Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.”— Exodus 7:1

Who are you?

You may have thought you knew the answer to that question, but you probably did not. Don’t tell me your name; that’s what you’re called, not who you are. Until you know who you are, you will not understand where you belong. Once you know who you are, it will become abundantly clear why you are here on earth, in your body, at this time.

Let’s begin this exploration by looking at one of the most famous scenes from the Old Testament: Moses speaking to the burning bush. In this passage of the Bible, Moses hears the voice of God speaking to him from a bush that burns but is not consumed. Aware that the bush’s not being consumed is a miracle, Moses humbles himself before the Lord and receives the charge that will change his life: liberating the Hebrews from bondage.

In Exodus 3:13-14, Scripture says, Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” In those two words, “I Am,” reside the wholeness of your true nature.

Why Has God Placed You Here?
God placed you in this world not to wait around for him to put things into your hands, but for you to declare “I Am” yourself! When you state “I Am,” you declare not just who you are, but what your purpose is. They are one and the same. This is one of the essential truths of the Laws of Thinking:

Do You Declare “I Am”?
When you declare “I Am,” you become God. Your Divine Nature
Ignorant minds will look at that statement and call it blasphemy, but that is only because they do not truly understand the nature of the relationship between God and man. Each and every one of us was created in God’s image; there is nothing in God that does not exist in man, and nothing in man that does not exist in God. You were sent here by I Am, and I Am is the state of your mind and your imagination. There is divinity in you, if you can see it.
Wow. That is a huge idea, maybe the hugest of ideas. You are God.

Did You Know You Are God?
But when you think about it, is it really so far-fetched? Man is the only creature with the power to create and shape his world, to bring things into being by first thinking them into being (because all things begin in the mind) and then working to manifest them into physical reality. Who else has the power to create what did not exist before? God, of course! When you declare your “I Am” nature, you are claiming your divine birthright and stepping into your role as God’s proxy in this world. You begin to discover your purpose, which is to walk in divinity and declare God’s will to men through your works and your actions.

What does this mean?
It means that in the same way that God’s declaration becomes reality, your declaration becomes reality. When you state “I Am,” you inherit the same power to make your thoughts manifest in this reality. In this way, you move beyond want, which is the source of misery and poverty of the spirit, as Buddha knew. Instead of wanting and coveting, walk in your divine nature:

If you desire the thing, declare yourself to BE the thing and it will manifest.

What Do You Desire?
If you desire a fine house, you must be the house. If you desire to be the owner of a prosperous company, you must declare yourself to be that company. There is no difference between your being and that company, house or whatever else is your passionate desire. That is your divine power, granted to you as part of your being by the Father! There is no greater inheritance.

People Will Scorn You for Not Being Consumed

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.
—Exodus 3:1-2

Do You Claim Your “I Amness”?
When you claim your “I Am” nature, you will be as God in that burning bush: on fire, but not consumed. This will be wondrous to you, as you feel your awareness of prophecy and God’s purpose in your life open up like a flower within you, and as you walk daily in the Word knowing you are progressing toward the destiny God ordained for you even when the universe was formed. But when other people perceive your divine nature, they will be confused.
They will see that you are as the burning bush, but that you are not consumed.

Can You See God In Man?
You see, most people can’t see God in man. They crave miracles, but they want to see miracles that involve seas parting or plagues of locusts (preferably raining down on people they don’t like), and they fail to realize that the true miracle is the opening of the eyes of a person like yourself. The miracle is that you are God, and that you can be in flesh, declaring yourself to be God and yet not be consumed by the Spirit within you. How is that possible? That’s the miracle.

When your Am consciousness becomes aware of itself, you can live and walk in Spirit and yet not be consumed by it. By becoming aware of the Spirit within you, you become that Spirit. That consciousness is a flame-retardant suit that lets you manipulate spirit to create the works of God without being burned by it.

