To Attain Him: Step 4
Prepare your mind with child-like faith, a thankful attitude and reflections that bring love to it.
Childlike belief ~ faith ~ is the key.
Then ~ what is next?
What are these ‘progressive steps of righteousness’ resulting in LOVE?
170:3.3 It is in the consideration of the technique of receiving God’s forgiveness [capacity] that the attainment of the righteousness of the kingdom is revealed. Faith is the price you pay for entrance into the family of God; but forgiveness [mercy] is the act of God which accepts your faith as the price of admission. And the reception of the forgiveness of God by a kingdom believer involves a definite and actual experience and consists in the following four steps, the kingdom steps of inner righteousness:
170:3.4 1. God’s forgiveness is made actually available and is personally experienced by man just in so far as he forgives his fellows. [they are not our children, they are His children]
170:3.5 2. Man will not truly forgive his fellows unless he loves them as himself.
170:3.6 3. To thus love your neighbor as yourself is the highest ethics.
ethics
n. The study of principles relating to right and wrong conduct.
n. The standards that govern the conduct of a person
4. Moral conduct, true righteousness, becomes, then, the natural result of such love.
This is not a ‘theory or concept’ of love. It is the real thing comprehended by actual experience with our indwelling Father in personal spiritual worship and then we PRACTICE this love by extending it to our fellows. This is the progression of growth. 170:3.7
It therefore is evident that the true and inner religion of the kingdom unfailingly and increasingly tends to manifest itself in practical avenues of social service. Jesus taught a living religion that impelled its believers to engage in the doing of loving service. [Not acts done for profit...monetarily or in ANY other form...but altruistic] But Jesus did not put ethics in the place of religion. He taught religion as a cause and ethics as a result. 170:3.8
Do we want to FEEL free from emotional strife...depression...painful memories...shame...anything like these that cause us to lose integrity of ‘living’?
This is the answer.
Faith is all that is required.