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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
confidence. You have not counseled with her as was your duty. You
keep your matters very much to yourself; you do not love to open your
heart to your wife and let her know your exercises of mind and your
real faith and feelings. You are secretive. Your wife does not hold the
honored place in your family that she deserves and that she is capable
of filling.
You feel that your wife should not interfere with your plans and
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arrangements, and you too frequently set your will and plans of oper-
ation in opposition to hers. You act as though her identity should be
merged in yours. You are not satisfied to have her act as though she had
an individuality, an identify of her own. God holds her accountable for
her individuality. You cannot save her, and she cannot save you. She
has a conscience of her own by which she must be guided. You are too
willing to be conscience for her, and sometimes for your children. God
has higher claims upon your wife than you can have. She must form a
character for herself, and she is accountable to God for the character
she develops.
You have a character to form, and you are accountable to God for
the character that you develop. You have a controlling influence and
possess a dictatorial spirit, which is not in accordance with the will
of God. You must cease to be so exacting. You have prided yourself
upon your fine taste and organization. You have nice ideas, but you
have not carried this exact and fine perception into your character
and into your deportment. You have failed to perfect a symmetrical
character. You have good ideas of order and arrangement, but all these
nice qualities of the mind have become blunted by being perverted.
You have not complied with the conditions laid down in the word of
God for becoming a son of God. All the promises of God are upon
conditions. “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith
the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and
will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters,
saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly
beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and
spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” This experience you
have yet to obtain. You love to get into the company of unbelievers
and hear them talk, and talk yourself. Jesus cannot be glorified with
your conversation, and if you had had the spirit of Jesus you could not