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.
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.
