2002-10-20-Kingdom Transcends Mortal Experience
Nashville #159
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Kingdom Transcends Mortal Experience
2Group: Nashville TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Ham
2TR: Rebecca
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
3Closing
Heading
Topic: Kingdom Transcends Mortal Experience
Group: Nashville TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Ham
TR: Rebecca
Session
Opening
Ham: Greetings my friends, children and students. I am Ham and I am happy to be here with you once more.
Lesson
Yes, you are correct in you understanding that the Father’s kingdom transcends all mortal experience. A human life may seem to be a complete and total failure in human terms and yet to have served in the highest capacity for the spirit at the same time.
It is human to look to the past for your examples. It is human to gauge progress in human terms. Your churches measure their success in terms of parishioner numbers, in terms of the collection plate, in terms of new buildings, employees and so forth. Just like all human business, they follow that example. But, I say to you, that the spirit moves in mysterious ways, the spirit uses every single available human heart to enter and transform.
You serve your fellows day by day by helping to prepare their hearts for the spirit’s entry. The work that human beings can do for each other is mostly limited to material help and yet there are those opportunities when one person can help to prepare the soil of another soul for the implantation of the seeds of the spirit.
The Master is still the sower. His spirit is ready to plant seeds of truth in the hearts of those who will respond. His spirit is not idle, but is always watchful, always ready, always working to husband the fruits of the spirit. All these things are invisible and yet they effect the world in which you live greatly.
Your world continues to make small steps of progress in the spirit. Year by year, little by little as you each grow in the spirit so do you advance the spirit in your world. There is no substitute for individual spiritual growth, there is no magic road, no instantaneous healing, no instant conversion that can take the place of the small steps one after another of the spiritual progressor. Wisdom is not bestowed in a blinding flash of light. Wisdom is gained by difficult daily struggles, by individual adjustment, by the tiny changes that are wrought in your hearts by the spirit’s presence and influence day by day.
The harsh realities of life must be faced with the spirit. It does not serve the spirit to weave fantasies or to set one’s self above the struggles of daily living for it is in those struggles, those small adjustments, that the spiritual progress of your planet depends.
Many of you at the beginning of these lessons wished very sincerely that some magic means would be provided to save you from the day to day difficulties of life. You wanted to think of yourselves as chosen and as such as being privy to the keys of ease that would smooth the path of mortal toil. And then it was necessary for their to be disappointments and for the hard knocks of life to be experienced. And all of you remained and put your shoulder to the wheel and pressed forward without complaint, without feeling disillusioned to the point of abandoning the teachings.
No, you who remained found within the teachings to take the small steps necessary, a way to examine yourselves and to change little by little and to grow gradually into stronger and more serious and more dependable men and women.
No experience that you endure upon this planet is wasted. Mistake not your lives are filled with purpose, you lives are directed and are given that you may understand this purpose and achieve the goals which are linked in its purpose.
The teachings do not sweep away the mundane, but the teachings elevate the mundane so that you can perceive its meaning. This is a time of great questioning, a time when those who have seemed to be the most fervent believers are dropping away at their first human disappointments and are looking for something that will replace what they perceive to be the ordinariness of their lives with something very extraordinary. This, my children, is the allure of false religion from radical Islam to the various isms in this country, those who seek to be taken away from the pain of living. But I tell you now, the pain of living holds within it the greatest value of your mortal life.
It is a mark of immaturity to want everything to happen quickly and painlessly, to want to be lifted out of the hard work of mortal living and set above your mortal companions. That is why these suicide bombers are young people and it is a terrible and cynical manipulation of their youth by their elders that is abhorrent in the universe.
When you take up the work of the religious life, it may seem to the world to be the same as living a completely secular life. To be a true believer, to be a true self-sacrificer requires the ordinary, mundane, difficult, back breaking labor of life. The work may not change, but the believer changes every day. To the outside world, the work is the same. But, to the believer, the work is gradually and steadily more and more sacred.The demand of the world do not magically disappear when you decide to dedicate your lives to a higher calling, but they are gradually transformed and elevated from mundane demands into a noble calling.
The Father does not ask that you leave yourselves behind when you enter his doorway. He asks that you leave gradually and steadily selfishness, intolerance, and all of the web of negativity that may have captured you before. Yes, you do leave your past behind you. But his door is not one that is entered once and then everything is changed. His door is rather a moment of commitment when the mind is completely convinced that the spirit holds a better way than the demands of the flesh and the ego.
You have all come very far. You have found in your lives greater and greater measures of peace amid the storm of life. But most of all, you have found within your hearts greater and greater measures of love, understanding, and forgiveness for your fellows and for yourselves. This is the mark of religious living and make no mistake, it is absolutely unmistakable in the eyes of others.
Many of you when you began wanted to preach the new religion, to be modern day Peter’s and Paul’s. But, the task before you is much more difficult. The task is to be yourselves for there is no way to grow in the spirit without discovering who you, yourselves, really are and this is even the great goal of eternity for their will never be a time when those inner petals stop unfolding. You will always be growing and revealing the beauty of your inner selves to the world.
The life of the spirit is not lived for the approval or the benefit of others as much as it is lived for the approval and benefit of He who sonshiped you in the first place, He who claimed you. Live your lives for him and you will automatically live your lives for others as well. Dedicate your lives to him, and he will give you all you need to fulfill his promise to you. That promise is one of eternal unfolding, eternal self-discovery, eternal life.
Do not be daunted by the effort required. Do not be discouraged by temporary set backs or unexpected change. Rather, keep striving day by day for the goals of the spirit. Love God with all your hearts and all your souls and the more you love him the more you will be able to love him and others as well. Know there is no shortcut but would the victory be as sweet if there were?
When you find yourselves on the mansion worlds reminiscing about the hard times on Urantia, you may almost wish they were a little harder for it will seem to have been not so bad in the end. The reasons for your suffering in this life will be fully understood in the next. You will see why things were difficult, why they could not have been easy, and your gratitude will be overflowing for the very difficulties you despair of now.
Closing
This evening we shall not entertain questions as Rebecca’s mortal mechanism has been weakened by an unfortunate infection. But, it is understood that our meeting will again take place next week and the week after and all your questions will be answered then.
This week, take time to enjoy your lives. Take time to be grateful for your blessings. Give thanks for one another, for your friendships, for your love, and cleave ever closer together for this life is sweetest in the sharing of it. Be at peace. That is all for this evening. As always, my prayers and my love go with you each. Farewell.
