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Cooperating With Heaven, January 21
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God
which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
Philippians 2:12, 13
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Man, in the work of saving of the soul, is wholly dependent upon God.
He cannot of himself move one step toward Christ unless the Spirit of God
draws him, and this drawing is ever, and will continue until man grieves
the Holy Ghost by his persistent refusal....
The Spirit is constantly showing to the soul glimpses of the things
of God, and then a divine presence seems to hover near, and if the mind
responds, if the door of the heart is opened, Jesus abides with the human
agent....
The Spirit of God does not propose to do our part, either in the willing
or the doing.... As soon as we incline our will to harmonize with God’s
will, the grace of Christ stands ready to cooperate with the human agent;
but it will not be the substitute to do our work independent of our resolving
and decidedly acting. Therefore it is not the abundance of light, and
evidence piled upon evidence, that will convert the soul. It is only the
human agent accepting the light, arousing the energies of the will, realizing
and acknowledging that which he knows is righteousness and truth, and
thus cooperating with the heavenly ministrations appointed of God in the
saving of the soul.
If the sinner or the backslider settles himself in disobedience and sin,
the light may flash from heaven all about him, ... without breaking the
bewitching power of falsehood and the spell of the world’s deception....
Obey not the voice of the deceiver, which is in harmony with the
unsanctified will, but obey the impulse that God has given.... Everything
is at stake. Will the human agent cooperate with the divine “to will and
to do”? If man places his will on God’s side, fully surrendering self to
God’s will, the high and holy endeavor of the human agent takes down the
obstruction he himself has erected, the rubbish is cleared away from the
door of the heart, the defiance barricading the soul is broken down. The
door of the heart is opened and Jesus enters, to abide as a welcome guest.
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