Do You Put Aside Your Purpose?
Do not be put aside from your purpose or discouraged by people who do not or cannot understand the nature of your true self, even as they cannot look away from the fire. The path of each life is a choice, and some will choose to become aware after you do, and others will never be aware at all. Do not pity them, but also do not listen to their negative or doubting words. Be true to your divine truth.

Are You Aware of God’s Nature?

The teachings in this part of the book are the foundation for all that comes later. The simple, cosmic truth is that God wants you to walk in divinity and experience Him the way you’re supposed to: as his partner in bringing the Word into flesh in this world. This goes against many traditions that insist God is angry, punitive and always seeking a reason to cast man into Hell. That’s absurd. If you are a reflection of everything that exists in God, why would He cast rage and retribution at Himself?

Why would He damn himself? Learning the Laws of Thinking turns many traditional Christian teachings on their heads and reveals them for what they really are: methods of controlling fearful, small-minded people. When you wake up and start partaking of God’s true nature, you begin partaking of your own true nature. Or to say it another way:

If you’re not aware of God’s nature, you’re not aware of your own nature.

Do You Know Who You Are?

You won’t know who and what you are (and who and what you can become) until you understand who and what God is. You can only partake of a revelation that you have received. As long as you are walking in a state of un-awareness, you cannot have the things that God has decreed for you.

Did You Know God is Not a Noun?

Whoa. I just blew your mind, didn’t I? Get used to it—that’s going to happen a lot in The Laws of Thinking. But it’s true: God is not a noun. A noun is a person, place or thing, and God is all of the above, but above all, God is a Force, a Mind, an Intellect, and a Spirit. That Spirit exists for one reason above all others: to manifest change in the world. So if you take that idea to its logical conclusion, you come to this:

Did You Know God is a verb?

God is an action word. Remember, God states that His name is “I Am.” I Am is an action phrase that stems from the verb “to be.” So to be God—which is what you are—is to be. When you come into your “I Am” awareness, you are in action as God. God is action. God in you is a force to take action to create change in this physical reality. God is the action itself. Once you are in an “I Am” state of being, you are the action yourself.

What does that mean?

It means that once you declare your “I Am,” you claim both the power and the responsibility to act on manifest God’s will on earth. When you say “I Am,” you have just taken on a new acting role, with God waiting to see the new action you are about to take on. You are the actor, writer, director, producer, and the cause of all things.

What Must You Produce?

You must produce your cause, but make sure it’s in line with God’s cause. If it’s a contrary cause, you will get contrary results. John 10:30 says, “I and the Father are one.” You must be in alignment of purpose with God if your actions are to bring forth the manifestations He desires. That’s critically important. That’s why it is vital to suppress your intellect and your ego even as you are proclaiming yourself to be “I Am.”

Even as you partake of the divinity that God has granted you, you must not try to impose your own will on what God desires of you. You must be open to hearing God and to producing and creating what He has in mind for you to create.

Can You Set Aside Your Ego?

When you can set aside ego (not an easy thing for anyone to do) and keep your mind still and at peace, you open yourself to being a conduit of ideas that come to you directly from God. As long as there is that agreement of mind and purpose, you experience the constant, eternal inflow of ideas and inspiration from God.

You end up copying from the Source. It’s like having the smartest kid in class always sitting next to you, always letting you copy off his homework! You wake in the morning alive with anointing and a flood of new ideas, new things to build and create, new opportunities to sow and give, new wealth coming your way. It’s a thrilling way to live and to serve the intent of the Lord.

Do You Know What Universe You Live In? We Live in a Universe of Becoming. A little way back, I gave you an incomplete definition. I told you that “I Am” was taken from the verb “to be,” but that’s only partially true. “I Am” is also derived from the verb “to become.” I held this back because it was a little too soon to share it with you, but you’re ready for the revelation now. This is the revelation, the first of the Laws of Thinking:

Law #1: We live not in a universe of being, but of becoming.

