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Of all the means, sources, and methods of Divine assurance, the foundation of assurance are the personal feelings we experience by the embrace of love. By both its reception and its giving.
We are told that Divine love is a circuit. We receive live by giving love. The more we give the more we get. We receive forgiveness as we forgive and we feel love as we give love. The feeling of this current of love as it flows through our being is assurance.
1545.9) 138:8.8 Jesus made plain to his apostles the difference between the repentance of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith — the new birth — which he required as the price of admission to the kingdom. He taught his apostles that faith was the only requisite to entering the Father’s kingdom. John had taught them “repentance — to flee from the wrath to come.” Jesus taught, “Faith is the open door for entering into the present, perfect, and eternal love of God.” Jesus did not speak like a prophet, one who comes to declare the word of God. He seemed to speak of himself as one having authority. Jesus sought to divert their minds from miracle seeking to the finding of a real and personal experience in the satisfaction and assurance of the indwelling of God’s spirit of love and saving grace.
Assurance is a result of the faith experience and our personal religious and spiritual growth. Assurance is like fruit….it grows by response – as fruit grows on the vine or tree and as grain grows on the stem. It is not a function of responsibility but is a function of response. Our response to the yearn and urge and hunger and thirst delivered by Deity brings a response from and by Deity….we respond to Deity and Deity responds to the response!!!
It is a karmic reciprocity of cause and effect whereby the effect then becomes further cause for ever greater effect….an amplification system/mechanism.
156:5.18 (1740.5) As you grow older in years and more experienced in the affairs of the kingdom, are you becoming more tactful in dealing with troublesome mortals and more tolerant in living with stubborn associates? Tact is the fulcrum of social leverage, and tolerance is the earmark of a great soul. If you possess these rare and charming gifts, as the days pass you will become more alert and expert in your worthy efforts to avoid all unnecessary social misunderstandings. Such wise souls are able to avoid much of the trouble which is certain to be the portion of all who suffer from lack of emotional adjustment, those who refuse to grow up, and those who refuse to grow old gracefully.
Me here: Here’s a couple of “fulcrum” quotes which address the topic of assurance. Both quotes below describe our cooperation with the Spirit within and our faith and our decisions based on faith and the actions we take thereby as providing great leverage which contributes to progress and Divine Assurance of our personal connection to Deity:
108:5.8 (1192.3) The Thought Adjusters would like to change your feelings of fear to convictions of love and confidence; but they cannot mechanically and arbitrarily do such things; that is your task. In executing those decisions which deliver you from the fetters of fear, you literally supply the psychic fulcrum on which the Adjuster may subsequently apply a spiritual lever of uplifting and advancing illumination.
110:6.17 (1211.2) The motivation of faith makes experiential the full realization of man’s sonship with God, but action, completion of decisions, is essential to the evolutionary attainment of consciousness of progressive kinship with the cosmic actuality of the Supreme Being. Faith transmutes potentials to actuals in the spiritual world, but potentials become actuals in the finite realms of the Supreme only by and through the realization of choice-experience. But choosing to do the will of God joins spiritual faith to material decisions in personality action and thus supplies a divine and spiritual fulcrum for the more effective functioning of the human and material leverage of God-hunger. Such a wise co-ordination of material and spiritual forces greatly augments both cosmic realization of the Supreme and morontia comprehension of the Paradise Deities.
Me here: Morontia (soul) comprehension is a form of Divine Assurance!! The more reality-response we have and the more we comprehend Deity within then the more Assurance we receive which unleashes even more growth. Our decisions AND our awareness upon which we make our choices combine as lever and fulcrum for Deity to uplift our very being through the Circles of Progress and toward our eternal destiny potential!!
It is by the Divine relationship and our response to that relationship – the relationship is the lever and our response to the relationship is the fulcrum upon which Deity uses both the lever and the fulcrum to deliver energy and force and the motion and propulsion of spiritization and progress!!
I would say Divine Assurance is a Deity response-gift to our own mortal/creature freewill experiential response to the Spirit within exhibited by the growth of spirit and wisdom and reality alignment due to our personal faith and truth experience.
Rather than say it is man’s responsibility…it would be more accurate to describe the mortal’s response-ABILITY as the fulcrum described above. God has the responsibility and has created and delivers the means of our progress and destiny. We must only respond to that reality God has created and delivers to each being.
The more responsive we are to the Spirit the more responsive we become to the Spirit, which is the nature of spirit gravity as we have previously discovered…the gravitational effect of the spirit gravity circuit increases as we gain spirituality and as we get closer to our Spirit nature by transferring the seat of our personal identity from material to spiritual. Or so I understand the UB to teach.
The very experience of Divine Assurance changes us. Profoundly changes us!! We become different people as we gain Divine Assurance by our personal religious experience!! We change our motives and intentions and priorities and choices and situational reactions and circumstantial responses! We are attaching our branch to the vine and the fruits of the Spirit are growing and growing and showing and showing!!!
It is impossible I think to withhold the sharing of our Divine Assurance Experience! Our lives are the very expressions of our experience! It is inevitable. It cannot be prevented. And it certainly should not be.
It is by our personal expression of our personally experienced faith, truth, and Divine Assurance that we change our perspective of the world around us and how we also change that world around us for the better!! To express faith and truth and assurance and wisdom is the very purpose of experiential reality itself.
140:3.13 “You are the light of the world. A city set upon a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and be led to glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
Divine Assurance does not eliminate confusions and conflict or our agitations of choosing between our dual natured perspective at the intersections of decision. We must not only choose between right and wrong but also between good and better and better and still even more better, and this will remain perplexing…even with Divine Assurance.
Trial and error, the hammer and anvil…these deliver experiential wisdom. The uncertainties of outcome make the results of our choices unclear as those choices are made. I find that Divine Assurance and our faith and trust in God reduces our anxieties about outcomes even without eliminating the uncertainties of outcomes.
Assurance is not an affirmation or confirmation of our choices or wisdom I do not think. To me, assurance is an affirmation of God’s love and confirmation of personal safety and belonging. It delivers confidence in my origin and my destiny. It makes me feel at home somehow, within the sanctuary of affection if you will.
