Charity

Do you remember what it is like to have your body vibrate at the speed of love, joy, wonder, and accomplishment, or how you felt and how easily you accomplished things when you knew little to nothing of resentment, criticism, guilt, and fear? Did you know that every thought you create is real substance that goes out into the universe to create your future? What you send out, you will get back, both good and evil, and your environment and situation are merely a looking glass of what you have chosen to attract into your life. It is exciting to contemplate that by shaping and molding our thoughts as we desire, we also shape and mold any future we desire. How important is a future filled with pure love?

Religion and science demonstrate that maintaining love and inner peace is more important than diet, exercise, or sleep when it comes to maintaining good health and longevity. Those who possess a loving and peaceful state naturally outlive those who tend toward worry, restlessness, anger, and other forms of stress. From the gospels we learn that love is not evil, proud, rude, self-seeking, easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs. A person filled with love and peace carries no extra burdens to weigh down the spirit or the body. Moreover, love is light, and darkness flees from light. And, the more love you give to others, the more love comes back to you. Even the darkness of disease often flees a body that is filled to overflowing with light!

From a scientific standpoint, love and peace enable an ideal balance within the autonomic nervous system and within each cell of the body, which leads to longer, healthier, and happier lives. By comparison, chronic stress caused from worry, anger, restlessness, hatred, hopelessness, nervousness, ingratitude, contention, and negative attitude each over-stimulate the fight-or-flight response system. Mental and spiritual disquietude are linked to heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidental death, cirrhosis of the liver, suicide, accelerated aging, and to all degenerative diseases. How can we foster and attain a peaceful and loving state? The short answer you can do today is to go about doing good continually. Let’s look at vital steps you can take toward a long-term solution:

• First, pray to recognize the Lord’s hand in your life and His love for you. As you sincerely ask to know of God’s pure love for you, His Spirit will bring to remembrance your many blessings and your eyes will open to see how He is aiding you in every walk of life, and then you will experience gratitude, which is a pre-requisite for being able to recognize and feel His deep love for you. Ask, pause, reflect, remember, and feel deeply. 
• Second, as you remember and feel the Lord’s love for you, pause to express divine gratitude for each blessing brought to your awareness. Expressing your gratitude is how to return pure love to God. As you so come to know the Lord, you will discover an intimate, sacred relationship built on trust and will come to know that He understands your burdens and will always respond to you with compassion. It is not enough just to know that God loves you; you must pause in gratitude daily to feel His deep love for you.  
• Third, the Lord’s response to us is always filled with love and motivates us to become like Him through repentance and through a continual remission of sins. Through the gift of His Spirit that attends our repentance, He helps us to become like Him, attribute for divine attribute. For example, through repentance we strive to become kind; through His Spirit and grace we transcend mere striving to be kind, to become kindness as He is kindness. With the new gift given, our desire to become like Him increases and we receive more grace (or goodness) for the grace we return to Him through expressing our deep-felt gratitude for the gift of kindness. As God's Spirit invites us to receive other attributes or gifts from Him, the process of striving (repenting) and becoming through grace is renewed again. And as we seek other gifts or characteristics of Christ, we are to immerse our thoughts in that characteristic and convey our feelings to God, self, and others. Righteous feelings generated by obedience toward any godly attribute and expressions of gratitude to God precede the increase of those feelings from the Spirit. As we are obedient and grateful, a magnified portion of the gift or attribute we seek will return to us from the Spirit. By His Spirit, we are taught more perfectly through feeling and thought regarding each gift or attribute we seek. 
• Fourth, as we consecrate the refinement of God-given attributes to Him through loving service to others, we prepare ourselves more fully; and when He does appear to us, we will be like Him. As we magnify any gift or attribute from God we receive a new heart, a pure heart. As we increasingly think and act like Him, the attributes of the natural man will slip away to be replaced by the heart and the mind of Christ. We become like Him as we truly receive Him. (See “Holiness”.) As we become like Him, our attentions turn to the welfare of our fellowman. The way we treat others with patience, kindness, a gentle acceptance and a desire to play a positive role in their lives becomes the indicator of how we are progressing as His disciples. 

Summary

Deep within the center of our beings there is an infinite well of love. As we come to know Christ through a continual remission of sins, the attributes of the natural man will slip away to be replaced by the heart and the mind of Christ. This unlocks the pure and infinite source of love that is within us to flow freely to the surface and to touch all that we see, think, feel, and do. This pure gift of charity is given only to those who seek it, only to those who earnestly pray for it, and only to true disciples of Christ. As we walk this path and overcome ego through loving service, consecration of our refined attributes, and by refusing to compare ourselves to others, we experience true happiness, love, and peace. As we pray daily, study His word, and follow His voice, we remain unencumbered through loving service to others. As His disciples, we restore charity’s circular love as we go about with unfailing compassion, patience, and mercy doing good to the poor, afflicted, and distressed. We love others because He first loved us. This is the reciprocating cycle of charity that never faileth. It is available to anyone who will enable the process described above to see, think, feel, and act as Jesus Christ.

Postscript: Imagine what will happen within our circles of influence as each of us cherish, watch over, and love one another as we want to be loved! Each utopia that has existed upon this earth, where man lived to the age of a tree or was translated, occurred through the process described above. Wherever a critical mass of disciples of Christ truly walk this path, Zion or Utopia is there established, and this is the only process by which it is established. It is not a stretch of the imagination to desire, seek, and receive the pure gift of charity, or to receive the other perfect attributes of Christ. By so doing you will enjoy greater health, happiness, and longevity. You will also help to establish the long-awaited Zion and will enjoy a spirit of peace and love throughout your lifetime. Most gloriously, by so doing you will qualify to meet the fountain of infinite pure love and to see His face, whilst you live!