A Spiritual Understanding of Life
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 a spiritual understanding of life.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
A Spiritual Understanding of Life
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways
acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs, Chapter 3, Verses 5 and 6.
Brothers and sisters, in today's broadcast, we shall share some meanings of spiritual understanding
of life. We shall arrive at a satisfying spiritual understanding that embraces all of human experiences,
not just the prime years of life, but the whole gamut of human existence from birth to death. We
know that at this time, society is oriented towards the prime experiences of life. All of the
advertizing is directed toward the prime of life. Our society has not developed any spiritual
understanding that deals with the end of life, nor with human suffering. In fact, even though these
things are a fact, the society is silent about their meanings and values until its members are suddenly
caught in one of life's cruel traps.
These are the facts of existence. That we are mortal is the first and last fact of existence. Everything
that we do, say, or think is conditioned by that fact. Second we are conscious of our mortality. It is
never far from any of us. We also live during a time when the cost of living makes it difficult for us
to offer each other sustaining material help. We have to have jobs to make a living, a matter made
necessary by the fact that we have to maintain these bodies. And even making a living is complicated
by the fact that at times it may not be even possible to have the job and therefore the resources to
take care of ourselves and our loved ones. There is also the specter of disease and disability that
makes it not only difficult to make a living, but circumstances that make it impossible to do so.
The basics that we need to survive materially are at the mercy of profit mongers. Those groups that
take advantage of the fact of necessity by charging as much as they can for those necessary products
that we have to have, like food, healthcare, shelter, and fuel. We are told that profits have to be high
in order to provide the incentive for those who are providing the goods and services. We live in a
society where we are often separated from the closeness of family bonds; members of a given family
are sometimes scattered all over the country, and in some cases all over the world. It is a fact that if
you incur a prolonged illness, you are probably not going to get very much support, sometimes not
even from your immediate family. This problematic reality is caused not only by the stresses of
employment in the lives of the family members, but also by the fact that often there does not seem
to be any sustaining moral bond, not to mention a spiritual bond.
The television constantly bombards us with pictures, depicting how wicked we are as a society, how
uncaring we are for one another, while the advertising that supports these programs bombard us with
materialistic and deceptive products. And when the television is not bombarding us with our
depravity, it showers us with escape programming designed to take our minds away from the
problems of human existence which we desperately need to solve. We live in a culture that is
pleasure-oriented, seeking to gratify its jaded senses. Entertainers are paid exorbitant salaries while
school teachers, the ones who are entrusted with passing on our cultural and educational values to
the next generation, are paid pennies in comparison.
On the larger scale, our world is gripped with the madness of wars. Our world is being polluted
because of our efforts to survive and make profits. There is widespread poverty, and the wealth of
our world is constantly being transferred from the bottom to the top. Each year we witness the
phenomenon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, while the so-called middle class
is getting smaller. This is due to a few of them are being transferred to the richer class, but the reason
for this shrinking is the transfer of many of them to the poorer class. This constant pressure of being
threatened with poverty causes the distortion of family life, in that both parents are required to work
full time, and some parents are required to have more than one job to stave off the wolves of poverty.
We are selfish creatures. We were created that way. All of the materialistic strivings and the drive
for ever-increasing profits are derived from the fact that we are mortal, constantly seeking some way
to avoid that fact, and to get as much as we can while life lasts. As the saying goes ““go for the
gusto; you only go around once," while the constant pursuit of pleasure is the attempt to antidote the
constant potential of pain and suffering which visits us like a bolt from out of the blue.
What spiritual insights can we draw from these facts? To the unbeliever, these fact convey a sense
of despair and hopelessness. To the unbeliever, we are marching towards the long night of oblivion
where the world will forget that we ever existed, just another face that danced to the tune of pain and
suffering. And though the pain and suffering was anguishing, he was ejected from life before he even
realized it. He has no hope of life beyond this one. "Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the
grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the
crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good."
But to the believer, we know that this is not the destiny of man despite the material difficulties of
his sojourn on earth. We know that as concerns the individual, he must adjust and accept the age in
which he lives. It is the responsibility of each individual to contribute their share to making the world
a better place for their children and their grandchildren. In the meantime, we have to accept the
consequences of being mortal as far as this material life goes. There is a good chance that we may
become victim to some if not all of the vicissitudes chronicled above. Being material, we are subject
to the material laws governing material reality. But while we must give Caesar his due, we can also
transcend these deplorable scenes. By changing our material value system to a spiritual one, we can
change all of this suffering and poverty. We can add another dimension to our material understanding. By one great step of faith, "all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of
God's children on earth."
We can recognize that even though the material self is absolutely real, there is another dimension
to human existence--the spiritual side. We can recognize the duality of human existence. We can
recognize that even while we are held in slavery by the material grip of life, we can be free in our
minds and spirits. We can embrace a value system that knows no incarceration. We can embrace
faith and hope. These two qualities flood our minds in the midst of material suffering and material
difficulties. These qualities are given to our minds by the spirit of the heavenly Father through his
Son, Jesus. And we can allow the Spirit of Truth to lead us through the trials and tribulations of
mortal existence to a liberated existence beyond this one, the spiritual existence.
We can even experience the values and meanings of this other existence and can base our moral and
spiritual decisions upon it. We can even enjoy the love of the Father and begin to grasp some of the
insights of his mercy. We can grasp the liberating truth that we are sons and daughters of the
heavenly Father. We can move to embrace the divine plan which starts our career in the mortal mind
for a glorious purpose. The willingness to live this life, to run this race, will redound to a higher
status and a glorious future, conditioned on living this mortal life. We can improve this mortal life
and will at sometime turn it into a beautiful poem of existence by embracing the higher and spiritual
value system sponsored by God the Father through His Son, Jesus. But for now, we must put our
back to the plow and work the field of actual existence, while we unfold the harvest of potential
existence--divine spiritual perfection.
This concludes today's message on the meaning of the spiritual understanding of life. 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!
A Spiritual Understandinf of Life