To me, Divine Assurance is not any form of divine agreement or stamp of approval for thoughts or decisions. It’s not about thoughts or choices but a general feeling of embrace and affection and protection. I do think there are affirmations and confirmation of decision and choice…that is just a different ministry to mind and is likely more suspect as a potential form of self justification and self affirmation perhaps – a real danger and risk according to the teachings.
Choice remains confusing even with assurance. There’s an old saying, “If you’re not confused then you’re not paying attention.” (Or not thinking!) Confidence in our opinions and beliefs is more likely (or just as likely) to be entrenchment, blindness, prejudice, stubbornness, and narrow minded egotism as it is to be a result of any form of Divine affirmations or confirmation. Assurance is something else entirely.
Assurance may not make life less uncertain or choices less confusing (experiential wisdom does both!) but assurance certainly removes the anxiety from uncertainty!!!!!!!!
This is key! We are taught “Anxiety must be abandoned!” “Fear not!” How is that possible? Only two ways – the blind and disastrous self confidence of self importance and self serving egotism or by the truth and blessing of Divine Assurance. The first is blindness and the second is the result of faith and truth response. The first delivers suffering and the second brings forth the fruits of the Spirit.
100:4.1 (1097.5) Religious living is devoted living, and devoted living is creative living, original and spontaneous. New religious insights arise out of conflicts which initiate the choosing of new and better reaction habits in the place of older and inferior reaction patterns. New meanings only emerge amid conflict; and conflict persists only in the face of refusal to espouse the higher values connoted in superior meanings.
100:4.2 (1097.6) Religious perplexities are inevitable; there can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation. The organization of a philosophic standard of living entails considerable commotion in the philosophic realms of the mind. Loyalties are not exercised in behalf of the great, the good, the true, and the noble without a struggle. Effort is attendant upon clarification of spiritual vision and enhancement of cosmic insight. And the human intellect protests against being weaned from subsisting upon the nonspiritual energies of temporal existence. The slothful animal mind rebels at the effort required to wrestle with cosmic problem solving.
103:2.6 (1131.5) In the absence of wrong teaching, the mind of the normal child moves positively, in the emergence of religious consciousness, toward moral righteousness and social ministry, rather than negatively, away from sin and guilt. There may or may not be conflict in the development of religious experience, but there are always present the inevitable decisions, effort, and function of the human will.
103:2.7 (1131.6) Moral choosing is usually accompanied by more or less moral conflict. And this very first conflict in the child mind is between the urges of egoism and the impulses of altruism. The Thought Adjuster does not disregard the personality values of the egoistic motive but does operate to place a slight preference upon the altruistic impulse as leading to the goal of human happiness and to the joys of the kingdom of heaven.
103:2.8 (1131.7) When a moral being chooses to be unselfish when confronted by the urge to be selfish, that is primitive religious experience. No animal can make such a choice; such a decision is both human and religious. It embraces the fact of God-consciousness and exhibits the impulse of social service, the basis of the brotherhood of man. When mind chooses a right moral judgment by an act of the free will, such a decision constitutes a religious experience.
103:2.9 (1131.
But before a child has developed sufficiently to acquire moral capacity and therefore to be able to choose altruistic service, he has already developed a strong and well-unified egoistic nature. And it is this factual situation that gives rise to the theory of the struggle between the “higher” and the “lower” natures, between the “old man of sin” and the “new nature” of grace. Very early in life the normal child begins to learn that it is “more blessed to give than to receive.”103:2.10 (1131.9) Man tends to identify the urge to be self-serving with his ego—himself. In contrast he is inclined to identify the will to be altruistic with some influence outside himself—God. And indeed is such a judgment right, for all such nonself desires do actually have their origin in the leadings of the indwelling Thought Adjuster, and this Adjuster is a fragment of God. The impulse of the spirit Monitor is realized in human consciousness as the urge to be altruistic, fellow-creature minded. At least this is the early and fundamental experience of the child mind. When the growing child fails of personality unification, the altruistic drive may become so overdeveloped as to work serious injury to the welfare of the self. A misguided conscience can become responsible for much conflict, worry, sorrow, and no end of human unhappiness.
We are told that there is no confusion or conflict for the purely material or the pure spirit. But every being in time with personality and freewill has some measure of confusion and conflict and uncertainty in the acquisition of wisdom by experience and in the experience of evolution itself. Outcomes of choice are uncertain when personality and time and relationships create circumstances and situations which require navigation by our decisions….lots of decisions by lots of beings. It’s all so very fluid. And because there are so many freewills and so many personalities creating so many choices at so many intersections of decision and choice – then are there always inherently endless potentials for outcomes – almost all of which are unpredictable to those of us in time and making decisions!!
That’s why we must experience and embrace Divine Assurance to eliminate fear and anxiety from the arena of choice!! We can only enjoy and anticipate uncertainty of outcomes by the certainty of our origin and destiny and by our personal relationship with Deity!!
Assurance is that gift which eliminates anxiety from uncertainty! Faith and truth experience come with assurance of Being and assurance of Belonging and the assurance of Becoming!!
Being. (I AM)
Belonging. (I AM SAFE)
Becoming. (I AM PERFECTING – or at least I AM PROGRESSING!)
Origin and Destiny! This is the gift of Divine Assurance.
117:6.8 (1289.1) All soul-evolving humans are literally the evolutionary sons of God the Father and God the Mother, the Supreme Being. But until such time as mortal man becomes soul-conscious of his divine heritage, this assurance of Deity kinship must be faith realized. …
118:6.8 (1300.4) To recognize Deity omnipotence is to enjoy security in your experience of cosmic citizenship, to possess assurance of safety in the long journey to Paradise. …
Me here: The assurance of our survival, our destiny, our safety, and God’s affection is a gift…it is experiential by our faith and trust and by personal revelation and by experiential wisdom attainment.
111:7.1 (1223.3) Uncertainty with security is the essence of the Paradise adventure—uncertainty in time and in mind, uncertainty as to the events of the unfolding Paradise ascent; security in spirit and in eternity, security in the unqualified trust of the creature son in the divine compassion and infinite love of the Universal Father; uncertainty as an inexperienced citizen of the universe; security as an ascending son in the universe mansions of an all-powerful, all-wise, and all-loving Father.
