Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:29 am +0000 Posts: 4694
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One of the most important lessons for me in the Urantia Book is the reality that our lives are designed to be challenging and confusing....if we respond well, new challenges and confusions present themselves. If we do not respond well, the old challenges and confusions become more confounding and painful and I think they become so to encourage us to face them. We are to learn to discern cause and effect at the material level, the emotional/intellectual level, and the spiritual level and by such experience to respond better to old challenges and new ones.
This is easier to accept intellectually than it is when we are in the pit fighting the gator at hand though....so I do not wish to pontificate with syrupy platitudes and be insulting thereby. I do not know the situation or stressors you face right now - but I can assure you that every mortal faces such crisis and tragedy and failure - how we deal with it builds and reveals character, especially for those of us with faith in God and eternal destiny....this becomes an anchor of hope and promise and a rock in the torrents of uncertainty. I too wish you well and peace of mind as you face the difficulties before you now. My granny use to say: everything will be alright in the end, so if its not alright now then it is NOT the end....keep trying! And praying.
156:5.12 (1739.7) Kingdom believers should possess an implicit faith, a whole-souled belief, in the certain triumph of righteousness. Kingdom builders must be undoubting of the truth of the gospel of eternal salvation. Believers must increasingly learn how to step aside from the rush of life — escape the harassments of material existence — while they refresh the soul, inspire the mind, and renew the spirit by worshipful communion.
156:5.13 (1739. God-knowing individuals are not discouraged by misfortune or downcast by disappointment. Believers are immune to the depression consequent upon purely material upheavals; spirit livers are not perturbed by the episodes of the material world. Candidates for eternal life are practitioners of an invigorating and constructive technique for meeting all of the vicissitudes and harassments of mortal living. Every day a true believer lives, he finds it easier to do the right thing.
156:5.17 (1740.4) The measure of the spiritual capacity of the evolving soul is your faith in truth and your love for man, but the measure of your human strength of character is your ability to resist the holding of grudges and your capacity to withstand brooding in the face of deep sorrow. Defeat is the true mirror in which you may honestly view your real self.
100:2.6 (1096.3) The goal of human self-realization should be spiritual, not material. The only realities worth striving for are divine, spiritual, and eternal. Mortal man is entitled to the enjoyment of physical pleasures and to the satisfaction of human affections; he is benefited by loyalty to human associations and temporal institutions; but these are not the eternal foundations upon which to build the immortal personality which must transcend space, vanquish time, and achieve the eternal destiny of divine perfection and finaliter service.
100:2.7 (1096.4) Jesus portrayed the profound surety of the God-knowing mortal when he said: “To a God-knowing kingdom believer, what does it matter if all things earthly crash?” Temporal securities are vulnerable, but spiritual sureties are impregnable. When the flood tides of human adversity, selfishness, cruelty, hate, malice, and jealousy beat about the mortal soul, you may rest in the assurance that there is one inner bastion, the citadel of the spirit, which is absolutely unassailable; at least this is true of every human being who has dedicated the keeping of his soul to the indwelling spirit of the eternal God.
100:2.8 (1096.5) After such spiritual attainment, whether secured by gradual growth or specific crisis, there occurs a new orientation of personality as well as the development of a new standard of values. Such spirit-born individuals are so remotivated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fondest ambitions perish and their keenest hopes crash; they positively know that such catastrophes are but the redirecting cataclysms which wreck one’s temporal creations preliminary to the rearing of the more noble and enduring realities of a new and more sublime level of universe attainment.
"Darkest Hour Is Just Before Down"
The sun is slowly sinkin' The day's almost gone Still darkness falls around us And we must journey on
The darkest hour is just before dawn The narrow way leads home Lay down your soul at Jesus' feet The darkest hour is just before dawn
Like a shepherd out on the mountain A-watchin' the sheep down below He's coming back to claim us Will you be ready to go
The darkest hour is just before dawn The narrow way leads home Lay down your soul Let Jesus in The darkest hour is just before dawn The darkest hour is just before dawn
48:6.9 (552.7) The Gods are my caretakers; I shall not stray;
48:6.10 (552. Side by side they lead me in the beautiful paths and glorious refreshing of life everlasting.
48:6.11 (552.9) I shall not, in this Divine Presence, want for food nor thirst for water.
48:6.12 (552.10) Though I go down into the valley of uncertainty or ascend up into the worlds of doubt,
48:6.13 (552.11) Though I move in loneliness or with the fellows of my kind,
48:6.14 (552.12) Though I triumph in the choirs of light or falter in the solitary places of the spheres,
48:6.15 (552.13) Your good spirit shall minister to me, and your glorious angel will comfort me.
48:6.16 (552.14) Though I descend into the depths of darkness and death itself,
48:6.17 (552.15) I shall not doubt you nor fear you,
48:6.18 (552.16) For I know that in the fullness of time and the glory of your name
48:6.19 (552.17) You will raise me up to sit with you on the battlements on high.
48:6.20 (553.1) That is the story whispered in the night season to the shepherd boy. He could not retain it word for word, but to the best of his memory he gave it much as it is recorded today.

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