Spiritual Loyalty
Greetings, 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 to me, and I want to share them with you. In today’’s broadcast, we discuss the meaning of spiritual loyalty.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
Spiritual Loyalty
Jesus said, "A new comandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." John, Chapter 13, Verses 34-35
Brothers and sisters, consider this: "What is loyalty? It is the fruit of an intelligent appreciation of universe brotherhood; one could not take so much and give nothing. As you ascend the personality scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be filial, and then may you be free." But we cannot self-realize finality of loyalty until we have attained perfection of loyalty: until we become a perfected spirit.
But even now as we tread the lowly pathway of mortal existence, we can learn to be loyal. By entering the kingdom of heaven, thus signifying that we have dedicated and consecrated our wills to doing the Father’’s will, we can grow in appreciation for the love that the Father has for us. The Father has a plan for our lives, indeed for the whole universe. The actualization of this plan requires loyalty for all personalities who are subject to it. Starting out down here as we do, we must first recreate ourselves. Once this is accomplished, we begin to discern the first part of the plan, which involves the perfection of our moral and spiritual character.
The Father has entrusted us to carry out this part, which requires loyalty to duty, for in the universe we are all interdependent. Without loyalty to duty, the whole plan would collapse. This is the reason for our moral character being emphasized. As we view the world today, we see the consequences of not being loyal to duty. We see that many have abandoned the good moral fight on behalf of selfishness. This creates disharmony in all who are dependent on those who default in carrying out their moral obligations. But the Father is also spiritual as well as moral,--thus we have the command to love one another as Jesus loves us. Loyalty towards the command to love takes away the burden of moral responsibilities and replaces it with the consciousness of love.
We must look to Jesus who demonstrated this supreme loyalty towards the Father’’s will. During his developmental years, Jesus ““suffered great mental distress as the result of his constant effort to adjust his personal views of religious practices and social amenities to the established beliefs of his parents. He was distraught by the conflict between the urge to be loyal to his own convictions and the conscientious admonition of dutiful submission to his parents; his supreme conflict was between two great commands which were uppermost in his youthful mind. The one was: ‘‘Be loyal to the dictates of your highest convictions of truth and righteousness.’’ The other was: ‘‘Honor your father and mother, for they have given you life and the nurture thereof.’’" We see this conflict emerge when, as a lad, his parents upbraided him when they thought he was lost. He was teaching in the temple, and said to them, ““How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not that I must be about my Father’’s business?"
He never shirked the responsibility, however, of ““making the necessary daily adjustments between these realms of loyalty to one's personal convictions and duty toward one's family, and he achieved the satisfaction of effecting an increasingly harmonious blending of personal convictions and family obligations into a masterful concept of group solidarity based upon loyalty, fairness, tolerance, and love."
As Jesus grew, he began to move more and more from the religious concepts that his family had taught him. He had come to the world to establish personal relationships between each individual and God, and his family was still locked in the group concept of relationship with God. And since he was human as well as divine, this created a conflict in his mind. He realized that he was on the horns of a dilemma: Be loyal to the dictates of your highest convictions of truth and righteousness, opposed by "honor your mother and father, for they have given you life." And while he realized that he could not embrace all the tenets of his family religious beliefs, he did respect them, respected their right to hold those religious beliefs, while in all other areas of his youthful life, he was subject to the will of his parents. But in the spiritual realm, he was subject only to the Father’’s will. And we can see this as an example of rendering to Caesar the things of Caesar and rendering to God the things of God. It was the parent’’s duty to rear him so that he could fit into the society in which he was born, and this they did well.
So taking this example from Jesus, we, too, can resolve the conflicts that arise out of the opposing claims between duty to our parents and loyalty towards our personal conviction. And we can see that this loyalty is loyalty towards the Father’’s will. By cultivating our relationship with the Father by being loyal to doing his divine will, we gain that insight that allows us to satisfactorily resolve all conflicts between group obligations and loyalty of our personal convictions.
Love is the greatest reality that can be experienced, because the experience of love is the experience of the heavenly Father. But we can see right away that if we are not loyal, we will never make it to this step of liberating affection. This command to love requires that our motive for carrying out our moral responsibilities be love. Now that we have established a relationship with our heavenly Father as sons and daughters, then it becomes our responsibility to be loyal to this relationship, to be loyal to truth. In our personal relationships, we are bound by truth, those values and meanings that reflect our relationship with the heavenly Father.
Thus in the life in the flesh, we must be loyal to truth. Truth must command our supreme loyalty. When we are loyal towards truth, we will stand for it, even if we have to stand alone. We clearly see this in Jesus’’ life, who went to the cross rather than turn his back on the Father’’s will.
Supreme loyalty towards the Father’’s will is our passport from the limitations of being human to the liberating freedom of perfected spiritual existence. After we have learned to be loyal, to love, and to be filial, respectful, we can truly be free because we will have become perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect. But even here in the flesh, if we are loyal to the Father’’s will, we can escape the devastating consequences of the animal nature. By exercising the fruits of the spirit that accrue as a result of doing the Father’’s will, we become liberated from our animal natures. Our animal natures no longer control us because we submit them to the Father’’s will and in so doing so gain self-mastery.
This concludes today's message on understanding the meaning of spiritual loyalty. 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
JHP 01/22/12
Your Kingdom Come; Your Will Be Done!
Inspirational Messages of Light
By Dr. James Perry
Spiritual Loyalty
