploration of the Bible verse being studied. Often, the questions connect the verse being studied to other verses on similar topics. And, lastly, the questions come from my observations. As a person goes through life, he or she will see certain incidents that teach them about human nature. For instance,

This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me: 14There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: 15Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. 16Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. 17The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. 18Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good. Ecclesiastes 9:13-18

The Preacher, the writer of Ecclesiastes, saw a small incident that seemed great to him. He received the following insight: wisdom is better than strength. He also saw that people are dismissive of others because we humans judge people by appearances and by wealth, that people are often ungrateful, and that sometimes solitude and quiet helps us hear wisdom better.

TESTIMONY

I included some of my testimony in this book because this is a book about how God helps His people. I felt it was important to tell how God has helped me because if I claim that God helps us supernaturally, I should give some proof that God has helped me supernaturally.

I hope this format will help you.

How to be Productive and Effective

3His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. 5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ 9 But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. 2 Peter 1:5-9

Most Christians pray. But sometimes our prayers don’t seem to be answered. We are told many reasons why God hasn’t answered our prayers. Some people blame God, subtly or not so subtly. They either get angry at God or they say that God is mysterious and has planned some suffering for us for His own mischievous plans. Some people say that our prayers are being answered but we have to be patient.  Jesus tells us in the parable of the sower that many of our seeds fall to the ground and of those that fall into soil end up being strangled by weeds, birds, lack of watering.

Simon Peter tells us in his letter that we can be unproductive and ineffective. What does that mean?  He gives a list of virtues which a person should have in order to be productive and effective. Faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, love. As Christians we want to be effective in our lives and in our prayers and, although much is given to us because of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, that virtue matters if we are to reap some benefits of salvation.

This book is a manual for self-examination. It is to help our effectiveness. It is to help us see what areas of our lives should be upgraded, changed, or gotten rid of. The first chapters are written to give you or your church group general examples of how we often lose our way on our path. The remaining chapters are guides to help us examine ourselves. I hope this little manual will help you as you read the true Manual for living: The Holy Bible.

The Bible is full of explanations about God’s laws. If we give, what we give will be given to us. Freely we receive, freely we give. Do unto others as you would wish others to do unto you. These spiritual laws can be compared to governmental or physical laws. Like Gravity, they exert power over all of us. The best we can do on our human level is to fall in line with the laws of God.

We are warned in many verses in the Bible that our prayers can be thwarted if we do not use the keys of the kingdom or follow its laws. There are many keys and they usually work by love. These keys become difficult to use and our prayers become unproductive and ineffective if Christians indulge in hardness of heart, lack love, lack holiness, and lack knowledge of the spiritual power God has given us in Christ.

The causes of our ineffectiveness are often a combination of our personal sins and issues and of false religious ideas. I have tried, to the best of my abilities, to categorize these issues. For instance, I want to write about godliness in the section on godliness. But categorizing our flaws is a difficult thing to do. A person who is gossipy is unloving, ungodly, lacking in self-control, and so much more. If someone lacks self-control, they probably are impatient as well.  Because of this reason, there will be some overlap in the chapters.

So, all our virtues work together for our good and all our vices work together to destroy our effectiveness and productivity. However, Jesus tells us that very few of the seeds we plant are productive. The main problem is the soil they are planted in, which is the state of our hearts.

LET’S MEDITATE ON THE following words from Scripture:

And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. 2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, 3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: 4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. 5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: 6 But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. 8 And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. 9 And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Mark 4:1-9

If you consider the parable of the sower, we are told that many of the sown seeds did not come to fruition. And of those few that came to fruition some had thirty-fold, seventy-fold, and a hundred-fold. I don’t think I have a history of a hundred-fold productivity. But I am aiming to. Sometimes while praying to God, I find myself falling apart on Him and I wail out to Him, Why is it when I have to pray to you for something because you are the only way out that I fall into terrible despair? Why am I always in such extreme situations that you’re my only hope? And why am I still struggling to rest in trust with you at age 59?

THERE ARE SO MANY OF us living ineffective and unproductive lives because we do not love God or our neighbors, and we cannot accept God’s love for us or others.

If we are not careful, we forget that Jesus is our friend. We begin to think of God as a hard taskmaster or we fall into a system of rules and methodology. Christianity is about a relationship with God.

Let’s meditate on the following words from Scripture:

14For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. 15And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. 16Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. 17And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. 18But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.

19After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. 20And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. 21His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

22He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. 23His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

24Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: 25And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

26His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: 27Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. 28Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

This man thinks that his master is a hard man. Many people, especially church-going Christians, think God is hard, a hard taskmaster. They wouldn’t come right out and say that but I have found this to be true. If you don’t believe me, try defending Job’s wife or Lot’s wife in some circles. Many Christians want righteousness and are pretty intolerant of mercy.

So how does believing God is a hard man affect prayer? Quite simply, it causes us to feel unable to rest in God’s love. It makes us suspicious of God. It makes us so secretive towards God that we cannot be honest with Him. Some Christians talk about the orphan spirit versus the beloved child spirit. They say that some people don’t understand God’s love and feel as if they are orphan’s in God’s family. That may be part of it but I’m not sure. One can still believe that one has a hard, strict, demanding and yet loving father. 

LET’S MEDITATE ON THE following words from Scripture:

I have not spoken in secret or kept my purpose hidden. I did not require the people of Israel to look for me in a desolate waste. I am the Lord, and I speak the truth; I make known what is right. Isaiah 45:19

It’s considered hip or even deep to think that God likes to confuse us. I suspect His truth is so blindingly right and good and otherworldly that we simply become confused because we don’t see or trust it. The world is a fearsome place. The default is that humans stumble through life, muddling through on their own devices, being like sheep without a shepherd. The worldly-wise and intelligent person will trust in his own intelligence or in the wisdom of his doctor if he has one.

LET’S MEDITATE ON THE following words from Scripture:

I heard God say two things: I am powerful and I am very kind. Psalm 62:11, 12 CEV

It is very difficult to trust the supernatural or to declare