The Messenger is the Message
Is He here or there?
How can I know His will?
Send a message here!
Be quiet and be still.
And know His will.
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 the meaning of the messenger being the message.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Messenger is the Message
"For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through
him might be saved." John, Chapter 3, Verse 17.
Brothers and sisters, today we shall talk about the problem of discerning the divine will. We know
that some roam the world searching for His will, trying to find what it is that He wants them to do.
Some have spent a lifetime trying to find clues as to what His will is. They have studied books and
different interpretations of the same books trying to find the answers. They have prayed unceasingly
and have exhausted their intellects trying to find the factual will. How can they find and know the
divine will? How can they find the truth, for the truth is what they seek.
The Father heard their pleas and sent a messenger to tell of His will, or rather to live according to
His will: the messenger is the message. The Father sent His Son, Jesus, so that we might know His
divine will. But because some have not accepted Jesus, they continue to fail to know the Father and
still look for another messenger. Jesus said to the disbelieving Pharisees, "If I do not the works of
my Father, believe me not, but if I do though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know
and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him." And because they failed to accept the messenger,
they have waged war in His name; have disrupted their lives and the lives of their children, seeking
Him in books that agree with their interpretation. They have become fanatical in their search and in
their interpretation of what they think they have found. But still they go on searching and searching,
not being able to see the forest for the trees. They have fragmented God's will, broken it up into facts,
some of them true, some erroneous.
The Father's will is spiritual and must be found in the spiritual realm. It is not intellectual despite the
fact that we must use the intellect in discussing the manifestation of that will. But be warned the
riverbed is not the river. The Father's will resides at the center of our being, and thus is no great
mystery. The Father's will can be known by the high and the low, by the mighty and the powerless;
by the educated and uneducated. Thus the intellectual approach to knowing the Father's will does not
deliver because the Father's will is not intellectual but spiritual. It is spiritually senseless to keep
asking the Father, "what would you have me do?" Rather, we should ask, "who would you have me
be?" We should be like Jesus, who is the messenger and the message. Jesus said, "No man come to
me except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day." There
is only one criteria for knowing the Father's will and that is to believe His son, Jesus, who is the
revelation of the Father's will.
The desire to know the Father's will is the secret to knowing that will. The Father's will, the divine
nature, resides in our souls and minds. And every morally conscious human being knows that nature.
The divine nature is that aspect of ourselves that loves unselfishly. It is that part of ourselves that
shows mercy and forgives. It is that part of our self that encourages and comforts. It is that part of
us that is like Jesus. Jesus' spirit, the Spirit of Truth, leads us to higher levels of truth, beauty, and
goodness. It gives us faith and hope. It gives us eternal life. In short, every worthy spiritual gift
comes from the divine nature. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. And
we are in the process of incorporating this divine nature into our own. And we measure the degree
of this incorporation by the quality by which we respond to these divine impulses. "By their fruits
shall you know them."
The divine nature is in our very midst. All that is required is to recognize, acknowledge, and choose
it. As we try to execute this divine will, Jesus displays the correct way of actualizing these qualities
in our daily lives. And this is the way of love, patience, mercy, and forgiveness. We are free moral
agents: God is not going to choose for us. We have the ability and power to choose the divine will.
But in order to choose truly, we must abandon the intellectual approach, tell me what you want me
to do, and grasp the spiritual aspect, tell me who you want me to be.
And as we choose the highest understanding of wisdom and truth that we possess in a given
situation, then we choose the Father's will and further integrate the divine nature into our own nature.
We have in effect become sons and daughters of the Father. We have become conduits of his selfless
love to our brothers and sisters, just like on high. The Son is the personal revelation of the Father,
and we mortal sons may become the personal revelation of the divine So no longer must we search
from sea to shining sea, from the valleys that are low to the mountains that are high. Wherever we
go, we take the divine will with us. The divine nature is closer to us than any other person could ever
be. No longer must we spend sleepless nights trying to discern the divine will in a crisis. We only
have to seek to know the divine will and act upon that nature, act upon that conduct that we know
is acceptable to the Father through his Son, Jesus. No longer must we be troubled by the riddle:
Is He here or there?
How can I know His will?
Send a message Here!
Be quiet and be still.
Be perfect as He.
This concludes today's message on understanding that the messenger is the message. 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 Messenger is the Message
