October 16 – The Imprisoned God
Our Lord, we praise Thee and bless Thy Name forever.
Yes! Praise. That moment, in the most difficult place, your sorrow is turned to Joy, your fret to praise, the outward circumstances change from those of disorder to order, of chaos to calm.
The beginning of all reform must be in yourselves. However restricted your circumstances, however little you may be able to remedy financial affairs, you can always turn to yourselves, and seeing something not in order there, seek to right that.
As all reform is from within out, you will always find the outward has improved too. To do this is to release the imprisoned God-Power within you.
That Power, once operative, will immediately perform miracles. Then indeed shall your mourning be turned into Joy.
Fret not thyself because of evildoers … Trust in the Lord, and
do good … Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give
thee the desires of thine heart. Psalm 37:1-4
October 17 – Faith-Vision
Turn your eyes to behold Me. Look away from sordid surroundings, from lack of beauty, from the imperfections in yourselves and those around you. Then you who have the Faith-Vision will see all you could and do desire in Me.
In your unrest behold My calm, My rest. In your impatience, My unfailing patience. In your lack and limitations, My Perfection.
Looking at Me you will grow like Me, until men say to you, too, that you have been with Jesus.
As you grow like Me you will be enabled to do the things I do, and greater works than these shall ye do because I go unto My Father.
From that place of abiding, limited by none of humanity’s limitations, I can endue you with the all-conquering, all miracle working Power of your Divine Brother and Ally.
Looking unto Jesus … who for the joy that was set before him endured the
cross … and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2
October 18 – Loneliness
And they all forsook him, and fled. — Mark 14:50.
Down through the ages all the simple acts of steadfast devotion, of obedience in difficulty, of loving service, have been taken by Me as an atonement for the loneliness My humanity suffered by that desertion.
Yet I, who had realized to the full the longing of the Father to save, and His rejection by men, the misunderstanding of His mind and purpose, how could I think that I should not know that desertion too?
Learn, My children, from these words two lessons. Learn first that I know what loneliness, desertion, and solitude mean. Learn that every act of yours of faithfulness is a comfort to My Heart. Learn too that it was to those deserters I gave the task of bringing My Message to mankind. To those deserters, those fearful ones, I gave My Power to heal, to raise to life.
Earth’s successes are not the ones I use for the great work of My Kingdom. “They all forsook Him and fled.” Learn My tender understanding and pardon of human frailty. Not until man has failed has he learnt true humility. And it is only the humble who can inherit the earth.
Then said Jesus, “Father, forgive them; for they
know not what they do.” Luke 23:34
October 19 – Hear My Answer
Lord, hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto Thee.
The cry of the human soul is never unheard. It is never that God does not hear the cry, but that man fails to hear the response.
Like parts of a machine, made to fit each into the other, and to work in perfect harmony, so is the human cry and the God-response.
But man treats this cry as if it were a thing alone, to be heard, or not, as it pleased God, not realizing that the response was there in all eternity, awaiting the cry, and only man’s failing to heed, or to listen, kept him unaware of the response, and unsaved, unhelped by it.
If we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if
we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that
we have the petitions that we desired of him. 1 John 5:14,15
October 20 – No Burden Irks
Our Lord and our God. Be it done unto us according to Thy Word.
Simple acceptance of My Will is the Key to Divine Revelation. It will result in both Holiness and Happiness. The way to the Cross may be a way of sorrow, but at its foot the burdens of sin and earth-desire are rolled away.
The yoke of My acceptance of My Father’s Will in all things is adjusted to My servants’ shoulders, and from that moment on no burden irks or presses.
But not only in the great decisions of life accept and welcome My Will. Try to see in each interruption, each task, however small, the same fulfillment of Divine intent.
Accept it, say your thanks for it. Do so until this becomes a habit, and the resulting Joy will transfigure and transform your lives.
Walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all
goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is
acceptable unto the Lord. Ephesians 5:8-10
October 21 – A Love Feast
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice,
and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him,
and he with me. — Revelation 3:20.
See, My children, the knocking rests upon no merit of yours — though it is in response to the longing of your heart for Me.
Keep, keep that listening ear. “If any man will hear My Voice.” Again no merit of yours. Only the ear bent to catch My tones, and to hear the sound of My gentle knocking.
Then listen: “If any man hear My Voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.”
What a feast! You think it would have been Joy to have been present at the Marriage Feast of Cana of Galilee, or to have been one of My disciples in the Upper Room, seated with Me at the Last Supper or one of the two at Emmaus, or one of the few for whom I prepared that Lakeside feast!
But oh! at each of these feasts, God-provided and God-championed as they were, you could not have known the rapture you may know as you hear the knocking and the Voice, and, opening, bid Me welcome to My Feast.
A Feast of tenderest companionship, of Divine Sustenance, truly a Love Feast.
Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live. Isaiah 55:3
October 22 – Home-Building
You are building up an unshakable faith. Be furnishing the quiet places of your souls now.
Fill them with all that is harmonious and good, beautiful, and enduring.
Home-build in the Spirit now, and the waiting time will be well spent.
