I am privileged to be with you here tonight. I have been looking forward to coming to this Church at some time, we didn’t know that we would get the call quite so soon, but here we are, thank you for inviting us.
I have been struck very much as I expect you have, that the theme has been set for this evening. It’s about love. It’s not about sentimental love, it’s about that very deep love. We call it unconditional love. When Jesus said ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ you’re going to think about that because how do you love yourself? Do you love yourself? It’s a big question. We hear a lot these days about mental health and a lot of it I feel is because people have forgotten how to love themselves. We can’t really love anybody else in a real way unless we start with ourselves.
How do we do that?
Some years ago we wouldn’t of had bank holiday last weekend. It would be next Monday, and why was that? Because next Sunday is pentecost – when the Church, the Anglo Church and the Catholic Church celebrated the becoming of the Holy Spirit. That would be celebrated by having a bank holiday, but of course there are a lot of people who don’t have anything in their minds, or their thoughts, or indeed in their hearts that has anything to do with the Holy Spirit. So, that bank holiday has changed, but the fact remains that the history of pentecost is there and for me the fact is that Spirit, Holy Spirit, call it what you will, the Holy Spirit is essential to the being of love in my mind.
A wise woman once wrote that God, the Holy Spirit is closer to us than our breath. And she was talking to children when she wrote that, and I believe that I am Spirit as well as I am a human being and that the Spiritual part of me continues for eternity, it will never die. The scientists tell us that you cannot kill energy and we are all energy, so scientists tell us that we are all energy and you can’t kill it, you can only transform it. So they’re already on our side but they don’t know it. The fact is of course that we are transformed from every past from this live and we put away this bits of body that so often don’t often work so well these days. That crucial part of us, that core of each one of us as an individual which is Spirit continues and that’s a wonderful thing, and it’s wonderful to know that, and to have that understanding. Not only to have that understanding, but week after week to have the proof in services such as this. What a wonderful thing. But you see when that happens, when we all understand it, it means we are starting to have a relationship with our higher selves, with that part of us which is Spirit which is part of the Holy Spirit.
I believe that we are all connected in a spiritual way with our God. Whatever you may call God, I imagine that here in this church we understand it in a particular way. But even so, if I went round you and said ‘what do you think God is, or who?’ I would get a different answer from everyone. Because it is down to experience, it is down to understanding, where our understanding is, how much Spirit has been willing because of the way we have been growing to show us. I do believe that Spiritual growth is something that is a) possible and b) dependant on the prewill of the individual to want to have it, to want to grow to have that relationship with that Spirit within. And so to have an understanding which expands, that’s the exciting part to me of living, of being a spiritualist.
The dear lady who accompanies me on the platform tonight brought me into this knowledge over 25 years ago, and then we lost contact and it wasn’t until the last year that we got together again and got married.
But Spirit has their way, Spirit knows if there is true love it can’t be destroyed. It’s there and it will remain and that is the wonder to me of the life that has a connection to the Spirit, to God. And that’s so important to me, it just brings excitement to my life because everyday is a new experience, new possibilities, new potentials and expansion of understanding. And isn’t that a wonderful thing? I’ll leave you to think about that.
This is a transcript of a Spiritual Address given by David Grove during our Divine Service on 2nd June 2019, at Thundersley Christian Spiritualist Church.