111:7.2 (1223.4) May I admonish you to heed the distant echo of the Adjuster’s faithful call to your soul? The indwelling Adjuster cannot stop or even materially alter your career struggle of time; the Adjuster cannot lessen the hardships of life as you journey on through this world of toil. The divine indweller can only patiently forbear while you fight the battle of life as it is lived on your planet; but you could, if you only would—as you work and worry, as you fight and toil—permit the valiant Adjuster to fight with you and for you. You could be so comforted and inspired, so enthralled and intrigued, if you would only allow the Adjuster constantly to bring forth the pictures of the real motive, the final aim, and the eternal purpose of all this difficult, uphill struggle with the commonplace problems of your present material world.
Divine Assurance is given to us all like the ocean is given to the cup. It is the size of our own personal cup that determines the amount of our personal assurance. Hope is a small cup…but it is large enough to be filled with Assurance. Trust enlarges the cup of hope and more assurance is personally known. Prayer and worship both also expand and enlarge the cup of hope and trust. The more trust we have, the larger the cup of Assurance.
Assurance is reciprocation of our own level of response to the Spirit ministry within. As we grow in the Spirit and become Spiritized and Spiritualized, we increase our capacity for assurance. Assurance is confirmation of hope, trust, faith, and the righteous expression of our personal religious experience. True religion and faith change us. True religion and faith determines our ever adjusting and maturing motives, intentions, priorities, and choices based on all of those. Religion is that experience of feeling and responding to the Spirit. It is personal and unique to each of us.
The results of the religious experience are NOT unique to any of us. The experience is personal but its results are shared universally. How so? As we become spiritized and identify ourselves with Spirit, we are purifying our very being and transferring our very identity from the material and animal nature to the Spirit nature which fills us with that Divine Spirit.
When I say the results are not unique or personalized, do not be confused. Certainly will our experience and our expression ALWAYS be personal…this is the very function of personality. But the changes that come to each of us are enjoyed by all of us based on our progress and wisdom and spiritualization. The fruits of the Spirit come to each and to all. The certainty of our safety and salvation and survival and eternal adventure and the joy of being and the poise in the face of uncertainty and tribulation….all of these are the eventual results of Divine Assurance and the experience of genuine religion.
Those who do not feel Divine Assurance and those sad brothers and sisters who may claim it does not exist are confessing their own lack of religious experience and personal faith. For there is no faith without assurance. The connection to the Spirit delivers assurance of being. From the very beginning of that connection. Those who believe Divine Assurance cannot be shared certainly do not know such Assurance or understand that faith is an act….it is a verb and not a noun….it is an expression of Divine Assurance!
This is not to suggest that believers and those of faith cannot also feel doubts and confusions early in their religious experience. But faith experience grows more faith and thusly experiences ever more assurance. When such doubts come to us, there is always the sanctuary of prayer. To seek and approach and pray to God is to find God within.
Assurance is a feedback loop after all….God touches us and whispers to us and we respond and God responds to our response and the more we respond, the more does God respond to our response….the greater the response to greater the response!! The larger our cup, the more within the cup. The cup we offer is always filled to overflowing. We can never have such a large cup as to not have it full too!! When our little cup becomes the size of a swimming pool or Lake Michigan, then those cups too will be filled to overflowing. Love is a circuit that flows through each to another and no matter how much love we give always is there more to be given.
Assurance is not just our own blessing. It is a blessing which is shared. It is a light which shines for all to see. It cannot be held or kept or hidden…it must be given and shared. It is meant to be given and shared. God’s fruit of the Spirit is a feast for all of God’s beloved children to share with one another!! The more we share God’s bounty then the more bounty we enjoy and the more bounty there is to share!
195:5.8 (2075.11) Religion is designed to find those values in the universe which call forth faith, trust, and assurance; religion culminates in worship. Religion discovers for the soul those supreme values which are in contrast with the relative values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman insight can be had only through genuine religious experience.
146:3.3 (1641.5) On the second evening at Ramah, Thomas asked Jesus this question: “Master, how can a new believer in your teaching really know, really be certain, about the truth of this gospel of the kingdom?”
146:3.4 (1641.6) And Jesus said to Thomas: “Your assurance that you have entered into the kingdom family of the Father, and that you will eternally survive with the children of the kingdom, is wholly a matter of personal experience—faith in the word of truth. Spiritual assurance is the equivalent of your personal religious experience in the eternal realities of divine truth and is otherwise equal to your intelligent understanding of truth realities plus your spiritual faith and minus your honest doubts.
146:3.5 (1642.1) “The Son is naturally endowed with the life of the Father. Having been endowed with the living spirit of the Father, you are therefore sons of God. You survive your life in the material world of the flesh because you are identified with the Father’s living spirit, the gift of eternal life. Many, indeed, had this life before I came forth from the Father, and many more have received this spirit because they believed my word; but I declare that, when I return to the Father, he will send his spirit into the hearts of all men.146:3.6 (1642.2) “While you cannot observe the divine spirit at work in your minds, there is a practical method of discovering the degree to which you have yielded the control of your soul powers to the teaching and guidance of this indwelling spirit of the heavenly Father, and that is the degree of your love for your fellow men. This spirit of the Father partakes of the love of the Father, and as it dominates man, it unfailingly leads in the directions of divine worship and loving regard for one’s fellows. At first you believe that you are sons of God because my teaching has made you more conscious of the inner leadings of our Father’s indwelling presence; but presently the Spirit of Truth shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will live among men and teach all men, even as I now live among you and speak to you the words of truth. And this Spirit of Truth, speaking for the spiritual endowments of your souls, will help you to know that you are the sons of God. It will unfailingly bear witness with the Father’s indwelling presence, your spirit, then dwelling in all men as it now dwells in some, telling you that you are in reality the sons of God.
146:3.7 (1642.3) “Every earth child who follows the leading of this spirit shall eventually know the will of God, and he who surrenders to the will of my Father shall abide forever. The way from the earth life to the eternal estate has not been made plain to you, but there is a way, there always has been, and I have come to make that way new and living. He who enters the kingdom has eternal life already—he shall never perish. But much of this you will the better understand when I shall have returned to the Father and you are able to view your present experiences in retrospect.”
