Spiritual Advice and Guidance Blog: Urantia Book

Q: Does spiritual growth and progress depend on purely material concerns like what we eat or wear?

A: Free will through experience is aligning with the Father's will, led into alignment by the indwelling spirit of God, prodded into transformation by angelic and spiritual helpers in a divine conspiracy. In the inner life we realize that God is real and personal, in fact God is inextricable from our daily existence, except when we ignore God. Where we live, what we wear, whom we love, and what we eat seem to be within the realm of personal choice.

Our conscious choices, even mundane choices, create the future in some measure. We mature in mind as well as body. Soul growth arises as we become more real, more aware. When that personal realm is uplifted by awakening to the presence of God's Spirit within, the range of choice begins to implement factors of discernment, penetrating insight into outcomes resultant from our choosing. The whole realm of physical health, energy, stamina, even courage, seems tied to choices of when and what we consume or take in. We also appear to be called to make choices about what to eliminate, to overcome, to forgive, and even to forget.

There is the self, yet everywhere there are others whose need for altruistic help brings us into relationships, not merely the magnetism of sexual attraction or romantic love. The authors of The Urantia Book even suggest that economic necessity will lead eventually to brotherhood. We have the power to lend a hand, if we choose. Families and friendships grow stronger and deeper as worship and wisdom are brought into daily existence. Devotions and meditation season the tough realities of our contemporary civilization, making a place for insight into "the wholeness of events."

Our world poses us the most exquisite choice panorama. Diet, health, religion, sexual and affectional preferences, political philosophy, personal discipline, labor or profession, and altruistic service all call to us to engage in living fully, utilizing our God-given power of choice for that which is true, beautiful, and good.

When we evolve toward transformation, we seem to be opening to the destiny that God desires us to implement, to the benefit of our world in its painfully uncertain cruise upon the waters of environmental and social destiny. May our loyalties to high ideals, tempered by our realistic appraisal of opportunities and liabilities, aid us in moving our troubled world one more step toward Light and Life.

Stephen Zendt

Labels: free will, material existence, spiritual growth, Stephen Zendt, the future, The Urantia Book