The Growth of the Spiritual Character
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 how the spiritual character grows.
And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
"Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect..” Matthew, Chapter 5, verse 48.
Brothers and sisters, in today’s broadcast, we discuss the growth of the spiritual character. We enter the world as a helpless enfant, a material being. We are endowed with a moral nature, and free will. We have material minds that can become spiritualized. We progress in time and exist in space. As we progress, we experience, and this experience leads to growth, to an increase in status. We grow, physically, emotionally, intellectually, morally and spiritually. “ What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment.” The heavenly Father has commanded us to be perfect even as he is perfect, and set into motion certain stimuli that are designed to help us obey that supreme command . Sometimes these stimuli cause us quite a bit of discomfort and suffering. There are a lot of things we do not understand while we are going through a given experience, often perceiving the experience as antagonistic, being full of sorrow and pain. But it requires a powerful stimulus to move man from his human nature to his divine nature. There is no other technique whereby we can grow.
The raw material for this growth is inherent within the environment in which we are forced to live. By submitting our will to the Father’s will, we can move towards our divine destiny: Spiritual perfection. The Father incarnated in the form of His Son, Jesus, and showed us how to do this. The Father is living love, and his Son revealed this love to us. He instructed us that we were sons and daughters of the heavenly Father, and that by submitting our will to the Father’s will, we would develop a character like Him. And now that he has left the earth, he has left His Spirit of Truth within us to guide and teach us how to obey the Father’s eternal command to be perfect even as he is perfect.
This march towards spiritual perfection is reflected in our acquiring a spiritual character, a character motivated by love and dominated by mercy, a character that loves others as Jesus loves us. The technique of growth requires reacting to our moral and spiritual environments. As we are presented with moral and spiritual stimuli, we must choose between good and evil, between truth and error. And as we choose the good and that which is true, we grow in moral and spiritual status For every action, there is a reaction. As we progress through this life, we accumulate these moral and spiritual values and they are reflected in our characters. And when life has run its course, the only possession that we take with us is our experiences and the moral and spiritual values derived from those experiences.
The acquirement of the moral and spiritual character is an unconscious process, but the display of this character is wholly conscious to the person perceiving the character display. There are primary two phases of character growth: The process of character attainment and the process of character display. All moral and spiritual activities contribute to these basic processes.
All activities are either positive or negative. An experience is positive if it leads to character growth. Conversely, an experience is negative if it leads to character destruction. There are no neutral moral activities. Nothing stands still in life. Either we are is getting better or we are getting worst.
In our interactions in the moral and spiritual environment, we are constantly faced with decisions, decisions that determine right and wrong. We should always exert good in the face of evil. Only good can vanquish evil. The return of evil for evil only increases the evil as the world. Not only does good vanquish evil, but by choosing it over evil, we increase our moral and spiritual status. Every time we make a moral decision, the divine spirit that lives in our soul is able to make us a little bit Godlike, like Jesus. If we show good in the face of evil, it will cause the evil doer to repent. It is the goodness of God that causes the evil doer to repent.
The love of God is the most powerful force in the universe. And that is because God is love, and this love is personally revealed in His Son, Jesus, and when we decide to follow Jesus, it is revealed in and through us.
When we are the victims of evil, no real hard is done to us, As Jesus said, the Father gave them to me and no man can pluck them our of my hand. Our feelings may be hurt, but feelings are transient. But the moral and spiritual character traits evolving out of such an experience subject to the Father’s will are permanent. It requires effort and struggle to master ourselves. But once we master ourselves, we naturally become masters of any given situation. We master any situation by displaying unconquerable faith, boundless love, endless mercy, and eternal forgiveness while patience is the ship that traverses the sea of unavoidable delay that intervenes between the shores of victory. The doing of the Father’s will is the secret to moral and spiritual perfection. It is the secret of achieving a moral and spiritual character like Jesus.
This concludes today's message on understanding how our spiritual character grows. 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 Growth of the Spiritual Character