111:7.1 (1223.3) Uncertainty with security is the essence of the Paradise adventure—uncertainty in time and in mind, uncertainty as to the events of the unfolding Paradise ascent; security in spirit and in eternity, security in the unqualified trust of the creature son in the divine compassion and infinite love of the Universal Father; uncertainty as an inexperienced citizen of the universe; security as an ascending son in the universe mansions of an all-powerful, all-wise, and all-loving Father.
I was doing some research in the UB on the concept of certainty. Uncertainty is a big topic. So is certainty. We should not confuse the two. The inherent and inevitable uncertainty mortals and ascenders face is not any uncertainty of destiny or ultimate outcomes. Faith and religious experience deliver certainty to our mind and soul…an unshakeable confidence and security and certainty. We develop a trust and confidence in God’s power and plan and care and affection for us that is unperturbed by all the uncertainties we face in our daily life and the endless intersections of choice where we are uncertain as to the best choice to make and we are uncertain about the outcomes of our choices.
These uncertainties do not disappear or even diminish by faith or experience or wisdom even. We cannot predict and do not control outcomes. Jesus did not have any faith or confidence in his own outcomes by his choices. Wisdom and experience still does not put us in charge of outcomes!! So we should not expect Divine Assurance and personal certainty in God to eliminate or even reduce life’s uncertainties. This will remain true in the heavenly abode as well. Our destiny (destination) is what is certain, but the trail there, the path to Paradise is filled with many uncertainties and many choices we may think of as adventure!
Religious faith and our certainty of salvation and survival and eternal life to come does not rely upon accuracy of our knowledge or beliefs for the fruits of the Spirit and the certainties of faith and Divine Assurance.
103:9.4 (1141.2) The magical and mythological parentage of natural religion does not invalidate the reality and truth of the later revelational religions and the consummate saving gospel of the religion of Jesus. Jesus’ life and teachings finally divested religion of the superstitions of magic, the illusions of mythology, and the bondage of traditional dogmatism. But this early magic and mythology very effectively prepared the way for later and superior religion by assuming the existence and reality of supermaterial values and beings.
103:9.5 (1141.3) Although religious experience is a purely spiritual subjective phenomenon, such an experience embraces a positive and living faith attitude toward the highest realms of universe objective reality. The ideal of religious philosophy is such a faith-trust as would lead man unqualifiedly to depend upon the absolute love of the infinite Father of the universe of universes. Such a genuine religious experience far transcends the philosophic objectification of idealistic desire; it actually takes salvation for granted and concerns itself only with learning and doing the will of the Father in Paradise. The earmarks of such a religion are: faith in a supreme Deity, hope of eternal survival, and love, especially of one’s fellows.
Divine Assurance is a response to those mortals who respond to the presence and ministry of the Spirit within…a feedback loop which grows in content, clarity, and volume. The greater the response by the mortal to the Spirit, the greater the response by the Spirit to the mortal!!! This religious experience automatically results in the personal expression of this Divine Assurance experience.
We must remember that Jesus was a mortal child who became a mortal adult…someone who, like all other mortals, had a progressive and transformative faith based religious experience. Not any singular event but the evolutionary and revelationary experience all mortals may (and so many do) realize by our own choices and responses to the Spirit within.
Jesus exemplifies the very human potential to choose the Divine nature and grow by spiritization and yield the fruits of the Spirit. Creator Sons become humanized by their final bestowals, becoming flesh and bone and blood while endowed by the Fathet Fragment, born as helpless babes who must also hear the whisper and respond in faith and be tutored by the inner Spirit and make decisions and take actions and mold motives and priorities and perspectives and philosophy of living and expressing all of that by mortal chouces in the situations and circumstances of mortal life.
The Papers present the story of this very human boy who grew into adulthood by conquest and courage and faith. So very mortal in potential and in fact. A life lived which revealed God to a universe by faith and by love. We too, and all people everywhere, have the endowments of personality, mind, spirit, and freewill to experience and to choose such a faith based life for ourselves. Faith and truth assurances grow soul and transfer the seat of identity and deliver those definitive fruits of the Spirit to each and all mortals who respond to the Spirit within and share those fruits with others.
Like the Master, all mortals have the Divine Nature within!!!! The Divine Nature within is already perfect and replete. Our mortal potential is eternal perfecting in partnership with eternal perfection. We must only choose to respond to God’s presence within to receive the Divine Assurance. The results of such hope, faith, and trust in God are strength of character and persistent nobility despite all uncertainties and disappointments to come.
101:3.4 (1108.3) Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which it induces the mortal personality to react to certain trying intellectual and testing social situations. Genuine spiritual faith (true moral consciousness) is revealed in that it:
101:3.5 (1108.4) 1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent and adverse animalistic tendencies.
101:3.6 (1108.5) 2. Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat.
101:3.7 (1108.6) 3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity.
101:3.8 (1108.7) 4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquillity notwithstanding baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering.
101:3.9 (1108. 5. Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice.
101:3.10 (1108.9) 6. Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory in spite of the cruelties of seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to human welfare.
101:3.11 (1108.10) 7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries.
101:3.12 (1108.11) 8. Continues to exhibit undaunted faith in the soul’s survival regardless of the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy.
101:3.13 (1108.12) 9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times.
101:3.14 (1108.13) 10. Contributes to the continued survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments.
101:3.15 (1108.14) 11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin.
101:3.16 (1108.15) 12. Goes right on worshiping God in spite of anything and everything. Dares to declare, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”
101:3.17 (1108.16) We know, then, by three phenomena, that man has a divine spirit or spirits dwelling within him: first, by personal experience—religious faith; second, by revelation—personal and racial; and third, by the amazing exhibition of such extraordinary and unnatural reactions to his material environment as are illustrated by the foregoing recital of twelve spiritlike performances in the presence of the actual and trying situations of real human existence. And there are still others.
101:3.18 (1109.1) And it is just such a vital and vigorous performance of faith in the domain of religion that entitles mortal man to affirm the personal possession and spiritual reality of that crowning endowment of human nature, religious experience.
Divine faith assurance is the first fruit of the spiritual vine. The inner whisper creates the natural spirit responses in our minds to bring forth idealism, altruism, hope, trust, and “faith”. Faith in someone within and something far greater than ourselves..the First Cause and Center of All…the I AM within.
We can learn to ignore this feeling and knowing, this “reality-response”. We can come to deny its presence and power. We can choose to turn away. But all receive this connection and Divine Presence within with and by the gift of personality – which likewise originates from the same source.
