'Our Religion'

 

'Our Religion'

131:10.1 (1453.3)After the great effort of putting together this compilation of the world religions' teaching on the Paradise Father, Ganid set to work formulating what he considered a summary of the beliefs concerning God to which he had come through the teaching of Jesus. The young man was in the habit of referring to these beliefs as “our religion. Here is what he wrote down:

131:10.2 (1453.4)'The Lord our God is one Lord, and you must love him with all your mind and heart, doing your utmost to love all his children as yourself. This one God is our heavenly Father in whom all things exist and who dwells by His Spirit in every sincere human soul. And we who are the children of God must learn to entrust our souls to him as to a faithful Creator. With our heavenly Father, all things are possible. Since he is the Creator and made all things and all beings, it could not be otherwise. Although we cannot see God, we can know him. And by living daily according to the Father's will, we can reveal him to our fellow men.

131:10.3 (1453.5)'The divine riches of God's character must be infinitely deep and eternally wise. We cannot fathom God with our knowledge, but we can know him in our hearts through our personal experience. Even though his righteousness is beyond all comprehension, even the humblest man on earth can receive his grace. As the Father fills the universe, he also dwells in our hearts. Man's consciousness is human, mortal, but man's spirit is divine, immortal. God is not only all-powerful, but also all-wise. If our earthly parents, yet inclined to evil, can love their children and bestow good gifts upon them, how much more must the good Father in heaven love his children on earth with wisdom and bestow appropriate blessings upon them.

131:10.4 (1454.1)'The Father in heaven will not allow even one of his children to perish on earth if that child has a desire to find the Father and truly desires to be like him. Our Father loves even the wicked and is always lenient toward the ungrateful. If only more people could know of the goodness of God, they would certainly want to repent of their bad ways of life and give up all known sin. All good things descend from the Father of the Light, in whom there is no mutability, nor hint of reversal. The spirit of the true God is in man's heart. His intention is that all men will be brothers. When people begin to grope for God, it proves that he has found them, and that they are seeking knowledge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

131:10.5 (1454.2)'It will no longer be enough for me to believe that God is the Father of all my people: from now on I will believe that he is also my Father. I will always seek to worship God with the help of the Spirit of Truth, who is my helper when I have become truly God-knowing. But in first of all, I am going to practice to worship God by learning to do God's will on earth; that is, I am going to do my best to deal with every fellow human being exactly as I think God would want me to. And when we live this kind of life in the flesh, we may ask many things of God, and he will fulfill the desire of our heart, so that we will be all the better able to serve our fellow men. And all this loving serving of the children of God, increases our ability to receive and experience the joys of heaven, the high pleasures of the service of the spirit of heaven.

131:10.6 (1454.3)'I will thank God every day for his unspeakable gifts; I will praise him for his wonderful works to the children of men. To me he is the Almighty, the Creator, the Power and the Mercy, but the most beautiful thing is that he is my spirit-Father, and as his earthly child I will go out once to see him. And my teacher has said that by seeking Him, I will become as He is. By faith in God, I have found peace with him. This new religion of ours is very joyful and brings lasting happiness. I trust that I will be faithful even unto death, and will surely receive the crown of eternal life.

131:10.7 (1454.4)'I am now learning to examine all things and to adhere to what is good. All that I would have people do for me, I will do for my fellow men. By this new faith I know that man can become a son of God; however, sometimes it frightens me to think that all men are my brothers, but it must be true. I do not see how I can rejoice in the fatherhood of God while refusing to accept the brotherhood of men. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If that is true, then all men must be my brethren.

131:10.8 (1454.5)'From now on I will do my good works in secret; also I will pray most when I am alone. I will not judge, so as not to be unfair to my fellow men. I am going to learn to love my enemies; I have not yet really mastered this exercise of being God-like. Although I detect God in these other religions, I find that in “our religion” his beauty comes out better, that here he is more loving, more merciful, more personal and more positive. But above all, this grand, glorious Being is my spiritual Father: I am His child. And by no other means than my honest desire to be like Him will I finally find and eternally serve Him. At last I have a religion with a God, a wonderful God, and he is a God who preserves forever.

A Thought for Consideration from The Urantia Book