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy
faith, praying in the Holy Ghost. Jude 1:20
October 23 – Hill of Sacrifice
You must trust to the end. You must be ready to go on trusting to the last hour.
You must know even when you cannot see . . . You must be ready, like My servant Abraham, to climb the very Hill of Sacrifice, to go to the very last moment, before you see My Deliverance.
This final test has to come to all who walk by Faith. You must rely on Me alone.
Look to no other arm, look for no other help. Trust in the Spirit Forces of the Unseen, not in those you see. Trust and fear not.
And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake:
but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. Matthew 10:22
October 24 – Salt of the Earth
Our Lord, we bless Thee and thank Thee for Thy Keeping Power.
Yes! “Kept by the Power of God” is a promise, and an assurance that holds Joy and Beauty for the believing soul.
The keeping that means security, safety, is wonderful. There is, too, the keeping that implies Life, freshness, purity, the being “kept unspotted from the world.”
Then there is the keeping that I ensure to those of whom I speak as the salt of the earth.
“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour it is henceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”
Only in very close contact with Me is the keeping Power realized. That keeping Power which maintains the salt at its freshest and best, and also preserves from corruption that portion of the world in which I place it.
What a work! Not by activity in this case, but simply by its existing, by its quality.
I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment;
lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. Isaiah 27:3
October 25 – No Unemployment
The Way of conquest over the material, the temporal, which all My disciples should know, is learned by the conquest of the physical, the self-life, in each of you.
So seek, in all things, to conquer. Take this as a very definite Guidance. Circumstances are adverse. Temporal power, as money, needs to be forthcoming.
Then seek daily more and more to obtain this self-conquest, and you are gaining surely, though you may not see it, conquest over the temporal forces and powers.
Unemployment would cease if man realized this.
If he has not the work let him make himself a conquering force, beginning with the conquest of all evil in himself, then in his home, then in all round him. He will have become a force that will be needed, and must be employed.
There are no idle hours in My Kingdom. Waiting may seem a time of inactivity, as far as the outer world is concerned, but it can, and should, be a time of great activity in the inner life, and the surrounding material plane.
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their
testimony: and they loved not their lives unto the death. Revelation 12:11
October 26 – Deserters
You must believe utterly. My Love can bear nothing less. I am so often “wounded in the house of My friends.” Do you think the spitting and scorn of My enemies, the mocking and reviling hurt me? No!
“They all forsook Him and fled.” “I know not the man.” These left their scars.
So now, it is not the unbelief of My enemies that hurts, but that My friends, who love and know Me, cannot walk all the way with Me, and doubt My Power to do all that I have said.
Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of
my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me. Psalm 41:9
October 27 – Days of Conquest
I see the loving, striving, not the defects. I see the conquest of your particular battle. I count it victory, a glad victory.
I do not compare it with the strenuous campaigns of My great Saints.
For you it is victory, and the angels rejoice, and your dear ones rejoice, as much as at any conquest noted, and rejoiced over, by Heaven.
My children, count the days of conquest as very blessed days.
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:57
October 28 – Glad Surprises
Our Lord, we know that all is well. We trust Thee for all. We love Thee increasingly. We bow to Thy Will.
Bow not as one who is resigned to some heavy blow about to fall or to the acceptance of some inevitable decision.
Bow as a child bows, in anticipation of a glad surprise being prepared for it by one who loves it.
Bow in such a way, just waiting to hear the loving word to raise your head, and see the glory and Joy and wonder of your surprise.
Do all things without murmurings and disputings. Philippians 2:14
October 29 – Discount Money
Never count success by money gained. That is not the mind of My Kingdom. Your success is the measure of My Will and Mind that you have revealed to those around you.
Your success is the measure of My Will that those around you have seen worked out in your lives.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2:5
October 30 – The Hardest Lesson
Wait and you shall realize the Joy of the one who can be calm and wait, knowing that all is well. The last, and hardest lesson, is that of waiting. So wait.
I would almost say tonight “Forgive Me, children, that I allow this extra burden to rest upon you even for so short a time.”
I would have you know this, that from the moment you placed all in My Hands, and sought no other aid, from that moment I have taken the quickest way possible to work out your salvation, and to free you.
There is so much you have had to be taught — to avoid future disaster. But the Friend with whom you stand by the grave of failure, of dead ambitions, of relinquished desires, that Friend is a Friend for all time.
Use this waiting time to cement the Friendship with Me, and to increase your Knowledge of Me.
Our soul waiteth for the Lord: he is our help and our shield. Psalm 33:20
October 31 – The Voice Again
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light into my path. — Psalm 119:105.
Yes! My Word, the Scriptures. Read them, study them; store them in your hearts, use them as you use a lamp to guide your footsteps.
But remember, My children, My Word is more even than that. It is the Voice that speaks to your hearts, that inner consciousness that tells of Me.
It is the Voice that speaks to you intimately, personally, in this sacred evening time. It is even more than that. It is I your Lord and Friend.
“And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Truly a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path.
Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might
not sin against thee. Psalm 119:11