Aligning Our Will with God's Purpose

to learn to depend on the reality of the spiritual as part of our life that's very difficult. now while i'm doing that a little glimpse behind the scenes hey tamodius i need you to come here for just a second um uh i'm at the property and i want you all to meet a friend of mine tomorrow's and i used to be part of the church back at menlo and he's here taking pictures right now thank you for doing this [00:00:49]

we want to learn to depend on the reality of the spiritual god is spirit but that's a word that's often used quite loosely so we need to talk today a little bit more precisely about it and how dallas would use it but what's important of course is not just how dallas uses it how do we best understand it so that i can actually depend on to god [00:02:01]

at the core you have a will or a spirit or a heart those serve to talk about basically the same function and then you have a mind and that includes both thoughts and feelings and then we have a body mostly a bunch of appetites we run on habit then there's the social dimension of other people and then there's our soul that connects that all together [00:02:39]

and unfortunately we live in a world that often tries to convince us that the physical part of reality is true is real but we we have we we tend to think of the spiritual realm as more metaphorical or abstract so dallas will talk about spirit in two different ways this is page 17. i'll try to remember to talk about page numbers [00:03:06]

the language of spiritual spirit and spirituality has become increasingly common today and cannot be avoided but it's often unclear in meaning and this can be dangerous it can lead us down paths of confusion and destruction spiritual is not automatically good we must be very careful with this language in the sense of spiritual which means only non-physical [00:03:37]

the hidden or inner world of the human self is indeed spiritual now the idea here is that just as you have a body neurons tissues and that's visible you have uh parts to you that are not visible not physical so your will your ability to choose your mind your thoughts and your feelings your soul that hides it all that ties it all together [00:04:05]

in a general sense to say that you are spiritual is to say that you have will you can choose and you have thoughts and you have feelings and you have a soul that integrates that all together that is the spiritual dimension of your being and just as you are a physical person you are a spiritual person [00:05:17]

the acts of willing the capacity for volition or choice form the spirit in a person in this narrow and focused sense the spiritual is not just the non-physical as we explained it early but it is the central core of the non-physical part in man you know us there is much that is not physical that is also not spirit in this narrow sense that is not of the will [00:06:32]

the spiritual is as real as the physical end in fact and in fact every physical thing you see began in the realm of the invisible or the spirit the cell phone that i'm looking into right now began because somebody one day had an idea for a cell phone and in a similar way the earth these trees began because there is a god in whose mind the idea came first [00:08:46]

there are two gods tolstoy once said there is the god that people generally believe in a god who has to serve them sometimes in very refined ways say by merely giving them peace of mind this god does not exist this god does not exist the god who has to serve me my will be done god you want you do what i want to be done that god does not exist [00:09:18]

but the god whom people forget the god whom we all have to serve exists is the prime cause of our existence and of all that we perceive you did not just evolve the earth did not just bang just as a cell phone or a tripod begins in the mind of a creator so the earth and you began in the mind of a creator [00:09:41]

our bodies are that little place where our wills begin to reign so our bodies are the beginning of our little kingdom but we were given our will in order to surrender to god our willpower is a very limited thing so the prayer for today that will be with us all through this series is actually a prayer of great strength your will be done [00:10:37]