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 ponder our lives as we seek to understand the liberation of spiritual faith.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Liberation of Spiritual Faith
"For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: As it is written, the just shall live by faith." Romans, Chapter 1, Verse 17
Brothers and sisters, in today’’s broadcast we examine the technique by which spiritual faith is liberated. We shall also look at the barrier preventing its liberation. By using a series of material analogies, we hope to access the material mind, and give some spiritual understanding to it. And while we realize that the explanation of a process is not the same as the process itself, still the explanation may prove useful.
All year long, there has been great anticipation for the Christmas season to arrive, and finally time has brought it into view. And now all the crowd stands before a magnificent fir tree that stands 150 feet tall as its branches reach for the sky. This magnificent tree was grown in the hearty mountains of North Carolina. It took many years for this tree to reach this level of maturity, but finally the day arrived in which it was ready to be harvested. It was cut down and transported to the city capital. It was duly erected upon a firm foundation, and was decorated with beautiful lights and trimmed with gorgeous ornaments. A beautiful red bow with long ribbons graced the front of it. Even though beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it was a sight to behold by all. And now all stand before its majesty awaiting the switch to be thrown that would transform this decorated tree into a beautiful spectacle of light. And the crowd waited for the electrical power to surge through the wires and bring life to this magnificent tree. And after a ceremony, the switch was thrown and the crowd beheld the fruits of their patience.
On top of a mountain, two beautiful mansions stood silhouetting the top of the mountain. These mansions had many rooms in them, and each room held some wonderful discovery that would enrich the lives of the person who entered these rooms. But these rooms were locked, the entrance requiring a key. The keys to the rooms of the first mansion were relatively easy to find, though some of them were missing--not all the rooms could be explored by a given individual. In other words, each individual had access to a different key. Some had keys that would open rooms that others did not have the key to. And there seemed to be some mysterious law that determined who would be given a key for a particular room. But even though no two people had exactly the same key to all the rooms, the contents of the room were equally valuable to all who entered the rooms. But even so the acquirement of the key to a particular room still required the individual to make the effort to pick up the key and unlock the door to the room in which he was qualified to enter. And though there were a few who refused to make the effort to pick up the key and unlock the door that held their treasure, most made the effort to pick up and use their key and were in the process of enjoying the treasures that they had access to.
The rooms of the other mansion, though requiring a key to enter, had no such restrictions. Whereas in the first mansion, there appeared to be handicaps for a given individual, in the second mansion, there were no handicaps. The only thing that was required was for the individual to pick up the key and enter the room. Admittedly even as in the first mansion, it required a certain amount of courage to explore these rooms filled with the treasures. And these treasures were of a different quality than those found in the rooms of the first mansion. This treasures had the power to satisfy the entire individual. Unlike the other treasures that only satisfied a part of the individual, these treasures penetrated to the very core of the individual, even into the soul. And even today these mansions on top of the hill remain for all to enter and explore. And the result of exploring the rooms of these mansions was an increase in personal status. Each exploration of these rooms made the individual more than he was prior to the beginning of the exploration.
A baby is born into the world. This child is the apple of his parents eye. It was the satisfaction of a dream to have this gift given to them to nourish, to nurture, and guide and direct throughout the ups and downs of the child’’s effort to acquire maturity. And the parents were diligent as the child entered each stage. The first year of life was the first stage; then began the years of toddlehood, where the child increasingly masters his basic physical mechanism. Here the child gained control over his bodily excretions, learned to walk, run, talk and developed into a delightful child and began to communicate with his parents.
Next the child entered the latent years, ages 5 to 12. Here the child begins to lay the foundation for his intellectual and further socialization. During these years of continuing growth, a period of relative freedom from conflict allowed the child to acquire a great deal of knowledge. And these accomplishments are a great source of joy for the parents. And though the child is still dependent upon his parents for his physical and emotional well being, he has advanced from the previous stage of being totally dependent upon his parents. The child also begins to establish friendships, mostly of the same sex.
Then the child enters that stormy period, the in-between years of childhood and young adulthood. This period creates somewhat of a conflict between the rapidly developing emotional life, and the child’’s desire to exercise his newly appearing free will and rapidly developing intellectual powers, as well as the new reproductive urges. The child wants to be totally liberated, but the parents knows that the child is not wise enough to handle this request for unsupervised decisions. The child does not understand why his parents keep interfering with what it wants to do, even vetoing some of his decisions. And this veto creates a certain estrangement between them. But the parents wisely restrain the child, and gives him freedom to the degree that he is able to bear the responsibility of choice and action. The child finally leaves the storm of adolescence and enters the realm of young adulthood.
The child now has completed his primary training from his parents. He has gained a relative level of emotional maturity and intellectual maturity so that he is able to function relatively independently. He now establishes his own life, and moves away from the immediate presence and supervision of its parents. During this beginning stage of adulthood, some will continue their education, and will still be dependent upon their parents for financial support. Others will enter the job market and begin independent lives apart from their parents, while a few will fall by the wayside, having failed to master the lessons preparatory to becoming an adult. But the child has now become its own agent and can explore the trails of life on her own. And a strange things happens: When the young adult truly becomes independent and assumes full responsibility, the child begins to make appropriate life decisions as her parents displayed. It begins to unconsciously display the values it has acquired during its sojourn with its parents. Suddenly the wisdom of the parent becomes apparent, as the child begins to follow the parents in many fundamental ways through the path of life. And most will marry just like their parents.
And now for the liberation of spiritual faith. This spiritual faith is like the great decorated fir tree, with all of its brilliant lights of truth and ornaments of beauty, rooted in the foundation of goodness, and overshadowed by the goodwill of love. All that is required is for the individual to turn on the switch of power, thus activating spiritual faith by a simple decision to believe, to whole-heartedly believe, to accept divine sonship and begin the conscious growth process.
And this faith unlocks the doors of the rooms in the mansion of truth because it is the key. These rooms become available for exploration with the liberation of spiritual faith. All that is required is the courage to embrace the divine values and meanings of divine sonship once they appear in the conscious mind. As Jesus said, faith the size of a mustard seed can do great things. Doubt is the only force that can prevent the liberation of faith, for it prevents the believer from wholeheartedly embracing his divine heritage. "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God."
But unlike the first mansion on the mountain, faith is like the second mansion, each room that is explored causes reactions of joy and astonishment. Such are the reactions of the meanings of truth. And even though no rooms in the second mansion are forbidden, there is also a separate reaction of each individual to the treasures of truth meanings. The treasures of truth are always individual; though they remain the same they are also different in each meaning for each soul that experiences them.
And there are always more rooms to explore, just as soon as the individual is ready. And like the child born into the world and moving through all the stages of growth, so does the soul move through all the stages of divine sonship until it enters young adulthood and learns so much truth that it becomes mature. In fact, it becomes so mature, that it will marry by fusing with its divine spirit, become spiritually perfected in the acquirement of divine values and meanings of divine sonship.
This concludes today's message on understanding the liberation of spiritual 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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