The Influence of the Father's Love
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 revealed many revelations of spiritual truth to me, and I want to share them with you. This
morning we ponder our lives as we seek to understand the influence of the Father's love.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Influence of the Father's Love
"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God,
and knoweth God." 1 John, Chapter 4, Verse 7.
Brothers and sisters, the Father's love is the most powerful yet subtle force in existence. The force
of this love overcomes all obstacles and demolishes all barriers. This force may at first appear to be
very ineffective; however, the passing of time reveals otherwise.
The Father's love functions as a purely spiritual influence. It does not use physical force or
intellectual coercion to achieve it objectives but appeals to the love that already exists in us, which
is the Father's spirit. Love responds to love. Like a gigantic magnet, the forces are drawn towards
each other. As this force is drawn, it spreads out in all directions, covering everything within its
circumference. Everything within the circle of love is thoroughly saturated. This process continues
even as the circle widens.
The secret to the power of this love is that it seeks the best for the individual whom it is bestowed
upon. Being the very essence of the best, love can achieve this. Every normal human being seeks the
best for himself. It then becomes a matter of education and redirection of the method that an
individual uses to bring this goal about. Initially an individual believes and has faith in the concept
that when he gets something for himself, he is getting the best for himself. But experience shows that
an individual is never satisfied with pure quantity. Experience shows that an individual is really after
quality. And even though it does not appear to be the case in early observations, the passing of time
reveals their deep dissatisfaction with the selfish pursuit of things.
So ingrained in our human minds is the selfish concept that it requires trials and tribulations before
our minds begin to recognize its errors. The essence of the natural mind is selfishness. Selfishness
is the survival instinct of the species. It guarantees that the strong and the fit will survive. But there
is something else inside of man that craves to survive beyond the physical and the earthly. And this
something else is none other than the influence of love. It is love that causes the individual to crave
survival beyond physical death.
It is the influence of love that causes us to want a better life. Without this influence, the very concept
of better and best would be meaningless. The influence of love gradually re-educates us to the
understanding that the best way to achieve happiness is to help another person, to share with others
unselfishly. Love does this by endowing us with the ability to choose between good and evil. After
having endowed us with this ability, love waits patiently for us to choose it.
At first the choosing of good over evil is slow, but as we grow in experience, we find that the way
of love is far superior to the ways of evil--selfishness. We may initially assign the superior to pure
luck, but as the luck continues, turning into bad luck or no luck, we want to have some of the good
luck. We are then moved to seek how to acquire that particular phase of quality that we desire. In
this way we gradually come better at recognizing the quality of love. We want more of it.
Love improves the quality of our lives to such a high degree that we have a desire to continue to
experience this love. Because this love is eternal, the desire for it becomes eternal, too. There is also
a desire to find the source of this love. This results in an endless search of the heavenly Father. We
learn of the process of being like him through His Son, Jesus.
And all of this time of searching for the Heavenly Father, his love has been bringing about
tremendous character transformations in us by the sheer power of its good will. As the Apostle Paul
in 1st Corinthians, chapter 13, verses 1-13, wrote: "Even though I speak in human and angelic
language and have no love, I am as noisy brass or a clashing cymbal. And though I have the
prophetic gift and see through every secret and through all that may be known, and have sufficient
faith for the removal of mountains and have no love, I am nothing."
"And though I give all my belongings to feed the hungry and surrender my body to be burned, but
have no love, I am not in the least benefitted. Loves endures long and is kind; love is not jealous;
love is not out for display; it is not conceited or unmannerly; it is neither self seeking nor irritable,
nor does it take account of a wrong that is suffered. It takes no pleasure in injustice but sides happily
with truth. It bears everything in silence, has unquenchable faith, hopes under all circumstances,
endures without limits."
"Love never fails. As for prophesying, they will pass away; as for tongue, they will cease; as for
knowledge, it will lose its meaning. For our knowledge is fragmentary and so is our prophesying.
But when the perfect is come, then the fragmentary will come to an end. When I was a child, I
reasoned like a child, but on becoming a man I was through with childish ways. For now we see
indistinctly in a mirror, but then face to face. Now we know partly, but then we shall understand as
completely as we are understood. There remains then faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest
of these is love."
This concludes today's message on the influence of the Heavenly Father's love. 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 Influence of the Faher's Love
