When you long for your prayer to be answered, when your need is great and you ask great things, then your way is so clear.
Take the next simple duty that lies to your hand and seek to do that thoroughly . . . and so with the next.
As you do it, remember My Promise.
Be faithful in that which is least, and I will make thee ruler over many things.
I am beside you. A very human Jesus, who understands all your weaknesses, and sees too your struggles and conquests.
Remember, I was the Companion of the Weak. Ready to supply their hunger. Teaching My followers their responsibility towards all, not only those near and dear to them, but to the multitude.
“Lord, send them away that they may go into the villages and buy themselves victuals,” said My disciples, with no sympathy for the fainting, exhausted men, women, and children.
But I taught that Divine Sympathy includes responsibility. “Give ye them to eat,” was My reply. I taught that pity, without a remedy for the evil, or the need, is worthless.
“Give ye them to eat.” Wherever your sympathy goes, you must go too, if possible. Remember that in thinking of your own needs. Claim from Me the same attitude now.
The servant is not above his Master, certainly not in Spiritual attainments, and what I taught My disciples, I do.
So fainting and needy, by the lakeside of life, know that I will supply your need, not grudgingly, but in full measure.
“And let us not be weary in well doing:
for in due season we shall reap,
if we faint not.” Galatians 6:9
In your life and on your home you have unfurled the flag of My Kingship. Keep that flag flying.
Depression, disobedience, and want of faith, these are the half-masts of My Kingdom’s flag.
Full and free, above earth’s fogs and smokes, keep My flag flying high.
“The King is there, they serve the King,” should be upon the lips and in the hearts of all who see it. Those who know you must, too, join those who fly My Flag.
The eternal God is thy refuge. Deuteronomy 33:27
A place to flee to, a sanctuary. An escape from misunderstanding, from yourself. You can get away from others into the quiet of your own being, but from yourself, from the sense of your failure, your weakness, your sins and shortcomings, whither can you flee?
To the Eternal God your refuge. Till in His Immensity you forget your smallness, meanness, limitations.
Till the relief of safety merges into Joy of appreciation of your refuge, and you absorb the Divine, and absorbing, gain strength to conquer.
The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God
of Jacob defend thee: Send thee help from the sanctuary,
and strengthen thee out of Zion. Psalm 20:1,2
What emphasis has been laid down upon the wonder of My walking upon the Sea, and upon My feeding the multitudes. In the eyes of the Heaven those were miracles of small importance.
Nature was My servant, the creation of the Father; and the Father and I are one. Over her and over the material world I had complete control. My acts were natural, spontaneous, requiring no premeditation, beyond the selection of a suitable moment for their performance.
But My real Miracle work was in the hearts of men, because there I was limited by the Father’s gift of free will to man. I could not command man as I could the waves. I was subject to the limitations the Father had set. No man must be coerced into My Kingdom.
Think of all that My restraint cost Me. I could have forced the world to accept Me, but I should then have broken faith with all mankind.
If two of you shall agree.
I am the Truth. Every word of Mine is true. Every promise of Mine shall be fulfilled.
First, “gathered together in My Name,” bound by a common loyalty to Me, desires only of doing My Will.
Then, when this is so, I am present too, a self-invited guest, and when I am there and one with you, voicing the same petition, making your demands Mine, then it follows the request is granted.
But what man has failed perhaps to realize is all that lies behind the words. For two to agree about the wisdom of a request, to be certain it should be granted, and will be granted (if it should be), is not the same as two agreeing to pray that request.
Nor forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the
manner of some is; but exhorting one another, and so much the
more, as ye see the day approaching. Hebrews 10:25
Walk very carefully in life. It is a wonderful thing to be known as one who loves Me and seeks to follow Me, but it is also a very great responsibility.
So much that you may do, in which you are not guided by Me, may be condemned as unworthy, and a slur be cast upon My followers and My Church.
There are no moments in your life from now on which you can be free from great responsibility. Never forget this. My soldiers are ever on active service.
Jesus, we come to Thee with Joy.
The Joy of meeting Me should more and more fill your lives. It will. Your lives must first of all be narrowed down, more and more, into an inner circle of life with Me (the three of us), and then, as that friendship becomes more and more engrossing, more and more binding, then gradually, the circle of your interests will widen.
For the present do not think of it as a narrow life. I have My Purpose, My Loving Purpose, in cutting you away from other work and interests, for the time.
To work from large interests and a desire for great activities and world movements, to the inner circle life with Me, is really the wrong way. That is why so often, when, through all these activities and interests, a soul finds Me, I have to begin our Friendship by cutting away the ties that bind it to the outer and wider circle. When it has gained strength and learned its lesson in the inner circle, it can then widen its life, working this time from within out, taking then to each contact, each friendship, the inner circle influence.
And this is to be your way of life.
This is the way of the Spirit. Man so often misunderstands this.
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught
up together with them in the clouds to meet
the Lord in the air. 1 Thessalonians 4:17
The path has been tried, every step has been planned with a view to your progress. Never test your work by what others can accomplish, or by what they leave undone. Yours to master the task I have set you. Go forward in My Strength and in the Spirit of Adventure.
Undreamed of heights can be attained in this way. Never question your capability. That has been for Me to decide. No experienced Leader would set a follower a task beyond his Power. Trust Me, your Leader.
The World would have been won for Me ere this had My followers been dauntless, inspired by their faith in Me. It is not humility to hesitate to do the great task I set. It is a lack of faith in Me.
To wait to feel strong is cowardly. My strength is provided for the task, but I do not provide it for the period of hesitancy before you begin.
How much of My Work goes undone through lack of faith. Again and again might it be said — “He did not many mighty works through this follower’s unbelief.”
Not our wills but Thine, O Lord.
Man has so misunderstood Me in this. I want no will laid grudgingly upon My Altar. I want you to desire and love My Will, because therein lies your happiness and Spirit-rest.
Whenever you feel that you cannot leave the choice to Me, then pray, not to be able to accept My Will, but to know and love Me more. With that knowledge, and the Love, will come the certainty that I know best, and that I want only the best for you and yours.
How little those know Me who think I wish to thwart them. How often I am answering their own prayers in the best and quickest way.
Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me;
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. Luke 22:42
