The Reward of Divine Communion
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 shared many revelations of spiritual truth to me, and I want to share them with you. This morning we seek to understand the reward of divine communion.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Reward of Divine Communion
" . . . When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Matthew, Chapter 6, Verse 6
Brothers and sisters, in today’’s broadcast we explore the reward of divine communion. Divine communion consists of all values that are a part of our relationship with the Father. They include urges, desires, hopes, thoughts, prayers, and the conscious practice of being in the heavenly Father’’s presence--worship. In short, divine communion is the doing of the Father’’s will. Now there is a proof that all of this is taking place, but the proof cannot be demonstrated to the outside world as such. It apparently remains a subjective experience in our souls and minds. But there is a spiritual proof of divine communion, and we want to give that spiritual proof. Though in order to prove this proof, we must go inside.
Without faith, our primary passport, there is no hope of proving this divine communion or for that matter experiencing divine communion. Also, we know that our relationship with the Father is one of Father/son. Inherent in this relationship is growth because we must grow in the relationship with the Father. Thus, our understanding and awareness of the divine communion is conditioned by this. But as we grow and experience this divine communion, we are able to progressively comprehend more and more of it.
And we can understand why this is so, for the heavenly Father is the spiritual Father of our souls, which is analogous to the earthly father-child relationship. We know that it took many years to fully understand the nature of such a relationship, and that our concept was not truly adequate until we functioned as parents ourselves. Functioning in the parental role provides crucial insights into parenting. As we struggle to provide guidance and direction for our offspring, we can understand many of the reasons for our parents’’ acts, which may have seemed cruel at times. Especially can we see the restraining acts of mercy that prevented us from handicapping our lives before maturity had a chance to restrain us. As we struggle with the circumstances of our existence, we can understand how circumstances and our environments conditioned the functioning of our parents. As we find ourselves making some of the same errors, we begin to really appreciate the difficulties in being a parent, and a lot of our criticisms vanish like puffs of smoke.
Our souls are similar to the earthly child. It has to grow and develop. It must be guided and directed, and it must be disciplined. It must learn to trust the heavenly Father and realize that the heavenly Father is always acting in its best interest, no matter how hard this may be for the material mind to realize. But the soul continues to grow and have spiritual experience with the heavenly Father. As it grows, it comes to see more and more the righteousness of the heavenly Father’’s point of view. It even grows to the point where it understands the Father’’s way so well that it goes into partnership with the Father. And all of this growth has taken place in response to unbroken communion with the Father. This communion teaches the soul how to do the Father’’s will.
In learning to do the Father’’s will, it is helpful to understand how the Father’’s will functions in eternity. When the Father desires to execute His will, he creates the very thing that is his will. Thus, the Son becomes the word of God, the personal revelation of the Father’’s will, and the Spirit becomes the Act of God, the execution of the Father’’s will as personalized in the Son.
On sub-absolute levels, the Father creates the embodiment of his will. These creatures embody the very value the Father wishes to display. But in the time-space universes, the creature that is the personified value is delayed by time and handicapped by space. Thus in time and space unlike in eternity where the Father’’s will is fully manifest, the creature is in the process of becoming like the Father’’s will. To do the Father’’s will, then, is the process of becoming like him. And as we seek to do that will, we progressively become more and more like him. And thus we pray, "Thou will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
There are two related phases involved in the process of doing the Father’’s will. The first phase centers on the degree that we have become like him, and the second phase the degree to which we are conscious of his presence. The more we become like the Father, the more we become conscious of his presence. But why can’’t we be conscious of him without being like him? Intellectually we can become conscious of the facts about him, but spiritually we can only become conscious of him to the degree that we are like him because we know the Father only by his nature.
The Father is love. The awareness of this love, which is the desire to do good to others (good will towards another), is directly proportionately to the degree that we desire to love others. Without the desire to love others, there can be no consciousness of the desire to love. Without the desire, there can be no consciousness of the thing the desire seeks. The Father is a spirit and imparts spiritual knowledge of himself by making the recipient like he is. And having become like he is, it follows that the degree that we have become like him is the degree to which we are aware of him spiritually. Let us consider this analogy to help us understand the two aspects of divine communion.
We have a scale and want to know the weight of an object. We place the object and get a read-out of the weight. We know the scale has a limitation. It is capable of weighing only so much. If we keep increasing the amount of weight, we will soon exhaust the ability of the scale to register, and the readout will convey only the maximum weight. This is the supreme weight limit of the scale.
The degree of Godlikeness is similar to the weight that is placed on the scale in ever-increasing amounts, and the degree of consciousness of the Father’’s spiritual presence is similar to the readout. When we complete our spiritual growth, we will have reached the supreme level of Godlikeness and the consciousness of his spiritual presence will have reached supreme levels. This is the maximum of Godlikeness and consciousness of spiritual presence that can be realized in the flesh. And when we attain such levels of Godlikeness and spiritual awareness, all fear will have been banished from our minds as well as the sense of isolation. We will have become like Jesus. All our acts will be motivated by love and dominated by mercy. And all of this is possible by the exercise and growth of our faith and our dedication to doing of the Father’’s will.
By our faith, we can become one with Jesus even as he is one with the Father. Each day as we seek to do the Father’’s will, we are becoming more and more like the Father through his Son, Jesus. And we must continue to seek to do the Father’’s will until we reach supreme levels of divine communion, where we will be rewarded with a perfected spiritual character like Jesus and a supreme spiritual consciousness of the heavenly Father. We will have become the perfected value that is the personalization of the Father’’s will. After all we are to be perfect even as the heavenly Father is perfect.
This concludes today's message on understanding the reward of divine communion. 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.
Your Kingdom Come; Your Will Be Done!
Inspirational Messages of Light
By Dr. James Perry
The Reward of Divine Communion
