n e w c h u r c h l i f e : m ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5
want from us, and what kinds of things
should we do to serve Him? Will He
raise us up when we die? How? When?
How can people live after death? What
does being saved really mean? And
how can all this have any connection
with our daily lives?
Does God care about the little
things we do from day to day? Does He
even care about the big things we do?
How can our own individual lives have
any meaning to God?
Countless numbers of people
wondered about God and His ways for a very long time, and many people are
wondering the same things today. Many have wondered for so long that they
have even given up hope of finding satisfactory answers.
But these answers are just what the Heavenly Doctrines give us, in a
beautifully full outpouring of love and wisdom from the Lord through heaven.
He teaches us plainly and directly about Himself, explaining clearly who He is,
so that we may know Him. And He tells us about His ways – not only why He
wants us to be happy but also what we can do so that He can make us happy.
He tells us about the life after death, in great detail, and He explains
precisely how the spirit – the real person – is drawn out of the body, not after
waiting for many years in a rotting grave but immediately after we die. He tells
us what life in heaven is like, so that we can use our lives on earth to get ready
for true happiness – not worshipping, or praying, or singing all the time, but by
loving our neighbors in all the ways we can find to do good to them.
One of the most wonderful things of all: He tells us how we can work
for conjugial love (true married love), not just the temporary romantic love
described in movies and books, but the permanent conjugial love between two
people who will grow to love each other more and more in marriage forever.
And who does not want that?
These and many more are the answers that the Lord gives us. That is the
reason the New Church puts so much emphasis on reading the Lord’s Word
– the Old and New Testaments and the Heavenly Doctrines. It is easy to forget
the Lord’s wisdom unless we continue to read His Word and learn to find
enjoyment from gradually learning more and more about Him and His ways.
It is not that the Word tells us outright every little thing we should do. That
would not leave us free and we wouldn’t like it at all. He wants us to follow Him
by using our heads to decide what we should do. So we should study the Word,
not because it will tell us exactly what we should do tomorrow, but because
The newness of the
New Church is not
from ourselves, but
from the Lord, because
He has now revealed
things that people have
not known before.
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