The Spiritual Insight 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 spiritual truths to me, and I want to share them with you. This morning we
seek to understand the spiritual insight of love.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Spiritual Insight of the Father's Love
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." John, Chapter 4, Verse 8.
Brothers and sisters, the Father is love, and the Father is spirit. Furthermore, the Father desires His
children to worship Him in truth and in spirit. The Father is a spiritual person who reveals Himself
to us as love. As His mortal children, we must communicate with Him in truth and in spirit. Thus
it is seen that the relationship between the spirit Father and His spiritual children is spiritual. The
great challenge of life is the perfection of this relationship with the Father. Love is the greatest of
all human experiences. This love becomes real in our experiences as we in turn pass this love on to
our sisters and brothers. Otherwise, the love of the Father remains strictly a test of faith. The Father
still loves us, but if we do not love others we cannot realize that he loves us.
There are many reasons for this seeming paradox, but the absolute reason for it lies in the very nature
of God and in the association of the Father, Son, and Spirit. The Father is love, but if He were a
solitary figure in eternity and infinity, love would only be potential even as His Fatherhood would
be potential. When God expresses His personal reality in the Son, He becomes the Father to the Son,
but in doing subjects Himself to expression through this Son whenever He absolutely personally
expresses Himself. The Son thus becomes the personal revelation of the merciful Father. All the
purely personal qualities of the Father are expressed in the Son. Thus, whoever has seen the Son has
seen the Father's loving and merciful character.
When we share this divine love with our sisters and brothers, our whole personality is bathed in this
love, duplicating the infinite, eternal, and absolute association on high, for the revelation of the truth,
beauty, and goodness of the Father's character is forever dependent upon His Son as ministered by
His Spirit. There is inherent in us the ability to recognize truth, beauty, and goodness, as they are
unified in love. But because of our incomplete status, there is always the possibility that we will
misunderstand these values, as well as act out in evil. And sometimes when we become proud and
disloyal, we may move into sin and iniquity. How can we be sure that we are in fact acquiring
truthful, beautiful, and good knowledge of the Father's character and our relationship with Him?
The Father has commanded us to become perfect as He is. This command is the secret of the drive
in us that causes us to strive to make things better. When guided by the Son and assisted by the
Spirit, we acquire a spiritual character like the Father, as revealed in His Son, Jesus. As human
beings, we are a combination of material and spiritual. We are thus able to experience material and
spiritual realities. The error in determining the true character of the Father, and the true relationship
with Him consists in confusing the material with spiritual.
While it is true that God is the source of the material and the spiritual, as well as the mind that
mediates between the two, our personal relationships with Him are purely spiritual. The amount of
material values and meanings that are attributed to the relationship with the Father is the degree of
error in our understanding, and determines the degree of evil action or inaction that we carry out in
trying to reveal the Father to our brothers and sisters. When thinking about the spiritual Father, we
should avoid all material considerations. When praying to the Father, in effect seeking the revelation
of His divine character which is His Son, we should only pray for the fruits of the spirit and their
derivatives.
The material mind is the mutual agent of the spiritual as well as the material. In the material world
the mind first consciously conceives of an idea and then gives expression to it in the outer world. In
the spiritual world, we experience the value first, before the meaning becomes conscious in the
material mind. Stated another way, spiritual values are experienced by us before we become
conscious of their meanings. This is because spirit exists before mind. Thus in spiritual experiences,
freed from material contamination, the comprehension of divine values and meanings is the truth of
their validity. The consciousness of divine values and meanings is soul consciousness, while the
display of these qualities is the living reality of the spirit.
This concludes today's message on the insight of the 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 Spiritual Insight of the Father's Love