Does static live?

Nothing that lives is static. God is not static. He did not just create the world eons ago and then sit back and never change. God is EVOLVING; he is changing His being, his ideas, and his purposes all the time. God is becoming. And because you were created in God’s image with all things in you that are God, you are also becoming. If you stand still, if you are only being, then you are dead. We don’t live in a universe that was made; we live in a universe that is being made, every moment.

What Comes In Stages?

Everything comes in stages. Everything and everyone is evolving, changing, and becoming something new, moving toward what it will be tomorrow. And when it reaches that state, guess what? It begins to become what it will be the next day! Every moment, you are moving toward a new state of being—either toward fulfillment of your potential as determined by God or away from that fulfillment.

Who Makes The Choice?

The choice is yours, but you can never stop moving. You are always on the road to becoming someone other than who you are at this very moment. The question you must ask is:

“Who am I becoming?”

There’s blessed freedom and joy in the fact of becoming. You are never trapped in where or what you are.
You are never stuck in a state of poverty, ill health or

loneliness…unless you choose to be. That is the message of “I Am.” When you declare yourself to be God, you are taking responsibility for your becoming. Isn’t God in charge? Then why should anyone else be in charge of saving you from a life that is not what you hoped it would be? The harsh reality is, no one will save you.

Whose Job Is It?

That’s not the job of the prophets, your friends, your family, anyone. It’s not God’s job. His task is to lay the path before you and say, “Here, I have ordained this for you to follow.” Whether or not you follow is entirely up to you.

Becoming empowers us to change what we are and our lot in life. If it didn’t, people who started off poor would not become billionaire owners of huge corporations or world-famous rap superstars. They would remain on their dirt farms, or end up dead or in prison. Instead, they understood that their destiny was to become, that becoming empowered them to change their reality.

Do You Go Back To The Word?

Go Back to the Word, to become, you must discover your “I Am,” and to do that, you must go back to the Word. You must be at peace, rest your thoughts and your ego, and listen to the voice of God speaking to you. If you do not do this, then you will condemn yourself to live in a universe of the past, like a still photo of the way your life once was. You will be stuck. The universe as it is in God’s mind is a motion picture, one that He is always editing—and that you, as God’s partner, are helping him edit. If God is the Master Editor, you in your “I Am” state of mind are his apprentice.
Do You Know The Concept Of Becoming? For some people, the concept of becoming and of an evolving, changing God is difficult to accept. It makes them feel more secure to think that God stopped with the Bible that He never changed. But if we mirror God, then look how much the world of men has changed in the thousands of years since the stories in the Bible took place. Does it not make sense that God would change as well?

And anyway, we are in a constant state of creation. Our bodies create new cells every moment. We replace all the trillions of cells in our bodies every seven years. We are constantly being reborn in flesh, and because of God’s love, we are constantly reborn in Spirit. That love gives every cell a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance to awaken to the truth of “I Am” and realize its true potential. Every morning, you area renewed and healed. You have a brand new day to change the world.

Are You a “Favor-ite?”

In the Bible, you can read about the many tribes that lived in the land where Moses led the Hebrews after their escape from slavery: the Hittites, Jebusites, Canaanites and so on. But what if there was a new tribe, and what if membership was based no on your bloodline, but on your ability to be at one with the Word and the purpose of God, to allow God to manifest through you? What if declaring and living your “I Am” status gained you entry to this elite group? You would become a “Favor-ite,” one upon whom God has cast his grace and favor.

When you become a Favor-ite, a season of grace and favor will be upon you. Good things will come into your life without you having seemed to work for them; you were busy sowing or giving money or working to develop an idea in another area, and money just showed up at your door. And people will say, “How did you do that?” More important, they will say, “Why does he get that when I’m working so hard and I get nothing?” Just smile inside yourself and know a fundamental truth of God’s order of things:

Is Favor Fair?

