You are being led forth. You have crossed the Red Sea. Your wilderness wanderings are nearly over. Behold I make all things new.
A new birth, a new heart, a new life, a new song.
Let this time be to you a time of renewal.
Cast away all that is dead. Truly live the Risen Life. In mind and spirit turn out all that offends.
Lord, give us Power to conquer temptation as Thou didst in the wilderness.
The very first step towards conquering temptation is to see it as temptation. To dissociate yourself from it.
Not to think of it as something resulting from your tiredness, or illness, or poverty, or nerve-strain, when you feel you might well excuse yourself for yielding, but first to realize very fully that when you have heard My voice (“the Heavens opened,” as it were) and are going to fulfill your mission to work for me and to draw souls to me, you must expect a mighty onslaught from the evil one, who will endeavor with all his might to frustrate you, and to prevent your good work. Expect that.
Then when these little temptations, or big ones come, you will recognize them as planned by evil to thwart Me. Then for very love of Me you will conquer.
“And lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil: For
thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.” Matthew 6:13
Yield to My demands.
Obey My Will, that is God’s Will, for My MEAT was ever to do the Will of Him that sent Me. Obeying that Will, making it yours, all you will must be granted.
That Will is creative, secures perfect achievement, and, being of God (One and indivisible), secures all that is of God — Love, Peace, Joy, Power, in the measure that one of His creatures can absorb them.
The first law of giving is of the spirit world. Give to all you meet, or whose lives touch yours, of your prayers, your time, yourselves, your love, your thought. You must practice this giving first.
Then give of this world’s goods and money, as you have them given to you. To give money and material things, without having first made the habit daily, hourly, ever increasingly, of giving on the highest plane, is wrong.
Give, give, give all your best to all who need it.
Be great givers–great givers. Give as I said My Father in Heaven gives. He who makes His sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Remember, as I have told you before, give according to need, never according to desert. In giving, with the thought of supplying a real need you must closely resemble that Father in Heaven, the Great Giver.
As you receive, you must supply the needs of those I bring to you. Not questioning, not limiting. Their nearness to you, their relationship, must never count. Only their need is to guide you. Pray to become great givers.
“Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that
would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”
Matthew 5:43
It is not in the crowd that lovers learn to know and cherish each other. Is in the quiet times alone.
So with My own and Me. It is in the tender alone-times that they learn all that I can be to each.
Shut out the world with its all too-insistent claims. Then, because of the power and the peace and the joy that come to you, you will crave to be alone with Me.
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised,
and we esteemed him not. Isaiah 53:3
That these words strike a note of Beauty in the hearts of those attuned to hear the Beautiful, shows truly that the heart recognizes the need for the Man of Sorrows. That it sees nothing contemptible in One despised by the world. That it recognizes the vast difference between the values of Heaven, and those of the world. Fame and acclamations are accorded to earth’s great, contempt and rejection to the Son of God.
One of the things My disciples must ever seek to do is to set aside the valuation of the world, and judge only according to the values of Heaven. These are not for you. Do not seek the praise and the notice of men. You follow a despised Christ. See the mob is hooting, throwing stones, jeering, and yet in that quiet little throng there is a happiness and Joy the reviling crowds could never know.
Follow that little throng with stones and gibes, and it appears to be of men, mean, ludicrous, contemptible. Be one of the throng, and you feel the Majesty of God in the presence of Him, Who was despised and rejected of men. Wreaths around His Brow, and shouts of applause, would belittle that Majesty.
In your dark hours, when human help fails, keep very close to the Man of Sorrows. Feel My Hand of Love press yours in silent but complete understanding. I, too, was acquainted with grief. No heart can ache without My heart aching too. “He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.”
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world….For all that
is in the world,…is not of the Father, but is of the world.” 1 John 2:15-16
“Whom do men say that I am?” That is the first question I put to each man. My Claim, and the world’s interpretation of My Mission and its culmination must be a matter of consideration.
Then comes My second question, and upon the answer to this depends the man’s whole future. Here we have left the realm of the mind. Conviction must be of the heart. “Whom do you say that I am?”
“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” was Simon’s answer. Then, and not till then, was it possible, without infringement of man’s right of Free Will, to add to that profession of faith, the confirmation of My Father, “This is My Beloved Son.”
I had lived My Life naturally, as a man among men. But always with the Longing that those I had chosen might have the eyes to see, the faith to penetrate the Mystery of Incarnation, and to see Me, the God revealed.
The faith of a personal conviction is always cemented by the assurance of My Father. It is that which makes the faith of My true followers so unshakable.
Fret not your souls with puzzles that you cannot solve. The solution may never be shown you until you have left this flesh-life.
Remember what I have so often told you, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Only step by step, and stage by stage, can you proceed, in your journey upward.
The one thing to be sure of is that it is a journey with Me. There does come a Joy known to those who suffer with Me. But that is not the result of the suffering, but the result of the close intimacy with Me, to which suffering drove you.
“But the path of the just is as the
shining light, that shineth more and
more unto the perfect day.”
Proverbs 4:18
In performing the simple duty, and in the restraint you achieve in doing it, and not in the feverish looking for the answer to your prayer for the big thing — maybe you learn the one thing needful before I entrust you with what you desire.
With Me, and in obedience to My Will, you have now become suited for that answer.
These are learning-times, rather than testing-times.
Draw nigh, shoes off thy feet, in silent awe and adoration. Draw nigh, as Moses drew nigh to the burning bush.
I give you the loving intimacy of a friend, but I am God too, and the wonder of our intercourse, the miracle of your intimacy with Me, will mean the more to you, if sometimes you see the Majestic Figure of the Son of God.
Draw nigh in the utter confidence that is the sublimest prayer. Draw nigh. No far-off pleading, even to a God clothed with majesty of fire. Draw nigh. Draw nigh, not as a suppliant, but as a listener. I am this Suppliant, as I make known to you My wishes. For this Majestic God is Brother too, longing so intensely that you should serve your brother-man, and longing, even more intensely, that you should be true to that Vision He has of you.
You speak of your fellow man as disappointing you, as falling short of the ideal you had of him. But what of Me? For every man there is the ideal man I see in him. The man he could be, the man I would have him be.
Judge of My Heart when he fails to fulfill that promise. The disappointments of man may be great and many, but they are nothing as compared with My disappointments. Remember this, and strive to be the friend I see in my vision of you.
“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.”
James 4:8