The Divine Presence within delivers Divine Assurance of our relationship to God and reality. Thusly does reality itself become more than the material world of our 5 senses. Only humans are connected to the Adjutants of Worship and Wisdom which make possible and real this gift of personality and the Divine connection and Reality Response of Faith Assurance.
Or so I understand the teachings….
101:10.4 (1116.5) It is only through the morontial avenue leading to spiritual insight that man can ever break the fetters inherent in his mortal status in the universe. Energy and mind do lead back to Paradise and Deity, but neither the energy endowment nor the mind endowment of man proceeds directly from such Paradise Deity. Only in the spiritual sense is man a child of God. And this is true because it is only in the spiritual sense that man is at present endowed and indwelt by the Paradise Father. Mankind can never discover divinity except through the avenue of religious experience and by the exercise of true faith. The faith acceptance of the truth of God enables man to escape from the circumscribed confines of material limitations and affords him a rational hope of achieving safe conduct from the material realm, whereon is death, to the spiritual realm, wherein is life eternal.
101:10.5 (1116.6) The purpose of religion is not to satisfy curiosity about God but rather to afford intellectual constancy and philosophic security, to stabilize and enrich human living by blending the mortal with the divine, the partial with the perfect, man and God. It is through religious experience that man’s concepts of ideality are endowed with reality.
101:10.6 (1116.7) Never can there be either scientific or logical proofs of divinity. Reason alone can never validate the values and goodnesses of religious experience. But it will always remain true: Whosoever wills to do the will of God shall comprehend the validity of spiritual values. This is the nearest approach that can be made on the mortal level to offering proofs of the reality of religious experience. Such faith affords the only escape from the mechanical clutch of the material world and from the error distortion of the incompleteness of the intellectual world; it is the only discovered solution to the impasse in mortal thinking regarding the continuing survival of the individual personality. It is the only passport to completion of reality and to eternity of life in a universal creation of love, law, unity, and progressive Deity attainment.
101:10.7 (1117.1) Religion effectually cures man’s sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a son of God, a citizen of a new and meaningful universe. Religion assures man that, in following the gleam of righteousness discernible in his soul, he is thereby identifying himself with the plan of the Infinite and the purpose of the Eternal. Such a liberated soul immediately begins to feel at home in this new universe, his universe.
101:10.8 (1117.2) When you experience such a transformation of faith, you are no longer a slavish part of the mathematical cosmos but rather a liberated volitional son of the Universal Father. No longer is such a liberated son fighting alone against the inexorable doom of the termination of temporal existence; no longer does he combat all nature, with the odds hopelessly against him; no longer is he staggered by the paralyzing fear that, perchance, he has put his trust in a hopeless phantasm or pinned his faith to a fanciful error.
101:10.9 (1117.3) Now, rather, are the sons of God enlisted together in fighting the battle of reality’s triumph over the partial shadows of existence. At last all creatures become conscious of the fact that God and all the divine hosts of a well-nigh limitless universe are on their side in the supernal struggle to attain eternity of life and divinity of status. Such faith-liberated sons have certainly enlisted in the struggles of time on the side of the supreme forces and divine personalities of eternity; even the stars in their courses are now doing battle for them; at last they gaze upon the universe from within, from God’s viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of material isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. Even time itself becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving panoply of space.
Or put another way…
196:3.1 (2093.6) Personal, spiritual religious experience is an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties; it is an effective sorter, evaluator, and adjuster of all human problems. Religion does not remove or destroy human troubles, but it does dissolve, absorb, illuminate, and transcend them. True religion unifies the personality for effective adjustment to all mortal requirements. Religious faith—the positive leading of the indwelling divine presence—unfailingly enables the God-knowing man to bridge that gulf existing between the intellectual logic which recognizes the Universal First Cause as It and those positive affirmations of the soul which aver this First Cause is He,the heavenly Father of Jesus’ gospel, the personal God of human salvation.
196:3.2 (2094.1) There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith—physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value.
196:3.3 (2094.2) The progressive comprehension of reality is the equivalent of approaching God. The finding of God, the consciousness of identity with reality, is the equivalent of the experiencing of self-completion—self-entirety, self-totality. The experiencing of total reality is the full realization of God, the finality of the God-knowing experience.
196:3.4 (2094.3) The full summation of human life is the knowledge that man is educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved—justified—by religious faith.
196:3.5 (2094.4) Physical certainty consists in the logic of science; moral certainty, in the wisdom of philosophy; spiritual certainty, in the truth of genuine religious experience.
196:3.6 (2094.5) The mind of man can attain high levels of spiritual insight and corresponding spheres of divinity of values because it is not wholly material. There is a spirit nucleus in the mind of man—the Adjuster of the divine presence. There are three separate evidences of this spirit indwelling of the human mind:
196:3.7 (2094.6) 1. Humanitarian fellowship—love. The purely animal mind may be gregarious for self-protection, but only the spirit-indwelt intellect is unselfishly altruistic and unconditionally loving.196:3.8 (2094.7) 2. Interpretation of the universe—wisdom. Only the spirit-indwelt mind can comprehend that the universe is friendly to the individual.
196:3.9 (2094.8) 3. Spiritual evaluation of life—worship. Only the spirit-indwelt man can realize the divine presence and seek to attain a fuller experience in and with this foretaste of divinity.
196:3.1 posted above says that religious faith is “the positive leading of the indwelling divine presence”. Divine Assurance is from, of, by, and through this same connection and circuitry of the “indwelling divine presence”.
Animals and humans share many aspects of mind connectivity circuits and spirit ministry in addition to the mechanical functions of brain. But humans enjoy the added circuits of the Adjutants of Worship and Wisdom. Animals and humans also share certain urges and impulses.
But humans have urges, impulses, yearns, mental and emotional hungers, curiosity, and love of adventure that includes a compelling need to understand and know, reason and logic to explain, the ability to calculate and project and discern meanings to understand, and the ability to transcend time in certain ways to remember and to predict while considering our options in the moment!! These abilities, derived from and by the highest two Adjutants, lead to science and to religious experience and civilization and both personal and social progress.