Favor isn’t fair. That’s right. Favor doesn’t come to those who earn it through the sweat of their brow, and it doesn’t come to those who do nothing more than sit in church, never give more than the minimum and sit back and wait for God to smile upon them. God looks with pity on them, because they don’t get it. Favor only comes to those who understand how God operates in this world. Favor is not fair. Some people will hate you because of this inequity, but you have to be able to withstand their censure and still declare “I Am” even if they say you are arrogant. Because whose favor matters more: God’s or your neighbor’s?

How Does God Operate?

I’ve saved the most important idea for the end of this chapter, because it’s going to shape the rest of the material to come. I’ve said that the key to favor and to realizing the potential that God has preordained for your life lies in understanding how God operates in this world—comprehending the Laws He has created and therefore must follow. That fact can be boiled down to this statement:
The purpose of human existence is to express the purpose of the Spirit of God in the material world.

Wow! That’s a huge idea! That would mean that instead of being put here by God to scurry around like ants, as some Christians would have you believe, God puts each of us here to play a role in bringing forth the physical manifestation of God’s plan. Each person plays a part in bringing to fruition a part of that blueprint.

Who Is The Prime Architect?

God is the Prime Architect, and each of us is the architect of our own existences, thinking things into being with the power of our minds. That is why God created Man: to play his role in bringing forth the myriad parts of God’s eternal purpose. To put it another way:

What Is The Whole Aim Of Creation? The whole aim of creation is manifestation. If that’s not earth-shaking enough for you, try this: God needs you. He needs us all. You see, God is not flesh. He is Spirit. The purpose of Spirit is to express, but because Spirit is not flesh, it cannot express itself on this material plane. It needs a vessel to fill, and then the Spirit can guide that vessel to express its purpose. Notice that the word “manifestation” even begins with the word “man.”

That is why God created us and the cosmos: to express His purpose in material reality! That’s a thrilling, humbling responsibility, isn’t it? The purpose of human existence is to express the purpose of Spirit—to make it manifest in the material realm. But to do that, you must understand that you are also Spirit. You are a walking, talking Spirit clothed in a suit of flesh and blood, and it is that Spirit that makes you one with God.

Can You Feel Or Hear The Spirit?
Many people cannot feel or hear their Spirit speaking within them, and so they do not speak with the voice of Spirit. That is why it is so important to be at peace and still—to quiet your mind and the chaos of your thoughts, intellect, worry and fear—so that you can hear the Spirit speaking within you.

Are You Fully Aware?
When you become fully aware of that Spirit—when you pay it full attention—you call it forth and can then claim your “I Am” state of being. You become spirit ex primo, spirit pressed out. Man is simply God pressed out into this world through flesh. When you hear and embrace the Spirit that you share with God, your words press His thoughts out, and you express the light of God within you.

That is why it is so crucial to always be thinking about wealth, prosperity, health, peace and so on. When you are speaking in Spirit, your words will manifest, for good or ill. You are here on this earth to manifest your “I Am” and to go forth and bring God’s vision to life. Your aim is to become God.

How’s that for a first chapter? There’s a lot more to come.

Lesson Summary

1. You have a divine nature that you share with God.
2. You must realize “I Am” in order to manifest. You must become the things you want.
3. God is an action.
4. We live in a universe of becoming. You are always becoming something.
5. Favor isn’t fair.
6. You were created by God to manifest his vision.
7. You are Spirit.
8. Your purpose is to become God.

You cannot get saved by doing good works, and you cannot undo your salvation if you sin. Your salvation and everlasting life are gifts from God. God never takes back His gift of salvation. The Bible is very clear about this. It says: “for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). In the translation of the New Testament known as The Message, that verse is translated very powerfully: “God’s gifts and God’s call are under full warranty—never canceled, never rescinded.”

Many people teach that if you sin, you lose your salvation and then you have to get saved all over again, but that is not true. God wants you to be absolutely sure that you cannot lose your salvation, so the Bible emphasizes its permanence in many ways.

