Miranda Clendening

I grew up with the Urantia Book’s teachings. Every time I asked a deep ethical or philosophical question to my mom, she would always get out the Urantia Book and read to me what it said. She would also share with me truth that she felt and go into other beliefs and other religious perspectives which helped teach me to be a deep thinker and to seek truth everywhere. From age 18-26, I never picked up the UB. I didn’t know what I believed. I struggled with having a hard time believing in God because I couldn’t see him and I have a very scientific, analytical mind so the concept of God was hard to grasp. Many of the teachings of the Urantia Book were engrained in me from childhood and I believed in a world that had potential to be so good. At that time, I was in Nursing School and working full time and had my first 2 children, got divorced and had a really rough road in life.
After getting divorced, I moved to Colorado to ‘Start over’. It had been my dream since I was a kid to move to Colorado. A month after I moved here, my parents came to visit me and my mom took me to study group at Mo Siegel’s in Boulder because I voiced interest in wanting my life to be different and wanted to be involved with the Urantia group. This was my first study group to go to ever, as an adult. It was an awesome evening that changed my life.
We just happened to be reading that night the paper 181 “Final Admonitions and Warnings” where Jesus tells the apostles about the Spirit of Truth coming to be with them and we flipped to Paper 48 where it talks about Seraphim and it says “Even on Urantia, these seraphim teach the everlasting truth: If your own mind does not serve you well, you can exchange it for the mind of Jesus of Nazareth, who always serves you well. (48:6.15)”. We talked about it a little bit but no one really shared any personal experience with this so I left wondering if it could be true.
I couldn’t believe what we had read. As a struggling single mother, I had been through so many hard things and was having a really hard time forgiving some people in my life at that time. I felt so much anger and hurt that I couldn’t get rid of, to the point that I couldn’t go to sleep easily at night. I sincerely prayed that night for Jesus to take over my mind and do the thinking for a while. I confessed that I hadn’t been doing a very good job at decision making in the past 10 years and was having a really hard time. In that instant, a feeling I had never experienced came over me…A Peace That Passes Understanding’ (“1954.5) 181:1. The peace of Jesus is the joy and satisfaction of a God-knowing individual who has achieved the triumph of learning fully how to do the will of God while living the mortal life in the flesh. The peace of Jesus’ mind was founded on an absolute human faith in the actuality of the divine Father’s wise and sympathetic overcare… he enjoyed the comfort of that confidence which ever empowered him to proceed with his life purpose in the full assurance that he was achieving the Father’s will. (1955.1) 181:1.10

The peace of Jesus is, then, the peace and assurance of a son who fully believes that his career for time and eternity is safely and wholly in the care and keeping of an all-wise, all-loving, and all-powerful spirit Father. And this is, indeed, a peace which passes the understanding of mortal mind, but which can be enjoyed to the full by the believing human heart.). It was incredible. I could feel Jesus’ spirit so strong. I went to bed that night feeling totally at peace. I felt total forgiveness for everyone including myself which I hadn’t even realized before that that was what I needed most.

I continued every day to pray for Jesus to stay with me all the time. Over the next 6 months, I felt him literally make decisions for me. Sometimes words came out of my mouth when I would be talking to someone that I felt was more him speaking than me. They were words of encouragement to others, words of pure faith and strength, words to others about how beautiful they are and how much they are loved. I just felt like what I would say wasn’t anything I had ever thought about before or even a way I felt sometimes. It is hard to explain. I do know that just thinking about the whole experience makes me shed huge tears of Joy and gratitude every time. I vowed to dedicate my life to knowing Jesus more and letting him live through me. I wanted to find ways to help people and help spread this wonderful Truth.
That was 6 years ago, and don’t get me wrong, life has still been very hard. I have 2 more kids now. I still probably don’t make every decision in the best way I should. But, it is all a learning experience and every time I feel lost or drawn into darkness, I pray for Jesus to make the decisions for me and he is always there. It is me that forgets to reach out for him sometimes.
In the last 6 years, I have helped set up a holistic patient care non-profit clinic, helped organize walks for Peace, helped organize various volunteer groups, set up an online patient support group with more than 300 people, learned much about organic farming and Aquaponics (a combo of raising fish and plants in a symbiotic, very environmentally friendly way and my family and I are working on trying to help supply as many food banks as we can with organic produce and fish and helping them have their own Aquaponics systems using recycled materials. Recently I have had the pleasure of getting to be involved with Urantia Truthseekers and Ya-Ya Groups who are doing so many inspiring awesome things!! I’m very excited to be involved with young Urantia Book readers who are so full of the Spirit and so full of Light, Life, and Love! I have been working with my mom and a group here in Colorado to try to develop a values curriculum based on Urantia Book teachings combined with service projects for children and youth that could possibly be used as an afterschool program involving the whole family when possible. We have also been trying to work on a preparatory course to prepare young adults for marriage and family life. I am really, really excited to talk about this more with everyone at our upcoming conferences in Taos, NM and Chicago, IL this summer. We need as much help and feedback as we can get
I’m so excited to be part of this wonderful adventure in the bright future 🙂
Peace, Love, and Blessings, Miranda Clendening

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3 thoughts on “Miranda Clendening”

  1. Dear Miranda,

    Thanks for your inspiring story and the reminder that we can ask to have our mind replaced by the mind (and heart) of Jesus.

    This is such an amazing experience for me too, when the words come out that are so much wiser and more loving than I had ever dreamed.

    Cristina

  2. Preparing young adults for marriage and family life is a wonderful & worthy program. Young people of this day and generation need the experienced guidance of those who are currently experiencing a dynamic marriage and learning daily from the awesome responsibilities of child rearing as a dedicated couple.
    A loving and loyal relationship between a man and a woman contributes mightily to the ennoblement of family life. The revelation tells us that children learn more from their parents loyalties than by their example.
    Each day that we live, may we all be learning how to be better parents, partners, lovers and friends to each other & may we also realize that it’s not so much who we are today as who we are becoming day by day that is important to our heavenly Father.
    We grow by our willingness to share what we’ve learned as partners and parents. We deepen our capacity to love in that sharing. We steadily evolve the concept of the human family based on spiritual & divine principles that we are learning day by day in this life. We grow in our appreciation of the realization that we are part of the love-saturated, living Family of God.
    In truth & In His light

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