SpiritualFamily.Net: June 2017

Abba

Strange Preacher — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 10:00:45 -0400

Abba

The teaching that Jesus was in some way hostile to the traditions of his people is erroneous. Jesus had sacrificed all to focus on and highlight certain essential spiritual truth. The first and foremost of these truths was to relate to each person the experience of knowing God – ‘You that have seen me have seen the Father’; and secondly to relate the concept-idea and, more importantly, to somehow facilitate the conscious realisation of the experience of knowing, personally, that ‘God is your Father.’ Indeed, he asked that when we speak to God we should call him ‘Abba.’

While this is something I had read countless times, I never really appreciated its spiritual value until one fine day as I sat by a swimming pool in Israel. I remember children were playing and splashing, as parents soaked in the warm rays of the Mediterranean sun. At one point a little girl came screeching passed, being chased by her brother; as she ran she shouted excitedly, ‘Abba, Abba, Abba!’ managing, at last, to leap into the safety of her father’s arms, where she wriggled in gleeful delight that she had escaped the clutches of her villainous brother. That single moment illuminated, for me, more of Jesus’ spiritual intent than one hundred scholarly works ever did.

Jesus invites us to share in this consciousness of the Fatherhood of God, that is the Kin-dom; that sense of sure safety; the open and welcome arms and the courage those arms and that relationship instils. Jesus asked that we endeavour to be possessed of childlike faith; that we be willing to take that faith leap into the loving arms of our waiting spiritual Father and, through that faith discover for ourselves and within ourselves the experience of spiritual assurance that communicates to your soul that abiding peace which surpasses all understanding; that sense that no real harm can ever befall you; that you have been found by the Father and that he will never let you go; that you are fully and finally secure in his arms and free from fear. Liberty indeed!

Jesus said, ‘I leave you peace; my peace I give you.’ The people of the world are limited in what and how much they can give to others but the peace that Jesus gives is limited only by your capacity to receive. Thus, as you grow in grace and wisdom, as the rivers of faith and love flow through the chambers of your heart it is by this spiritual force that those very chambers are widened so that you can receive more and your life is blessed with spiritual abundance.

Having found the Kin-dom, it is only natural to want to share the joy born of that sense of safety and security. Knowing such joy you will naturally and freely reach out to your fellows, especially those that are harassed by fear and lost in spiritual darkness. You will never want to add to their burden of troubles and endeavour always to increase their quotient of happiness. This tender and passionate love for one’s fellows and the service it inspires authenticates the truth that you have found the Kin-dom and have truly entered therein. This is the love that declares to all the world that you are a disciple of the Master, that you are a faith filled, love inspired child of God, that knows – without a shadow of a doubt – that when you call ‘Abba!’ your cry is heard and responded to instantly.

Spiritual Dynamics made Simple

Strange Preacher — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 09:51:03 -0400

Spiritual Dynamics made Simple

The body and the spirit lay before the mind their plans, hopes, and desires for the future.
Mind is the arbiter between the desires of the flesh and lures of the spirit.
Will is the executor.
Character is what’s left in the wake of the decisions you make. The life you live bears witness to the values you hold in your heart, to whether you are motivated by the pleasures of the flesh or the high lures of spiritual attainment.
You can choose to grow and evolve, to strive for the attainment of progressively higher levels of health, wholeness and happiness; or to decay and devolve toward despair, disintegration and destruction.
The Universe is on your side. It managed to pluck you out of the Endless Seas of Possibility and plonked you right at the start of a tremendous adventure of discovery, revelations, and achievements the likes of which you couldn’t even imagine. Once the confusion of being pulled into existence passes and you come to more fully realise who you are, where you are from and where you are going, you will be morethan happy. Until then, have faith – it’s all going to work out.

The Religion of the Urantia Book

Strange Preacher — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 09:49:37 -0400

The Religion OF the UB:

1. The Kin-dom of Heaven is at hand.

2. By faith in the Fatherhood of God you enter the Kin-dom of heaven, thus becoming the sons of God.

3. Love is the rule of living within the Kin-dom — supreme devotion to God while loving your neighbour even as Jesus loves us.

4. Obedience to the will of the Father, yielding the fruits of the spirit in one's personal life, is the law of the Kin-dom.

5. Be perfect; even as the Paradise Father is perfect.

6. The Kin-dom which the Father is to establish in the hearts of his earth children is to be an everlasting dominion. There will be no end of the rule of the Father in the hearts of those who desire to do his divine will.

Simple principles to live by:

• Don't take things too seriously – in all things strive for balance.

• Learn; the whole universe is a School - you can learn from every person you meet and every experience you have. The only failure is the failure to learn.

• Laugh; few things give the Father more joy than the laughter of his children.