• As you have seen, salvation is called a “gift” over and over, and the Bible specifically says the gifts of God are irrevocable.
  
  
• A term for salvation is “born again” or “new birth” (1 Pet. 1:3 and 23). We all know that birth is permanent. Once I am born, I am a child of my mother and father forever. Even if I am a horrible kid and my parents really don’t like me, the birth is permanent. God wants Christians to know that He loves us and that we are His children no matter how we behave, so He uses the term “birth” to describe what happens to us when we are saved. Birth is a one-time occurrence that cannot be undone.
  
  
• Another term for your salvation is “adoption.” At first you may wonder why God would say you are “adopted” when saying you are “born” into His family seems so much more wonderful. The answer to that question lies in the Roman law and culture at the time the New Testament was written. According to Roman law, adoption into a Roman family was permanent, but a naturally born child could be disowned. So, in writing to the Roman people (as in the books of Romans, Ephesians, and Galatians), God used the word “adoption” so they would be sure to understand that their salvation was permanent. [For further study read Adopted by God.]
  
  
• When you are saved, God gives you holy spirit, His gift, on the inside. Because it is spirit, you can’t feel that it is within you, but it is God’s permanent seal in you that you are His child. Ephesians is very clear about getting saved by believing and then being sealed with holy spirit:

  
  Ephesians 1:13 and 14
  (13) And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised holy spirit,
  (14a) [which] ...is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance….

Read those verses again. They are so rich. The Bible says you are sealed with holy spirit, God’s gift. Therefore, you are sealed. God’s salvation does not “leak out” if you sin. You were sealed when you believed, and that seal is a “guarantee” of eternal life, your “inheritance” with the Lord.

• Because your salvation is permanent and you cannot lose it, God says you are His child! “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! ...Dear friends, now we are children of God...” (1 John 3:1 and 2a). Surely it cannot be that one day you are a child of God and the next day you aren’t. God chose to communicate to us in the words we use in our everyday speech, and we all know that children are a permanent addition to a family. No one has children in his family one day and then does not have them in the family the next day. The same is true for God’s family as for our human families. God calls you His child to make the point that you are permanently in His family. That is also why unbelievers are never called “children” of God—they are not part of the family.

Children have their father’s “seed” in them, and Christians are born of “imperishable seed” (1 Pet. 1:23). The Bible is very clear: If you are saved, you are born into God’s family, you are permanently adopted, you are sealed with holy spirit and God calls you a child of God.

Why should I stop sinning if I cannot lose my salvation?

That’s a good question, and there is a good answer. First, anyone who lives a sinful life becomes a slave “to sin” (Rom. 6:16). People who live lives of sin are often guilt-ridden, depressed, unhappy people. Sin takes its toll on people, and Christians should want to escape the tyranny of sin.

Second, you are united to Christ, identified with him in the most intimate way possible. That is, you were crucified with him, you died with him, you were buried with him, raised with him from the dead, ascended with him and seated with him at the right hand of God (Rom. 6:1-10; Eph. 2:6). Being thus joined with Christ, why would you want to continue to be joined to sin in your day-to-day life?

Third, it is right and proper to thank the one who has given you a gift. God and His Son have given you the greatest gift of all—everlasting life. The greatest gift you can give back is your life in service to them.

Fourth, there are many people who do not know God and who desperately need salvation. They could die any day and miss eternal life. What a terrible loss that would be! One of the things that turn people off to God and the Church is hypocrisy. If you are a Christian and don't live like one, you make it more difficult for the non-believer to come to Christ.

Fifth, how you live and serve in this life will determine how God will reward you in your future life in God’s kingdom. Christ is going to come back to earth and set up a kingdom (“...the meek...will inherit the earth”), and not every person in that kingdom will have the same rewards. Many verses attest to this truth