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 will ponder our lives as we seek to understand the meaning of the pursuit of truth.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Pursuit of Truth
Jesus said, "Howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak." John, Chapter 16, Verse 13.
Brothers and sisters, in a previous broadcast, we defined and discussed the concept of Truth. And now we wish to discuss the pursuit of truth. When we pursue truth, we pursue those personal realities that are divinely real. Truth has the effect of liberating the mind, because it pushes out everything that is not divinely real. It removes superstition from religion, error from science, aligns relationships correctly. Thus are superstition, maladjusted relationship, error ultimately banished from the mind. But the greatest manifestation of truth that we can experience is the truth that God is our Father and we are his sons, and we can experience this truth daily by the technique of submitting our will to the Father’s will. And since there can be no higher truth than submitting our wills to the Father’s will, we will focus upon the phenomenon of submitting the human will to the divine will.
The heavenly Father has given us free will concerning the choice of himself, and thus the only true gift that we can give him is the gift of abiding by his will. But what is the Father’s will and how do we abide by the Father’s will? How do we submit our will to the Father’s will? How do we know when we are submitting our will and how do we know when we are not? The Father’s will is the way of the Father, the choice that the Father makes. The human will is the way of the human, the choices that the human makes.
To give us a feel for submitting to the Father’s will, let us look at the illustration of the Father’s will submitting it self to the human will. Yes the Father does submit his will to our will. It happens in this way. The Father sends his will in the form of his spirit to live, work in and through our minds, to co-create us in the form of a soul, to spiritualize our minds so that we can comprehend divine values and meanings, to love us, to reveal truth, beauty and goodness to us. It is the Father’s will to perfect us, to recreate us in the image of his Son, Jesus who is the revelation of the Father to all of us.
The Father’s spirit, the Father’s will waits patiently in our minds and souls subject to our will. Of all the blessings the Father has in store for us, the growth, the revelations of truth, beauty, and goodness, the impulse to love our brothers and sisters, they remain powerless unless we choose them, choose his will. No matter how strong the desire may be for the Father to save us, he remains subject to our will. So if the Father is willing to submit his will to our will, then surely we can by way of comparison submit our will to the Father’s will.
Now in reverse, we submit our will by choosing all of those qualities that he reveals to us. When we are faced with a moral choice, it is the Father that reveals the higher choice in the face of the natural choosing of the material mind. When we make the higher choice in the face of the urge to make the lower choice, we choose the Father’s will. When we are faced with a choice of unselfish regard for another in the face of making a selfish choice, we choose the Father’s will, for it is the urge of the Father that sponsors the unselfish choice.
Now the question arises as to how we know when we are submitting our will to the Father’s will. First of all there is the desire that we express that indicates that we are desirous of submitting our will to the Father’s will; next there is the decision that we make to choose the Father’s will over our own. Our will is capable of choosing a spiritual reality just as it can choose a material reality. In the spiritual arena when we choose the Father’s will, we choose his way as oppose to our way. Analysis shows us when we have chosen the higher choice. The choice of the Father’s will is followed by an objective change on the outside that is reflective of the Father’s will. We change our objective reality by interjecting the unselfish regard for others, and this unselfish regard is manifesting in our behavior on the outside. We are self conscious being, so we are aware when we have made a conscious choice. Finally there is faith. Faith is the assurance that we have indeed chosen the Father’s will. So now we are ready to consider in detail the pursuit of Truth.
The pursuit of Truth is the pursuit of the perfect relationship with the Father. It is the relationship that the Father shares with all of his creatures. The Father is truth. We experience this divine reality in our soul as the Father relates with us. So the experience of Truth is the experience of Father. Two thousand years ago, the Father incarnated in the form of a human being, Jesus. And thus Jesus becomes the personification of truth. Jesus contains with in his being the perfect relationship between the creature and the Creator. He demonstrated this relationship to his human brothers and sisters. Jesus contains the beginning of human perception of truth to finality of human perception of truth. Therefore the most effective and accurate way of pursuing truth is to pursue the Spirit of Truth which surrounds the souls of all of his creatures. By following this Spirit of Truth, we will be led into all truth.
We pursue truth by loving our brothers and sisters the way that Jesus does. And these relationships are characterized by being motivated by love and dominated by mercy. As we pursue truth, then do the meanings of truth become available to our minds; and these meanings constitute Father consciousness. When we have perfected these relationships, we will also have perfected our souls. Our relationship with the Father will be perfected as will our relationships with our brothers and sisters. We will perfectly reflect the finite image of the Father as revealed in his Son.
In the final analysis, there can be no end to the pursuit of truth, since the source of truth is God and God is eternal, infinite, and absolute. Always will there be revelations of new truth meanings as we pursue the value of Truth. The pursuit of Truth is eternal life.
This concludes today's message on understanding the meaning of the pursuit of truth. 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.