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 meanings of three truths. And now, sit back and listen to today's message.
Three Truths and Their Meanings
"Jesus said unto them, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy souls, and with all thy mind, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Matthew, Chapter 22, Verses 38 and 39
Brothers and sisters, in today’’s broadcast we shall examine three truths and their meanings. And as you would expect, these truths are all related to each other and follow from one another, and are as follows: (1) When you turn to God on the inside, then you turn to your fellow man on the outside. (2) When you help someone, you reveal God in the process. (3) When meeting your brothers and sisters, be sure to allow Jesus to greet them and allow him to say goodbye to them when you depart from them. Let us examine the first truth.
When you turn to God on the inside, then you turn to your fellow man on the outside. This is critical because this truth provides for salvation. We recognize that this truth springs from the Great Commandment quoted above. When we love God with all our heart, souls, and mind, we have turned towards him on the inside. When we love our neighbors as ourselves, we have turned towards him on the outside. We cannot love God without loving our neighbor. One is a measure of the other. As John said, "How can you love God who you have not seen, and hate your brother who you have seen."
Turning to God is no more or less than submitting to the Father’’s will. But we all know of situations where there is a confession of turning to God on the inside, but there does not follow the turning to your fellow man on the outside. What is the explanation of this? This is a false conversion. And it happens this way. The soul of the individual is desirous of submitting to God’’s will but the will is not. So there follow the desire of the soul to do the Father’’s will, but the will is not. The mind then ducks the call for salvation and passes this call on to others. And we are all familiar with this phenomenon. This individual then proceeds to intellectualize the doing of the Father’’s will, but the clue is that they do not turn to their brothers and sisters in loving service. And of course Jesus says to these unrepentant souls: "I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity." When a person submits to the Father’’s will, by that decision he is agreeing to allow the divine nature to be the primary force when interacting with his brothers and sisters, for it is the nature of the divine will to always focus outward in loving service to others. And to ensure that this happens, the desire to do the Father’’s will must always be the supreme desire of the mind and soul.
Now let us examine the next truth: When we help someone, in the process we reveal God. God is spirit, and when we reveal him we reveal his spirit, which is love. Thus, when we as human beings reveal the Father through our actions, the quality of those acts reveal the Father’’s spirit.
We can help others using one of three attitudes. We can begrudgingly help because of some selfish motive; or we can help because we feel it is our duty; or we can help with joy and goodwill because we are executing the Father’’s will. It is the delight of the soul to unselfishly help another soul. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but joy, peace and righteousness in the Holy Spirit." Therefore, all who do His will are happy. Kind acts, spiritual revelations of good will, are received by the recipient’’s soul. The mind may not initially appreciate the quality of loving kindness in our acts and attitudes. But we can all attest to having been the recipients of someone’’s kindness towards us as we look back on our lives. Then, we may have appreciated the act itself——not its quality. Our minds and souls have since become more spiritual and thus can we recognize the meanings of the divine values of loving-kindness that were transmitted to our souls.
The final truth is that when meeting our brothers and sisters, we should be sure to allow Jesus to greet them. When we depart from their presence, we should be sure to allow Jesus to say goodbye to them. This truth is important because the Father loves his children and, like all fathers, he is glad to see his children to demonstrate that gladness in the greetings of affection. Also like all fathers, our heavenly Father desires to wish His children well when they depart from Him. How do we do this?
We can begin to appreciate this truth by recalling occasions where someone was not glad to see but was happy to see us go. This attitude does not allow the Father to greet or say goodbye to his children. It is the quality of our greetings that allows the Father to greet his children; and the quality of our goodbyes that allows the Father to say goodbye to his children. And again, there are three attitudes that we can display when greeting our brothers and sisters and saying goodbye to them when they depart. We can grudgingly greet them while wishing they were not there, or we can greet them as it is our duty to greet them by being polite. But the greetings of Jesus is an enthusiastic greeting oozing with good will and joy, and the goodbye is really a genuine sorrow to see a brother or sister have to depart.
Finally brothers and sisters, we must remember that God is a spirit and that his revelation is always spiritual and this revelation in material beings is manifested by the quality of their interactions with one another. It is a quality that is surcharged with love and mercy, and good will. What greater quality of experience can we have than the experience of the quality of sharing the love of Jesus with our brothers and sisters?
This concludes today's message on understanding the meaning of three truths. 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.