The evolution of religion in persons is not accidental or of human origin. Religious experience is Divine in origin and is intentional in the very design and formatting of human mind. Urges, impulses, yearns, longings, and related behavioral drivers are the work of the Adjutant Mind Spirits. For humans, those are complimented by and supplemented with certain spiritual and religious Spirit connections too, like the God Fragment and Spirit of Truth and Guardian Angels in addition to the Holy Spirit and higher Adjutants.
These agents and circuits are fully functional in children and in primitive peoples as well as more educated, enlightened, and spiritized persons. The religious experience does not depend upon accuracy of beliefs or specific knowledge to be powerful and effective in the minds of all persons of every age and epoch on the material, evolutionary worlds of time.
So….Divine Assurance is a form of feedback loop….the more faith we experience by our response to the touch and whisper of Deity within and the yearning and hunger imposed by Deity in mind, then the more assurance we experience. The growing reality result of such a feedback system of cause and effect and greater cause by response/effect to the cause for even greater response/effect is a sublime peace that comes to the soul of mortals. Assurance grows into certainty by our personal religious experience and ever increasing faith and truth assurance connection.
We do not need great knowledge or understanding or insight or wisdom to experience these fruits of the Spirit which grow and grow as we attach our faith-branch to the spirit-vine of truth, beauty, goodness, and Divine Love. Happiness and certainty of destiny grows with our spirit connection…Divine Assurance is but the feeding of the vine of the Spirit the branch of the soul. We become certain of our connection and safety and are assured by peace of mind and joy and confidence that overcomes doubts and fears and uncertainties. Divine Assurance is profoundly powerful and influential to all who respond to the Spirit within!!
100:4.3 (1097.7) …… Of health and sanity man understands much, but of happiness he has truly realized very little. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding.
100:6.6 (1101.1) One of the most amazing earmarks of religious living is that dynamic and sublime peace, that peace which passes all human understanding, that cosmic poise which betokens the absence of all doubt and turmoil. Such levels of spiritual stability are immune to disappointment. Such religionists are like the Apostle Paul, who said: “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”101:6.8 (1112.4) The teachings of Jesus constituted the first Urantian religion which so fully embraced a harmonious co-ordination of knowledge, wisdom, faith, truth, and love as completely and simultaneously to provide temporal tranquillity, intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical sensitivity, God-consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal survival. …..
103:9.12 (1142.3) There is a reality in religious experience that is proportional to the spiritual content, and such a reality is transcendent to reason, science, philosophy, wisdom, and all other human achievements. The convictions of such an experience are unassailable; the logic of religious living is incontrovertible; the certainty of such knowledge is superhuman; the satisfactions are superbly divine, the courage indomitable, the devotions unquestioning, the loyalties supreme, and the destinies final—eternal, ultimate, and universal.
111:4.7 (1220.6) Happiness and joy take origin in the inner life. You cannot experience real joy all by yourself…..
So how does a believer and faith child of the Spirit maintain hope, faith, assurance, happiness, contentment, peace of mind, and joy in the midst of material chaos and uncertainty?
Are happy people blind or indifferent or uncaring or insensitive or self centered or naive?
Was Jesus happy? Joyful? Content?
Wasn’t Jesus surrounded by sickness and death and chaos and uncertainty and suffering in so many forms by so many others and also drink deeply himself from tragedy and grief and loss and disruption and loss of personal dreams and priorities and hopes? Wasn’t he hated and reviled and pursued and threatened and falsely accused and rejected (even by friends and family) and tortured and murdered?
Was Jesus blind or indifferent or uncaring or insensitive or self centered or naive?
Hmmmm……something for us to consider perhaps…..in these trying times…..
“Happiness”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Happiness+&x=3&y=14
“Joy”:
“Joyful”:
“Cheerful”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Cheerful&x=10&y=16
“Peace”:
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Peace&x=11&y=9
All of these feelings and attributes of genuine religious experience are possible, even unshakable, in faith children with Divine Assurance.
How so?
I think it is by the differentiation in perspective of the eternal perspective and the limiting temporal view and the distinction between the spiritual and the material perspective of reality. Suffering is temporary and material in its limitations. I think one must see that limit to suffering and find peace by understanding of what comes on the other side of material suffering and what can be found even in its very midst when we place our absolute faith and trust in God’s affection and wisdom and purpose and plan!
Are you happy? Do you feel a little guilty about that? Hmmmmm……
Perhaps we should talk about it…?
Bradly
5:4.2 (66.6) The great and immediate service of true religion is the establishment of an enduring unity in human experience, a lasting peace and a profound assurance…..
100:4.3 (1097.7) But the great problem of religious living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of love. Health, mental efficiency, and happiness arise from the unification of physical systems, mind systems, and spirit systems. Of health and sanity man understands much, but of happiness he has truly realized very little. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding.
100:6.6 (1101.1) One of the most amazing earmarks of religious living is that dynamic and sublime peace, that peace which passes all human understanding, that cosmic poise which betokens the absence of all doubt and turmoil. Such levels of spiritual stability are immune to disappointment….
100:7.12 (1102.9) Jesus was consistently cheerful, notwithstanding he sometimes drank deeply of the cup of human sorrow. He fearlessly faced the realities of existence, yet was he filled with enthusiasm for the gospel of the kingdom. But he controlled his enthusiasm; it never controlled him. He was unreservedly dedicated to “the Father’s business.” This divine enthusiasm led his unspiritual brethren to think he was beside himself, but the onlooking universe appraised him as the model of sanity and the pattern of supreme mortal devotion to the high standards of spiritual living. And his controlled enthusiasm was contagious; his associates were constrained to share his divine optimism.
100:7.13 (1103.1) This man of Galilee was not a man of sorrows; he was a soul of gladness. Always was he saying, “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad.” But when duty required, he was willing to walk courageously through the “valley of the shadow of death.” He was gladsome but at the same time humble.
Me here: I wonder what “courage” might have to do with it?
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Courage+&x=6&y=14
https://urantia-association.org/search/?zoom_sort=2&zoom_query=Courageous+&x=6&y=6
It is interesting to me how each of the 7 Adjutant Mind Spirit and ministry circuits of connection work with the others and upon the others in ways which first deliver the mortal mind connection to the Holy Spirit which begins the evolutionary and personal faith based religious experience of the lowest level of universe personality endowment. Each mind adjutant ministry is a link bound to the others to form human function and connection to the Spirit which completely differentiate the mortal from the animal kingdom of its evolutionary origin.
