The Foresight of Faith
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 given many revelations of spiritual truth to me, and I want to share them with you. This
morning we ponder all lives as we seek to understand the foresight of faith.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Foresight of Faith
Of Abraham, it was said, that he "died in faith, not having received the promises, but having
seen them afar off." Hebrew, Chapter 11, Verse 13.
Brothers and sisters, today we shall consider the foresight of faith. In previous broadcasts, we have
examined various phases of doing the Father's will while we live in the flesh. We considered the
reality of the Father's will as being eternal and questioned how a temporal being could execute an
eternal impulse. We arrived at this conclusion: a temporal being executes the Father's will through
the Spirit of Truth by learning how to integrate the wisdom gleaned from past experiences and using
it to forecast decisions in the present and future. Such present decisions made under light of the past
contain aspects of the past and future. Today, we focus on the future aspects of decisions. We shall
see how faith allows us to exercise foresight, a facility that is essential to forecasting the
consequences of decisions made in the present. We shall also give examples of such forecasts.
The secret of foresight is the divine spirit whose operation of faith in the mind and soul makes these
forecasts possible. This faith endows the soul with the quality of looking beyond the present into the
future. This faith is like a looking glass so that when the souls looks through it, it sees the future. The
longer we live, the greater the foresight we can exercise because our warehouse of experiences has
grown and we have extracted wisdom from them.
We are more likely to see corollaries of the past to the present condition of our lives the further we
are able to look back. We recall the saying that those who do not remember history are doomed to
repeat it. While this saying seems to have a negative connotation, the truth within it is positive. It we
make the same decision under the same circumstances we can expect the same outcome; similar
decisions in similar circumstances yield similar outcomes. Similar things that are equal to similar
things are equal to each other. And it is this law that allows us to make forecasts of the future based
upon past experiences. Let us ponder a few examples.
Human experience has shown that life on this planet is full of uncertainty. Considering the
vicissitudes of daily living, we realize that there are times of scarcity and times of plenty. Having
experienced scarcity, we can expect it to occur in the future, so we wisely provide for that
occurrence. The resources we have often times are not always in harmony with their use so we must
make the adjustment ourselves. This means that if we need rent money or mortgage money that is
due at the end of the month or the first of the month, we may need more than one weekly pay check
to cover the expense. It may require 2 or 3 or even 4 weekly checks to cover the expense. Thus it
becomes wise to save those resources so they are available to be used when necessity requires. The
same thing applies to other material necessities. We must save in times of excess so that we can
proceed in times of scarcity. Though we are familiar with this material fact of life, some of us may
fail to exercise the foresight at our disposal because of inadequate experiences or just plain ignorance
or even rebellion. Nevertheless, foresight is a spiritual gift.
When we make life decisions, we know that certain decisions lead to certain outcomes. This is why
an older, more experienced person can often review the life decisions of a younger person and
accurately predict the outcomes (if the decisions continue along the same line, all other things being
equal). This foresight is made possible by the divine spirit through the agency of faith. Another way
of looking at future eventualities is to view them in terms of potentials. We know that potentials are
possible realities. They may not necessarily materialize or moralize or spiritualize because decisions
are not made that make potentials real. Potential reality can be forecasted depending on the kinds of
decisions that are made in the present based upon wisdom gleamed from past decisions.
With spiritual realities, we know that a similar mechanism operates. Spiritual decisions always
involve values. To acquire a future spiritual value, such as divine perfection, decisions must be made
now based on values acquired in the past. In other words, there must be a continuity of experiences.
Since the value is actually eternal, then to acquire it we must make eternal decisions. And these
eternal decisions are made by submitting our decisions to the Father's will or actually doing the
Father's will, which is an eternal function.
When we execute the Father's will, we are at the same
time executing the decisions of past, present and future at once. These decisions made in the present
contain the wisdom from the past and well as the future outcome of such decisions. The decision has
now ceased to be a function of the purely present and has in fact escaped from its mooring of the
solitary present and lock-stepped with the eternal. As we look further into the future, even into
eternity, we glimpse the kind of character that makes these decisions, a glorified perfected character
just like Jesus. And all of this is made possible in the spirit now by exercising faith, by
wholeheartedly believing that when it comes to future spiritual values, these acquisitions can be
made a present spiritual reality in our life experiences.
This concludes today's message on understanding the foresight of faith. 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.
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By Dr. James Perry
Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done!
The Foresight of Faith