• Never denigrate the faith of others.

The Good Samaritan

Strange Preacher — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 09:47:24 -0400

The Good Samaritan

Ecumenism seeks to restore wholeness to the family Jesus’ followers, a family that appears to be divided over issues of doctrine. For me the Kin-dom is founded upon the personal spiritual experience of recognising the Fatherhood of God and its correlated truth the Brotherhood of Man or, simpler, your personal experience of the love of God and your love for God. The foundation of the identity of the followers of Jesus is the personal experienceof the love for and faith in the Father as reveal in the life and teachings of the Son and not upon the assertion of provisional assent to some system of dogmas or doctrines. Such an experience may inspire dogma, doctrine, art, prayer, worship, service, etc. but these are consequences not causes, they are the shadows not the substance. Any attempt to use shadows as a foundation is doomed to failure.

So, how can the Good Samaritan help? Can he carry us out of the darkness of the shadows of mere belief (provisional assent) and into the healing hostel of the personal experience of spiritual truth and divine realities? Tall order, I know, but let’s see.

It’s hard for us to appreciate the audacity of Jesus in making a Samaritan the hero in a story being told to Palestinian Jews two thousand years ago. When we hear this story today it appears sweet but when first it was heard it was a shocking and unsettling challenge to the prejudice and hypocrisy of his people! Jesus chose this type of individual as a worthy vehicle to exemplify the spirit of the Kin-dom. Were he in Ireland today he might well make a Traveller the main character or a Transgender person. If he was in China maybe he’d be a Human Rights Lawyer. If he was in America there’s a chanced he’d be an African-American Muslim.

There are many significant features to this story. At that time Samaritans were held in lower esteem than even the Romans. They were despised by the Jews. Not only were the Samaritans regarded as racially inferior, they also practiced a different religion to the Jews – a fact even Jesus acknowledged when speaking to the woman by the well. Thus, Jesus selected a man from a despised minority, one that was not even a Hebrew, and made him the primary instrument in one of his most famous parables.

The nature of Parable is also significant to our enterprise. The purpose of a parable is not to communicate some literal fact but to convey a spiritual (inspirational) truth. Jesus was not interested in the beliefs to which this man subscribed, it was the spirit of his life that he commended, the values inspired him, and the ideals he held that shaped his life. Jesus asked his hearer’s to look passed all that was objectionable: his minority status, the historical grievances between the Jews and the Samaritans, the fact of his different and supposedly inferior religion and perceive the spirit wherewith this child of God lived his life.

The Samaritans heart reached out passed all objections and questions about the man’s identity, passed wondering if he was rich or poor, Jew or gentile, deserving or undeserving, saw a man in need and took upon himself the responsibility of ensuring that this man was nursed back to health. This quality is as admirable now as it was then and it is to Masters’ credit that he concocted a story that has lost none of its sweetness, or its power to illuminate, even after two thousand years. It wasn’t this man’s religion that made him a beautiful portrayal of the spirit of the Kin-dom. If anything, traditional loyalties would have prejudiced him. Had he obeyed the dictates of tradition and custom, as the others had done, he would have amounted to little more than a commendable hypocrite. It was the fact that he courageously and quietly broke through all these confines to reach out to someone in need. In this parable Jesus pierced through all objectionable incidentals and revealed the child of God beneath and in so doing he challenges us to challenge our own prejudice or, at the very least, to be aware of them and recognise that these can become spiritual prisons.

There are tremendous truths enfolded in parables and when telling them Jesus was often heard to cry, ‘Let you that have the eyes to see – see, and you that have the ears to hear – hear!’ His parables and method of teaching played upon a favourite spiritual principle of his, ‘Seek and you will find.’ He understood that if someone is truly dedicated to finding truth then they most certainly would but, equally, if they were equally determined to NOTfind truth then they most certainly would not; if they were determined to find that which would justify their own bias and prejudice they would find it. TRUTH is more than figuratively in the eye of the beholder. Dogma and doctrine, then, are useless to one that is dedicated to not finding truth and are unnecessary to one who is. Consequently, we find that those that seek to find a cause for offense do indeed find offense. While, conversely, those that seek cause to join hands – find it.

Over and over, throughout the Masters life, he laboured to teach us that we are not defiled by what enters through the eyes, ears, and mouth and, that being the case, neither can we be sanctified by what enters through the eyes, ears, and mouth. Sanctification or desecration comes from the heart. It was for this reason he looked with favour upon the prayer, ‘Create in me a clean heart, oh Lord!’ why Paul, and others, spoke about the regenerative work of the indwelling spirit. This emphasis on SPIRIT, in terms of the indwelling spirit, the inner guide that leads the way for every truth seeking child of God, and the Almighty Spirit that is shaping the destiny of the Universe, were fundamental to the teachings of Jesus.

