“And
I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is
with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God
himself shall be with them, and be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no
more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:
for the former things are passed away.” (Revelation
21:3-4; King James Bible Version (KJV). In the material sense of being, we
are in need of an infinite number of things: clothing, shelter, friends,
pleasant weather, health, money, as well as emotional things, such as joy,
peace, self-confidence, safety and love.
We need these things to survive the finite, material environment in
which we find ourselves trapped. In this
human experience, where we seem to have a dual identity as both material and
spiritual creatures, each day brings us to new material things we need for our
well-being and survival. Believing
ourselves to be cut off from our divine Source of being (God) we spend every day just trying to provide for ourselves and obtain all the
conditions, and things, that are materially necessary for our survival of body
and mind. From this mental standpoint,
the idea of a spiritual, invisible God can seem irrelevant. As material mortals in a material sense of
reality, physical and mental survival is the name of the game. Yet,
Christ Jesus once told us, “…do
not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What
shall we wear?’
For after all these
things the Gentiles seek. For your
heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matthew 6: 31-33; New King James Version (NKJV).
Now,
the kingdom of God isn’t something we can materially
find or identify. Yet, it is supposed to
be ever-present with us, despite all appearances to the contrary. So, the kingdom of God must be a mental
place, not a physical location. It must
be a state of mind, or consciousness, which we can achieve just by
knowing of its existence within us. And
this higher state of mind is a conscious awareness of the realm of Spirit, in
which we are told, “for in Him we live and move and
have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His
offspring.’ ”
(Acts 17:28; NKJV). God
is a spiritual presence…not a physical being.
Spirit does not exist as a finite form.
Because of this, divine Spirit (who we call God) can be ever-present,
even when undetected by any of the five (limited) physical senses of our
material body form. Of this divine
Spirit the Bible tells us: “Be still, and
know that I am God; I will be exalted
among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”
(Psalm 46:10: NKJV). This
means that God, Spirit, is above and beyond all other beliefs of
existence. It is the only real power in
existence. Material-seeming powers
appear, only, in our temporarily time here.
These false powers do not exist in our spiritual, ever-lasting life in
God (Spirit’s) realm. God
is progressively ‘exalted in the earth’ as the realization of spiritual
reality (as present and active) becomes more commonly perceived in the whole, collective
consciousness of mankind. At this
present time, only a small portion of humanity leans in the direction of
Spirit. For those who have yet to
perceive spiritual, rather than material existence as our true reality, all
problems still seem to be out of even God’s reach. In that false state of mind, we continue to
feel as though we are always “on our own.” Yet,
consider this well-known analogy: If one
has a gold mine in his or her yard, but doesn’t know of it, the gold can do
that individual little good. While it
stays hidden from view or conscious
perception, it may as well not be there at all. Yet, once it is known to its owner,
the gold could be a source of supply for a long time, even though it is still
hidden to others. That
is what the kingdom of God is like: it
is visible to the consciousness that perceives
its invisible presence; but it remains hidden to those who do not know of
its presence and, therefore, fail to turn to this divine kingdom, within their
own consciousness, for deliverance of whatever is lacking in their human life
experience. Human lack is a
manifestation of belief in lack; it
is not a divine state of being, as is produced by the harmony of God’s
spiritually present creation. So,
to experience the benefits of God’s ever-presence with us, we must first
believe in this divine presence. It is
with each of us. It has never left us to
our own follies (our physical troubles).
And it is a choice. We either
decide to believe in the spiritual fact of God’s sovereignty and heavenly,
loving care and presence, or we decide NOT to believe in it. Then, when our own beliefs keep us from
expecting God’s loving power over all creation, we proceed to materialize
the bad fruits of our own belief system. In
the Bible, Matthew 8:13 (NKJV) tells us that once a centurion came to Christ Jesus
to heal his servant, to which Jesus replied: “Go
your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you.
And the
servant was healed that very same hour.” These
words about belief do not represent a
punishment from God, when we don’t believe.
Rather, Jesus was alerting humanity to the effects of belief, itself,
in this human level of thought. We
become victims of our own beliefs about everything. We accept, through our own, private beliefs,
all sorts of ‘lacks of good’, such
as lack of health, lack of safety, lack of supply, lack of harmony, lack of
peace, opportunity, the list is endless.
We
accept these lacks of good when we do not perceive God’s ever-present love and
care for us. So, instead of turning to
God’s forever love for his own off-spring, we do not turn, mentally, to the
spiritual laws of God’s creation that are invisibly
present at all times, and which would have brought forth into the human
situation, whatever good we seemed to
be missing materially. Actually,
the Bible is full of stories that tell of individuals who overcame great
adversities by believing in God’s sovereign presence and power over creation. To name a few, there was David’s stand
against Goliath, Daniel’s safety among the lions in the Den, Mary Magdalene’s
plight against those who would stone her, and even Christ Jesus’ rise above
material death on the cross. All threats
of danger were overturned by divine decree…God’s Law. God
has no contenders. No one defeats the
ultimate power of the divine Creator and Its spiritual universe. That’s what Jesus’ mission was all about: showing us that our real life is deathless,
despite the physical death process. And
even those who refuse to believe in
the presence and power of Spirit, (and perhaps lose their lives earlier in this
human sojourn by doing so) these mistaken ones still awake on the other side of
physical death, to learn that they had not died at all, for one, simple
reason: we are each the spiritual child
of God, the only Creator; and Spirit’s children cannot actually die. Physical death may shorten our time here, in
this false, material sense of reality, but this human experience is not a
permanent place. Our ever-lasting
spiritual identities have existed before our entry here, in the finite,
physical scene, and they will go on after our earthly experience ceases. One
may not come to these realizations while still going through this earthly
experience, but we will all end up, one day, fully awake to our spiritual
identity and reality. So, today, we
should live for today. Today, we will
find both good and bad things in our human situations, before the day is
over. How we handle these experiences is
an individual matter. No one can do it
for us. For when we leave spiritual
being out of our belief system, the blessings we could have had, while here,
will be absent from our daily lives. The
human experience is like a school: we
are learning what to do, and what not to do, to bring us into the complete and
ever-lasting harmony that awaits us in our fully-awakened state of being. The kingdom of God can permit no one to be
destructive, in any way, shape or form. So,
we must learn how to live in eternity. Now,
it’s only my opinion that the human, temporary life experience is about learning
what to be, and what not to be. It is
our training ground for eternity. I
could be wrong, of course, but I don’t think so. There is something larger afoot than we,
ourselves. For example, these articles I
write each month come to me, sometimes, in the night when I’m sleeping. I don’t create them. It’s more like someone is dictating them to
me. Yet, I have to awaken and write, or
lose them. So, day or night, I wait for
that soft, quiet voice within me to tell me what to write for each month. When, or if, this ‘assignment’ stops in the
future, I’ll just go on to something else and feel that my mission is done. But until then, I’ll be at my computer, once
a month, getting out the message that I hear from within, which comes through
me, but not from me. I’ve been so
blessed, all my earthly life experience, not to do so. |