This integration and coordination of all the Adjutant ministry circuits into a functional whole leads to each of those ministries and circuits to gain forms of function and activation not possible without the totality of all 7 working in harmony! The sum or value or totality and function of the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts. Indeed….each adjutant function is enhanced by the totality of function and connection which delivers experiential wisdom and Divine assurance.
Such a mind can transcend itself and experience revelation and creative thinking and problem solving and develop certainty of what and whom cannot be seen or heard or discovered by the 5 senses – or any number of material senses!! The totality of the connection of the 7 Adjutants reveals a universe reality and aspect of selfhood that is not material and that new connection to the Holy Spirit and the God Fragment and the Spirit of Truth creates whole new paradigms of being and intuition and insight and understanding and faith – all of which is required for Divine Assurance!!
Assurance is evidence of connection and relationship and belonging and the love of the creators for their progeny. This connection and that Divine Assurance we experience and the evolutionary progression of experiential wisdom are the very plan of God and the very purpose of material creation. The gods benefit from the realization of potential and the wisdom only available by experience and perfecting over time by trial and error and freewill choice. Mortals are designed and created to benefit the universe and all beings in the universe of universes by BEING mortal.
Our connection to the Spirit delivers Divine Assurance to verify this connection to the beings so connected. It is as natural as it could possibly be. It is an inherent function of the connection of personality to the source of personality and the mind to the source of mind. It is the connection to Divinity that delivers the Divine Assurance we feel within. And it is that Assurance that leads us to discernment, understanding, courage, knowledge, altruism, worship/assurance, and the integrating power of wisdom!
As we become spiritized and gain experiential wisdom, we begin to become weened from the Adjutant Mind Spirits as we are become more directly connected to the Paradise Spirit ministries of the Trinity and the related gravity circuits of personality, mind, and spirit. Indeed, the Adjutant Spirits ministry does not follow us beyond the grave and into our resurrection. It is our soul and the ministry of the God Fragment/Thought Adjuster that then connects to the direct ministry of the mind, spirit, and personality circuits without the Adjutant circuits influence or connection.
The Adjutants are a ministry bridge which connects the mortal mind to the morontial mind. Both are connected to the Source Spirit ministries so the more material connection of the Adjutants is simply not needed once the material brain ceases to function at death in this life. Or so I understand.
36:5.5 (402.2) We are handicapped for words adequately to designate these seven adjutant mind-spirits. They are ministers of the lower levels of experiential mind, and they may be described, in the order of evolutionary attainment, as follows:
36:5.6 (402.3) 1. The spirit of intuition—quick perception, the primitive physical and inherent reflex instincts, the directional and other self-preservative endowments of all mind creations; the only one of the adjutants to function so largely in the lower orders of animal life and the only one to make extensive functional contact with the nonteachable levels of mechanical mind.
36:5.7 (402.4) 2. The spirit of understanding—the impulse of co-ordination, the spontaneous and apparently automatic association of ideas. This is the gift of the co-ordination of acquired knowledge, the phenomenon of quick reasoning, rapid judgment, and prompt decision.
36:5.8 (402.5) 3. The spirit of courage—the fidelity endowment—in personal beings, the basis of character acquirement and the intellectual root of moral stamina and spiritual bravery. When enlightened by facts and inspired by truth, this becomes the secret of the urge of evolutionary ascension by the channels of intelligent and conscientious self-direction.
36:5.9 (402.6) 4. The spirit of knowledge—the curiosity-mother of adventure and discovery, the scientific spirit; the guide and faithful associate of the spirits of courage and counsel; the urge to direct the endowments of courage into useful and progressive paths of growth.
36:5.10 (402.7) 5. The spirit of counsel—the social urge, the endowment of species co-operation; the ability of will creatures to harmonize with their fellows; the origin of the gregarious instinct among the more lowly creatures.
36:5.11 (402.8) 6. The spirit of worship—the religious impulse, the first differential urge separating mind creatures into the two basic classes of mortal existence. The spirit of worship forever distinguishes the animal of its association from the soulless creatures of mind endowment. Worship is the badge of spiritual-ascension candidacy.
36:5.12 (402.9) 7. The spirit of wisdom—the inherent tendency of all moral creatures towards orderly and progressive evolutionary advancement. This is the highest of the adjutants, the spirit co-ordinator and articulator of the work of all the others. This spirit is the secret of that inborn urge of mind creatures which initiates and maintains the practical and effective program of the ascending scale of existence; that gift of living things which accounts for their inexplicable ability to survive and, in survival, to utilize the co-ordination of all their past experience and present opportunities for the acquisition of all of everything that all of the other six mental ministers can mobilize in the mind of the organism concerned. Wisdom is the acme of intellectual performance. Wisdom is the goal of a purely mental and moral existence.
36:5.13 (403.1) The adjutant mind-spirits experientially grow, but they never become personal. They evolve in function, and the function of the first five in the animal orders is to a certain extent essential to the function of all seven as human intellect. This animal relationship makes the adjutants more practically effective as human mind; hence animals are to a certain extent indispensable to man’s intellectual as well as to his physical evolution.
Me here: Progress in the Spirit, religious growth, and experiential wisdom should each and all increase our sense of connection and momentum and assurance of that connection and progressive momentum. Assurance is not merely preliminary nor static. It too grows concurrently with and due to our personal evolutionary and experiential wisdom “which initiates and maintains the practical and effective program of the ascending scale of existence;” and ” to utilize the co-ordination of all their past experience and present opportunities for the acquisition of all of everything that all of the other six mental ministers can mobilize in the mind of the organism concerned.”
Wisdom initiates and integrates and harmonizes and perpetuates GROWTH and completes and enhances and integrates and harmonizes greater and growing – intuition, understanding, courage, knowledge, counsel, and worship!! The whole improves the functions of the each! This fact and function of our very being delivers Assurance of the Spirit which is the very source of all these characteristics of BEING…and BECOMING.
Assurance is simply the evidence of our connection to the Spirit. An awareness of that connection. An awareness of belonging and being loved and being safe and the eternal nature of that very personal reality.