When it came to prayer he taught that the Father was focused on the intention (spirit) not the words. Which is just as well really, given that the carpenter from Nazareth never spoke a word of English in his entire life and I doubt that situation has changed much in the last two thousand years. Thus the Spirit God reacts to the spirit content of your prayer and even your life. This being the case, that the spirit (the substance) is supreme over the letter (the cultural form), can it be that dogma, doctrine, tradition is somehow higher than the spirit that inspired it? Hardly, these are the effects, not the cause; the shadow, not the object. The substance of any prayer, parable, doctrine or dogma, lies with the spirit that inspired it and not in the letter wherewith it was constructed. Jesus always taught that spiritual realities are supreme over material one’s; that matter relates to spirit similar to how effects relate to cause. It was for this reason that he admonished us to be mindful of the desires we nurtured in our hearts, for of such come the issues of life.

The source of division amongst the grand family of the followers of Jesus probably lies more in the damaged, fractured and fragmented human heart than in doctrine and dogma. Like the Apostles, we are brothers, but we constantly bicker over who will be greatest in the Kin-dom. By succumbing to the delusion that we are somehow better than our brothers, more holy, closer to God, more fully in the Kin-dom, more authentic, more sincere, more loyal to the ideals and values of the gospel, means we have lost our spiritual way. Such is Pharisee Talk, ego, vanity and arrogance creating the spiritual stumbling blocks of prejudice, hypocrisy and self-righteousness, keeping us blind to the fact that our real purpose is to serve one another as friends and brothers and not to seek to lord it over one another as the heathen do. But to see your self (your church) as nothing and others as higher and more deserving, to be humble, sincere and service oriented, that would be more in keeping with the Kin-dom values taught by the Master.

I’d imagine few things make Heaven wince quite like an arrogant Church. Pride goes before a fall and perhaps this is why our Church now appears as one bloodied and bruised, naked and discarded on the roadside, like one whom passers-by step gingerly around in order to avoid. Could the Good Samaritan save it from this sorry plight?

The Mind

Strange Preacher — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 09:32:47 -0400

The mind is designed for the contemplation of great things. In the absence of great things it makes a great fuss over little things. Therefore, the contemplation of the Infinite is necessary if we are to keep all things in their true perspective.

Happiness

Strange Preacher — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 09:31:04 -0400

A person may be happy by accident but they can never stay happy by accident. Happiness is dependent upon living in harmony with, and intelligently and creatively employing, the fundamental laws of happiness.

The Gospel Cosmic

Strange Preacher — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 09:29:26 -0400

The Gospel Cosmic

This is the Gospel: the one and only Ever Living, Ever Loving, All-Powerful God of all Creation is the Father of your soul. You are a child of this Ever Living, Ever Loving,All-Powerful Source from whence springs all things and beings, meanings and personalities, facts and values. If you can dare to accept this transforming truth, if you will allow it to sink down into the deeps of your being, then you are both in and of the Kin-Dom of God.

The primacy of this relationship precedes the formation of the world, precedes the establishment of borders and the division of humanity into the various races; it stood before the formation of even the galaxies and it therefore takes precedence over all these other incidental and coincidental factors. The moral obligation, the divine privilege, to serve this family precedes all other loyalties. There exists only one other thing more primal than these duties, obligations and privileges, and that is the worshipful recognition and loving response to the Eternal Father, the Primal Source from whence this tremendous reality issues.

Theologies and ideologies reflect the time and place, as well as the level of enlightenment of the individuals and people wherein, wherefrom and through whom they originate. These very material facts, the diversity of their origins and the relationships that govern them, imply that theologies and ideologies inevitably become contaminated by materialistic thinking - materialism. Our perception of the unifying and indivisible truth from whence we all draw our existence is thus obscured and refracted and, consequently, is our primordial sense of loyalty and brotherhood corrupted, distorted, perverted and twisted. In our confusion, we mistake brothers for enemies and out of the dark fear soil of the human heart spring vengeance and violence, hatred and wrath, the Masters of Woe, the Architects of Tragedy, Sorrow and Heartache.

Once we learn to spiritually transcend material differences; racial, national, religious and ideological, and from that exalted perspective learn to perceive the underlying unity that creatively binds all this endless diversity, then will we have entered truly and fully into the clear light of unending truth and therein shall the darkness of our ignorance no more be found and our cup of joy will be filled to overflowing!

Destiny

Strange Preacher — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 20:47:09 -0400

Destiny

Click the Link below to Listen Now to Destiny

Entrance into the Kin-dom

Strange Preacher — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 20:13:57 -0400

Entrance Into The Kin-dom

Click the Link below to listen Now to the Entrance into the Kin-dom