The Spiritual Realities of Faith
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 seek to understand the spiritual realities of faith.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
The Spiritual Realities of Faith
"I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able." First Corinthians, Chapter 3, Verse 2
Brothers and sisters, in today’’s broadcast we share with you some further insights into the realities of faith. We know that faith is the all important quality that we use to compensate for the incomplete growth of our minds and souls. To help assist us in grasping this new insight, we shall again resort to the use of a material analogy.
A helpless infant is born into the world. His infant is devoid of all self consciousness. He is not aware that he is aware. If the infant is to survive there are many things that must be done for him. And it will be a long time before he becomes self conscious of the service that is being provided for him, and even longer before he can really appreciate the continuing service provided for him by his parents.
The parents of the child must provide the child with nutrients. The child is not consciously aware that he needs foods, but yet when he is hungry and thirsty, he cries. When he is wet he cries. In fact, at this stage of development all of his needs are signaled by this cry. But the skillful and attentive mother recognizes the quality of these cries. She is so attuned to her infant, that she recognizes the cry of hunger, the cry of thirst, the cry of fatigue and sleepiness. She recognizes the cry for affection and nurture. She knows when the child just wants to be held and loved.
As times goes, on the child responds to this loving service. He grows and thrives. He gradually becomes consciously aware of his material needs, and with the development of speech, he begins to consciously ask for these needs. And we might add at this point that the child recognizes his mother long before he consciously knows it. He responds to her voice and her presence. As time further goes on, the child begins to consciously recognize his mother and enters into a conscious relationship with her. But though the child is able to recognize and request that his needs be filled, he still has no consciousness of the real appreciation of the supplier of these needs. He more or less takes it for granted, that this is the way it is.
And because the child feels like this is the way it is, and as he continues to develops, he also develops some desires other than his needs. At this point in the child’’s development, he is unable to distinguish needs from wants. And this confusion continues on and on as the child continues to develop. And the child does not come to fully understand this difference between needs and wants until he is able to become a parent himself where the full impact and understanding registers with him as he begins that process of doing for another what has been done for him.
But though the child has not been fully conscious of what has been done for him and continues to be done for him, that does not change the reality of what has been done for him. In short the child has had and continues to have his needs met regardless of whether he can appreciate that fact or not. The service that he received was and is real, as demonstrated by his continuing growth and development.
Now in the spiritual life, a similar process follows. The soul is born into the mind of the human being. This soul has a hunger for truth and a thirst for righteousness. This hunger and thirst must be satisfied or else the soul will perish. The soul requires a continuous supply of love. Without love, the soul cannot live. This process goes on without conscious mind awareness. Indeed the conscious mind like the helpless infant has no awareness of this process initially but still benefits from it. But as time goes on, the desire for worship appears in the soul, and this desire may be mistaken by the material mind and placed upon some other object other than the loving and merciful Father. And without the quality of faith and the exercise of it, the material mind can never discover these revelations of truth, beauty, and goodness and the precious mercies of love of the heavenly Father. As it is, very few make use of this quality that compensates for the material mind’’s inability to directly perceive spiritual reality.
As the soul continues to develop, it gradually begins to consciously experience the ministry of mercy and love coming from the Father of love and mercy, but the mind continues to remain ignorant of these precious spiritual realities. The material mind is skeptical of things that it cannot experience and so doubts the reality of the faith projections and blocks out the meaning of these precious truths. Intellectually the facts of these qualities are and can be known by the mind, but the meanings are absent. And if the meanings are absent, they lose the power to motivate, inspire, animate, and hold the conscious mind in its efforts to further realize the ever- increasing divine values and meanings. Divine values must be loved in order to be known. When the mind truly desires to know the divine meanings of the divine values that are experienced in the soul, it will wholeheartedly embrace these meanings by faith.
Faith is the technique whereby these divine meanings become conscious to the mind. When faith is embraced wholeheartedly, it creates a consciousness of these divine meanings that is as real spiritually as material things are to the mind. Faith makes real to the mind divine values and meanings. These realities then go on to endow all moral activities with high purpose, and life takes on a quality that is reflective of knowing the divine meanings. And the first of these joy-provoking meanings is that of divine sonship, the realization that God is our Father.
The faith holder need not fear error in these divine values and meanings that relate to the spiritual relationship between himself and the heavenly Father, for all of these meanings are true. There can be no error in the love and the mercy and the derivatives that are derived from love and mercy. It is a realization that elevates the self to new heights and empowers and inspires the self to grab the rope of hope which pulls it through when locked and trapped in the arms of adversity. Spiritual faith is the revelation of other and more real values and meanings of human existence. The realization of sonship with God and its precious status of eternal life in the face of mortal existence drives the self on with the armor of long suffering as it battles its way through a difficult and sometimes painful physical existence. As the embrace of mortality tightens its grip on the aging self, the soul continues to chip away at its imprisonment in the material mind, straining and chaffing at the bit of incredible joy and hope. It know that its day of incarceration in the mind of its birth is rapidly approaching the end. It looks with keen relish to the day when its union with the Father will be factual as well as truthful.
The human self may go right on suffering as it often does, but now that it is fully faith conscious that its life is secure in the hands of its all powerful and merciful Father, it cries, "My Vindicator lives!" It never allows the material values of human existence to crowd out the divine values of its spiritual existence. No matter how difficult the material existence, the revelations of divine values and meanings never cease to flow. In fact, the more difficult the material existence, the greater the flow of divine values and meanings. This is the law of spiritual contrast that states the greater the differential between the material and the spiritual reality, the greater the value and meaning.
As the human self travels the dark road of material existence, faith provides the light of truth, beauty, goodness and love to brighten the way. One traveling on such a road can see clearly, for he is following the Spirit of Truth, who is the way, the truth, and the life. He knows that he is traveling the road to the promise land. He knows that sooner or later this road of human existence will yield to the glorious road of a spiritual existence, where there will be no end to the ever increasing divine values and meanings, which will eventually carry him into the very presence of the Heavenly Father through His Son, Jesus.
This concludes today's message on the meaning of the spiritual realities of 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.
Your Kingdom Come; Your Will Be Done!
The Spiritual Realities of Faith
Inspirational Messages
By Dr. James Perry
