How Jesus Overcame Doubt
Greetings and good morning, brothers and sisters. This is Dr. James Perry continuing with our series where we seek to explore the deeper meanings of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Over the years, the heavenly Father has shared many revelations of spiritual truth with me, and I want to share them with you. In today’’s broadcast, we discuss and share some insights on how Jesus overcame spiritual doubt.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
How Jesus Overcame Spiritual Doubt
““Who in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared [believed].”” Hebrews, Chapter 5, Verse 7
Brothers and sisters, Jesus being the Son of God and our Savior, we often forget that he was human as well as divine. He entered this world as a helpless infant, completely devoid of all human knowledge and facts regarding his previous status prior to incarnating in the flesh. He therefore had to pass the same spiritual tests that you and I must pass. We catch a glimpse of his purely human struggle in scripture: ““who in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared [believed].””
Jesus began seeking to know the Father’’s will when he was about 5 years old; this occurred when he received his divine spirit, just like you and I do around that same age. This divine spirit came to indwell his mind when he made his first moral decision. Jesus grew up in the home of Jewish parents. His parents had no personal relationships with God but only a religio/cultural consciousness of God. His parents taught him how to pray, but after they finished praying Jesus would insist on having ““just a little talk with my heavenly Father."
Jesus’’ insistence on having this personal talk with his heavenly Father was the beginning of his unparalleled religious and spiritual achievements. His unbroken communion with the Father, sharing his inner life with the Father, eventually generated a spiritual faith and consciousness of the Father that overcame spiritual doubt and fear. And as the human Jesus continued with his earthly life, always submitting his will to the Father’’s will as he continued to make increasingly difficult and spiritual decisions, he reached the apex of moral and spiritual development. He perfected his human nature and integrated the human nature with the divine nature. He became aware of his pre-existence as the Son of God.
Jesus came to establish personal relationships between man and God. Jesus is the living way to divinity while living the life in the flesh. By the technique of submitting our will to the Father’’s will, we can follow Jesus along this same path since his victorious spirit now surrounds our souls. Ponder this: "Through the appropriation of the faith of Jesus, mortal man can foretaste in time the realities of eternity. Jesus made the discovery, in human experience, of the Final Father, and his brothers in the flesh of mortal life can follow him along this same experience of Father discovery. They can even attain, as they are, the same satisfaction in this experience with the Father as did Jesus as he was."
Jesus experienced the essentials of life just as you and I. In traversing the stage from purely human awareness to the exalted state of divine awareness, where he became wholly aware of his identity as the Son of God, he had to overcome spiritual doubt. Doubt in the material mind is proportional to the degree of its dominance of the spiritual nature. So he started out in life having the same human nature as we.
Jesus said that we have only one fight and that is the fight against doubt. Our experience testifies to this truth, for doubt is a formidable adversary. But it can be overcome. In the material world, we overcome doubt by discovering facts. Once the facts are ascertained concerning any given issue, the truth can be discerned. For example, if we doubt that we have enough gas to make a particular trip, there are several ways this can be cleared up. The most effective way is to fill the gas tank up so that we have more than adequate fuel for the trip. The other method which is a little more tedious is to calculate how much fuel is in the tank, how many miles per gallon we get from driving, and how far we have to travel. The correlation of all these factors will answer the question of whether we have enough fuel to make the trip. The doubts will be overcome effectively. The least efficient way to overcome the doubt is to make the trip. This will most effectively clarify the question of adequate fuel, but what a price to pay if we are wrong.
In the spiritual world, we overcome spiritual doubt by discovering values instead of facts. Once the values are discovered, the truth is discerned. For example, if we doubt our sonship with the Father, we can reduce and ultimately eliminate this doubt by using our God-given faith. By using our faith, the value of sonship becomes a spiritual experience in our souls. Faith bears witness to the truth that we are in fact sons and daughters of the heavenly Father by creating a consciousness of this truth. We begin to show forth the fruits of the spirit, the evidence that we are indeed sons and daughters of the heavenly Father.
This faith grows by our continuing to seek the Father’’s will because, by doing so, we become more and more like him. Since the Father is spiritual, we must become like the Father to recognize him. The more we become like him, the more we come to know him, and the more we know him, the more we begin to think like him, and the more we think like him, the more we act like him. This is the continuous exhibition of the fruits of the spirit, and the fruits of the spirit are love, faith, goodness, meekness, temperance, gentleness, long suffering, peace and joy.
As we continue with this process of seeking to know the Father’’s will, faith increases our spiritual consciousness, and our knowledge of him grows to the point where we reach that supreme state of awareness where our souls exclaim: "You can’’t make me doubt him because I know too much about him." And this knowledge of the Father is so great that the soul also exclaims: "Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him." The soul recognizes that nothing can tear him away from the Father since they have become one. Doubt may continue to reign supreme in the material world but not so in the spiritual world. Doubt finally collapses and acknowledges that it has no jurisdiction in the spiritual world.
Finally consider this: ". . . In the human life of Jesus faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. This faith was not reverence for tradition nor a mere intellectual belief which he held as a sacred creed, but rather a sublime experience and a profound conviction which securely held him. His faith was so real and all-encompassing that it absolutely swept away any spiritual doubts and effectively destroyed every conflicting desire. Nothing was able to tear him away from the spiritual anchorage of this fervent, sublime, and undaunted faith. Even in the face of apparent defeat or in the throes of disappointment and threatening despair, he calmly stood in the divine presence free from fear and fully conscious of spiritual invincibility. Jesus enjoyed the invigorating assurance of the possession of unflinching faith, and in each of life’’s trying situations he unfailingly exhibited an unquestioning loyalty to the Father’’s will. And this superb faith was undaunted even by the cruel and crushing threat of an ignominious death."
Jesus overcame all spiritual doubt by unbroken communion with the heavenly Father, by constantly seeking to know the Father’’s will until that will became so integrated in his soul that there could be found no standing room for spiritual doubt.
This concludes today's message on how Jesus overcame doubt. We hope you find something in this message to ponder and pray about as you go about your day.
Until next time, this is Dr. James Perry.
How Jesus Overcame Doubt
Inspirational Messages of Light
By Dr. James Perry
How Jesus Overcame Doubt