So….there is the human response to the Spirit connection in mind which generates the yearning and thirst and hunger for happiness and truth, and there is the Divine Assurance response of the Spirit in this symbiotic connection, and this connection gives birth to soul and the attachment of the mortal branch to the Spirit vine, which results in the growth of mortal spirituality and the fruits of the Spirit which are reflected and demonstrated by peace of mind and trusting confidence and sublime happiness.
This is the answer to….”What is Assurance?”
Divine Assurance often leads to a feeling of “being in the flow” and being propelled forward by a current of momentum with and by some force and energy that is beyond our own selfhood and control. I believe this is the response to the personality gravity circuit and mind gravity circuit and spirit gravity circuit as we become spiritized and shift the seat of our personal identity from the material to the spiritual.
Assurance becomes a force of progress eventually where once it was but an initial relationship response of recognition. Divine Assurance is a great and powerful force whose power is determined and limited only by our own spiritual progress.
7:1.3 (82.2) Spirit realities respond to the drawing power of the center of spiritual gravity in accordance with their qualitative value, their actual degree of spirit nature. Spirit substance (quality) is just as responsive to spirit gravity as the organized energy of physical matter (quantity) is responsive to physical gravity. Spiritual values and spirit forces are real. From the viewpoint of personality, spirit is the soul of creation; matter is the shadowy physical body.
7:1.4 (82.3) The reactions and fluctuations of spirit gravity are ever true to the content of spiritual values, the qualitative spiritual status of an individual or a world. This drawing power is instantly responsive to the inter- and intraspirit values of any universe situation or planetary condition. Every time a spiritual reality actualizes in the universes, this change necessitates the immediate and instantaneous readjustment of spirit gravity. Such a new spirit is actually a part of the Second Source and Center; and just as certainly as mortal man becomes a spiritized being, he will attain the spiritual Son, the center and source of spirit gravity.
7:1.8 (82.7) All reactions of the spirit-gravity circuit of the grand universe are predictable. We recognize all actions and reactions of the omnipresent spirit of the Eternal Son and find them to be dependable. In accordance with well-known laws, we can and do measure spiritual gravity just as man attempts to compute the workings of finite physical gravity. There is an unvarying response of the Son’s spirit to all spirit things, beings, and persons, and this response is always in accordance with the degree of actuality (the qualitative degree of reality) of all such spiritual values.
7:3.2 (84.2) The spiritual-gravity pull of the Eternal Son constitutes the inherent secret of the Paradise ascension of surviving human souls. All genuine spirit values and all bona fide spiritualized individuals are held within the unfailing grasp of the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son. The mortal mind, for example, initiates its career as a material mechanism and is eventually mustered into the Corps of the Finality as a well-nigh perfected spirit existence, becoming progressively less subject to material gravity and correspondingly more responsive to the inward pulling urge of spirit gravity during this entire experience. The spirit-gravity circuit literally pulls the soul of man Paradiseward.
16:8.15 (195.2) The Urantia type of human personality may be viewed as functioning in a physical mechanism consisting of the planetary modification of the Nebadon type of organism belonging to the electrochemical order of life activation and endowed with the Nebadon order of the Orvonton series of the cosmic mind of parental reproductive pattern. The bestowal of the divine gift of personality upon such a mind-endowed mortal mechanism confers the dignity of cosmic citizenship and enables such a mortal creature forthwith to become reactive to the constitutive recognition of the three basic mind realities of the cosmos:
16:8.16 (195.3) 1. The mathematical or logical recognition of the uniformity of physical causation.
16:8.17 (195.4) 2. The reasoned recognition of the obligation of moral conduct.
16:8.18 (195.5) 3. The faith-grasp of the fellowship worship of Deity, associated with the loving service of humanity.16:8.19 (195.6) The full function of such a personality endowment is the beginning realization of Deity kinship. Such a selfhood, indwelt by a prepersonal fragment of God the Father, is in truth and in fact a spiritual son of God. Such a creature not only discloses capacity for the reception of the gift of the divine presence but also exhibits reactive response to the personality-gravity circuit of the Paradise Father of all personalities.
9. Reality of Human Consciousness
16:9.1 (195.7) The cosmic-mind-endowed, Adjuster-indwelt, personal creature possesses innate recognition-realization of energy reality, mind reality, and spirit reality. The will creature is thus equipped to discern the fact, the law, and the love of God. Aside from these three inalienables of human consciousness, all human experience is really subjective except that intuitive realization of validity attaches to the unification of these three universe reality responses of cosmic recognition.
A principal benefit of the feelings of Divine and paternal affection and assurance is the coping mechanism that it so reliably becomes. I have learned to lean on and depend upon the strength and certainty of knowing I am loved, protected, guided, and attended in God’s friendly universe no matter my own frustrations and confusions and failures and disappointments over situations and circumstances.
We are thusly enabled and encouraged to face vicissitudes and doubts in the uncertainties and unpredictabilities of material life with calm resolve and the confidence of any child who knows they have a large and loving family all around them and are adored by such wonderfully powerful parents!
This assurance is the very source of personal confidence in the face of all uncertainties and failures. No matter what happens in this life, or what doesn’t, I know I am loved and cherished and cannot be harmed in any meaningful ways by anything material. Divine Assurance delivers peace of mind that can be shared in love and kindness and patience with others.
The faith connection to Spirit is the branch connection to the vine from which the fruits of the Spirit come forth. Our personal assurance of belonging and destiny and identity is something precious to be shared with others in our daily life. It signifies faith. How much faith can one truly have without feeling the Spirit’s connection and assurance in that reality? This is the inherent value of assurance I think.
Those who become mired in guilt and blame, shame and regret, feelings of isolation and despair, doubt and anxiety, these folk are in need of Divine Assurance. God is not distant or aloof nor indifferent. Assurance is a response to faith. It is factual and functional. It is both an effect and a great cause of further effects! Belief, prayer, and choices based on those in faith inevitably deliver assurances of relationship, origin, and destiny.
Such an experience is profoundly influential related to our reality perspective, response to situation and circumstance, and our philosophy of living. Such faith assurance delivers us from doubt and anxiety and guilt and all such suffering by delivering a nurturing feast and rejuvenating fountain of truth, beauty, and goodness. We become a conduit of God’s love and assurance for others.
Or so I understand the UB to teach us.
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