When you think of Me as your Rescuer, remember it is not only from sin, depression, or despair.
It is from the difficulties of life also and from perplexity as to your path. I solve your problems. I provide the channel through which help will come.
I send My messenger to prepare your way before you. I train you so that you may be fitted for your next task, so that you may be worthy of My promised blessing. That blessing which I long to shower on you.
“Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
My bravest are those who can anticipate the morning and feel in the night of sorrow that underlying Joy that tells of confident expectations of the morning.
But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep,
that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 1 Thessalonians 4:11
We would see Jesus.
This is still the cry of a hungry, dissatisfied, seeking world.
I look to My followers to satisfy that cry.
Reflect Me, that the seekers may see Me in you, and then go on to company with Me.
Rejoice at this as John rejoiced when he could point his disciples to Me with the brave and humble words, “He must increase, and I must decrease.”
Go on in Faith and Joy and Love.
I will be much entreated because I know that only in that earnest supplication, and the calm trust that results, does man learn strength and gain peace. Therefore I have laid that incessant, persistent pleading as a duty upon My disciples.
Never weary in prayer. When one day man sees how marvelously his prayer has been answered, then he will deeply, so deeply, regret that he prayed so little.
Prayer changes all. Prayer re-creates. Prayer is irresistible. So pray, literally without ceasing.
Pray until you almost cease to pray, because trust has become so rock-like, and then pray on because it has become so much a habit that you cannot resist it.
And always pray until Prayer merges into Praise. That is the only note on which true prayer should end. It is the Love and Laughter of your attitude towards man interpreted in the Pray and Praise of your attitude towards God.
Men ought always to pray, and not to faint. Luke 18:1
Too many hinder their work for Me by seeking to justify themselves. You are fighting for Christ the King, not for yourself. The explaining or justifying must be for Me.
In any difficulty with another put yourself in his place and pray that his difficulty may be solved for him.
This will bring about a solution of yours, and help you to see better that for which you should pray.
The power to realize the needs of those you contact can only be acquired by absorbing sympathy and understanding from My Life. So, time for knowing Me must be increasingly dear and necessary to you.
Your task is to show the Power of My Spirit working through a life of yielded will, and the Joy that transforms the life when this is so.
What can I say to you? Your heart is torn. Then remember “He bindeth up the broken hearts.” Just feel the tenderness of My Hands as I bind up your wounds.
You are very privileged, both of you. I share My plans and secrets with you and make known to you My Purposes, while so many have to grope on.
Try to rest on these words. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Then strive not for them, but untiringly, for the things of My Kingdom.
It is so strange to you mortals, you would think the material things first and then grow into the knowledge of Spiritual things. Not so in My Kingdom. It is spiritual things first and then material. So to attain the material redouble your efforts to acquire the Spiritual.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath sent me to heal
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, … to
set at liberty them that are bruised. Luke 4:18
Fasting is the starving out of self. It may not always be by food-abstinence. But it is an absolute essential of progress in the life with Me.
There is no standing still in the Christian life. If there is not progress there is retrogression.
I redeemed you. Bought you back from slavery to sin, of whatever kind.
So, when weakness overcomes you, and you yield to temptation, you make of My Redemption a mockery.
Remember that a loving Master delights in the intimacy of demands made, as much as He desires His followers and friends to delight in the tender intimacy of His demands.
The wonder of family life is expressed in the freedom with which a child makes demands and claims, quite as much as in the loving demands the parent makes upon all the Love and Joy of the children. Only as the result of frequent converse with Me, of much prayer to Me, of listening to and obedience to My behests comes that intimacy that makes My followers dare to approach Me as friend to friend.
Yield in all things to My tender insistence but remember I yield too to yours. Ask not only the big things I have told you, but ask the little tender signs of Love. Remember that I came as the world’s Great Lover. Never think of My Love as only a tender compassion and forgiveness. It is that, but it is also the Love of a Lover, who shows His Love by countless words and actions and by tender thought.
In each of you, too, remember there is God. That God I reverence and submit to, though I and My Father are one. So as man grows more and more like My Father in Heaven I bring to our friendship a reverent, tender Love. I see as no man can see the God in you.”
It is always given to man to see in his fellow man those aspirations and qualities he himself possesses. So only I, being really God, can recognize the God in man. Remember this, too, in your relation to others.
Your motives and aspirations can only be understood by those who have attained the same spiritual level. So do not vainly, foolishly, expect from others understanding. Do not misjudge them for not giving it. Yours is a foreign language to them.
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where
thou makest thy flock to rest at noon. Song of Solomon 1:7
The Way of Holiness differs for each of My followers as the character of each differs. My command for you is not necessarily My command for another.
My followers often forget this. Because I may have told them to take a certain road they are sure that you should be walking in the same way.
Heed them not. Remember, too, that a way of discipline for you may not be My Will for another.
What Joy follows self-conquest! You cannot conquer and control others, either of you, until you have completely conquered yourself.
Can you see yourselves absolutely unmoved? Think of Me before the mocking soldiers, being struck, spat upon, and answering never a word – never a word. Try to see that as Divine Power. Remember by that Power of perfect silence, perfect self-control, you can alone prove your right to govern.
Never judge. The heart of man is so delicate, so complex, only its Maker can know it. Each heart is so different, actuated by different motives, controlled by different circumstances, influenced by different sufferings.
How can one judge of another? Leave to Me the unraveling of the puzzles of life. Leave to Me the teaching of understanding. Bring each heart to Me, its Maker, and leave it with Me. Secure in the certainty that all that is wrong I can set right.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. Matthew 7:1
