The Feel of Spiritual Experience
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 revealed many revelations of spiritual truth to me, and I want to share them
with you. This morning we seek to understand the feel of spiritual experience with the heavenly
Father.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Feel of Spiritual Experience with the Heavenly Father
Jesus said, "If a man love me, he will keep m words: and my Father will love him and we will come
unto him, and make our abode with him." John, Chapter 14, Verse 23.
Brothers and sisters, in today's broadcast we shall examine the feel of experience with the heavenly
Father. We know that the heavenly Father can only be known as a spiritual experience, and the
heavenly Father is revealed through His Son, Jesus. Whosoever has seen the Son has seen the Father
Like all persons, material or spiritual, it requires experience to get to know. To aid us in capturing
the feel of the experience of knowing the heavenly Father, we shall embark on our journey from a
material beach head, the experience of emotional feeling.
Human emotions are necessary to give the feeling of reality to our human experiences. These
feelings either energize us when we are successful or de-energize us when we are not. They can
range from the ecstatic heights of joy to the bottom pits of sadness and depression. These emotions
are necessary for us to have a concept of divine emotions and feelings. We must have a starting point
for choosing good over evil, and these feelings link us with our choices and help to reinforce our
learning and understanding. In short, they can help us reach for the joys and pleasures of the spirit
when we are confronted with pain and sadness of the material world. These spiritual emotions do
not take away the reality of human emotions, but they transcend them by giving us the elevation of
hope.
Let us look at the human emotion of fear, which gives rise to impatience and intolerance. Now these
two attitudes cause much sorrow. We are mortal creatures, and often times in our efforts to advance
our human goals, we run into obstacles that are sometimes caused by the delays of time and the
handicaps of space, and by our interaction with the shortcomings of others who may or may not share
our particular vision on a given issue. Impatience and intolerance do not advance our progress in
being successful. It might appear that by being impatient and intolerant, using force to compel others
to cooperate or tacitly go along with our program, we will get what we want. But those who are
victims of this unjustified force become bitter and angry, and sooner or later the effort backfires. The
human cure for impatience and intolerance is patience and tolerance. Now these are temporal
qualities and even in the temporal sense are difficult to acquire, but most of us acquire them to some
extent after much interaction with the results of impatience and intolerance. These two attitudes
serve as the basis for acquiring the concepts of divine patience and tolerance, even forbearance. The
Heavenly Father is eternally patient and tolerant of the shortcomings of his children.
We know the revelation of the heavenly Father is the revelation of his character and his love--truth,
beauty, and goodness. These qualities are revealed as we acquire experience with Him through His
Son, Jesus. And as we move through the delays of time and the handicaps of space, we acquire
experience. As we move through these experiences we are also in the search of the Heavenly Father.
We are seeking to find more and more of him, we are seeking the feel of Him.
"Men all too often forget that God is the greatest experience in human existence. Other experiences
are limited in their nature and content, but the experience of God has no limits save those of the
creature's comprehension capacity, and this very experience is in itself capacity enlarging. When men
search for God, they are searching for everything. When they find God, they have found everything.
The search for God is the unstinted bestowal of love attended by amazing discoveries of new and
greater love to be bestowed."
The search for God should not imply that He is in hiding, nor should it imply that somehow He is
lost and must be found. Rather should the concept of the search for God mean that first we have free
will, and that this free will is absolute when it comes to choosing God. Secondly, we must desire
Him if we want to find Him. Third, the search for God should mean that we are in search of a Being
that is eternal and infinite. There is simply no end to Him. Always will there be more of Him than
we can ever find. But we do find him in greater and greater amounts, so to speak, as we continue our
experiences in time and space. And finally we are in search of a spiritual being, whose essence
include values that are absolute, infinite and eternal. So what we find are the meanings of these
values, based on our ability to comprehend them. "Ask and you shall receive" is the law of the universe.
The experience of love comes from our experience with our brothers and sisters and the
circumstances of life. As we live we gain knowledge and skill at revealing His character and
revealing his love--truth, beauty and goodness. But we must realize that "You cannot perceive
spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths are not really felt except in
adversity." God is found in our trials and tribulations. The Father is hope during seasons of despair;
He is joy in the midst of pain; a comforter in distress; faith in uncertainty; strength in weakness;
success in disappointment; and a companion in loneliness. He is the savior in the face of mortal
death and light in the darkness. Our human and un-spiritualized natures require trials and tribulations
to recognize and realize the Father's love and his character. It requires a strong stimulus for
unspiritualized man to seek after the heavenly Father. Only after his self-sufficiency is exhausted
does he turn wholeheartedly to the heavenly Father and begin to consciously experience Him.
Now when we examine this experience, when we reflect upon this experience, when we feel this
experience, we feel the divine values and meanings. And since divine values and meanings are the
presence of the Heavenly Father, when we reflect upon them we are reflecting upon the feel of God,
the feel of experience. It is the accumulation of divine values which holds us and the ever-increasing
meanings which satisfy us that constitute spiritual growth--the comprehension of the heavenly Father
and in our increase in spiritual status. And as we continue to experience, the feeling of God fills us
with the satisfaction of an experience that is true, beautiful, and good. And after all is said and done,
this is the feeling of the experience with Jesus, the personal revelation of the spiritual Father.
This concludes today's message on understanding the meaning of the feel of spiritual experience with
the heavenly Father. 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.
Inspirational Messages
By Dr. James Perry
Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done!
The Feel of Spiritual Experience
