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Jesus said, "When a wise person understands the inner impulses of their fellows, they will love them. And when you love your brothers and sisters, you have already forgiven them. This capacity to understand human nature and forgive apparent wrong doing is Godlike." Jesus enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted faith in God. He never doubted the certainty of God's watchcare and guidance. Jesus faith was the outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of the divine presence, his indwelling Thought Adjuster. The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as, "the will of the Father in heaven." In the face of all natural difficulties and all temporal contradictions of mortal existence Jesus experienced the tranquility of supreme and unquestioned trust in God. In the Master's life we discover a new and higher type of religion; one based on personal spiritual relations with the Universal Father and wholly validated by the supreme authority of genuine personal experience. In the human life of Jesus faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. Jesus' faith was so real and encompassing that it absolutely swept away any spiritual doubts and effectively destroyed every conflicting desire. Whether in the face of apparent defeat or in the throes of disappointment and threatening despair, Jesus calmly stood in the divine presence free from fear and fully conscious of spiritual invincibility. In each of life's trying situations Jesus unfailingly exhibited an unquestioning loyalty to the Father's will. This superb faith was undaunted even by the cruel and crushing threat of an ignominious death. Always did the Master coordinate the faith of the soul with the wisdom appraisals of seasoned experience. Hence he never became fanatical, nor did he let his faith run away with his well balanced judgments concerning commonplace social, economic, and moral life situations. Jesus faith was wholly free from presumption upon God. Jesus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the greatest of all offerings: the consecration and dedication of his own will to the majestic service of doing the divine will. Jesus always and consistently interpreted religion wholly in terms of the Father's will. Jesus never prayed as a religious duty. To him, prayer was a mighty mobilization of the combined soul powers to withstand all human tendencies toward selfishness, evil, and sin. The secret of Jesus unparalleled religious life was his consciousness of the presence of God, attained by intelligent prayer and sincere worship--unbroken communion with God--and not by leadings, voices, visions, or extraordinary religious practices. Jesus depended on the heavenly Father as a child depends upon its earthly parents. His fervent faith never for one moment doubted the certainty of the heavenly Father's overcare. Jesus combined the stalwart and intelligent courage of a full-grown man with the sincere and believing optimism of a believing child. His faith grew to such heights of trust that it was devoid of fear. Jesus sense of dependence on the Divine was so complete and confident that it yielded the joy and assurance of absolute personal security. Jesus does not require his followers to believe in him but rather to believe with him, believe in the reality of the love of God and, in full confidence, accept the security of the assurance that all mortal beings are members of the one family of the heavenly Father. Jesus desires that all his followers should share in his transcendent faith. He touchingly challenges us to not only believe what he believed, but also to believe as he believed. Jesus earthly life was devoted to one great purpose--doing the Father's will--living the human life religiously and by faith. But that faith was wholly free of presumption. Jesus devotion to the Father's will and the service of man was a whole-hearted consecration of himself to an unreserved bestowal of love. The Master has ascended on high as a man as well as God; he belongs to mankind; we belong to him. The aim of kingdom believers should be to share Jesus' faith, to trust God as he trusted God, and to believe in their fellows as Jesus believed in them. As a man, Jesus progressed from consciousness of the human to realization of the divine; from the nature of man to the realization of the nature of God. He achieved this through the faith of his mortal intellect and the acts of his indwelling Father-Spirit. Jesus' ascent was an exclusively mortal achievement. This same pathway of achievement is open to all of us. Jesus taught us to place a high value on ourselves, both in time and in eternity. Because of the high estimate he placed upon us, he was willing to spend himself in unremitting service. What mortal can fail to be uplifted by the extraordinary faith Jesus places in us? Jesus led us to feel at home in the world; he delivered us from the slavery of taboo and taught that the world is not fundamentally evil. He did not long to escape earthly life; he mastered a technique of acceptably doing the Father's will while in the flesh, attaining an idealistic religious life in a realistic world. Jesus saw mankind as weak rather than wicked, more distraught than depraved. But regardless of our present status, he saw us as God's children and his brothers and sisters.
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