Page 243 - This Day With God (1979)

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Look to the Light, August 12
Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer.
Romans 12:12
.
God demands of us to exercise fervent piety under all and every circum-
stance in harmony with Jesus Christ. Seek for work in His lines because this
is the fruit of true godliness. Win souls to Jesus.
If you feel at liberty to moan and groan over bereavements, things that are
past, out of your keeping, things you cannot change or alter, you will neglect
the present duties lying directly in your pathway. Look unto Jesus, who is
the Author and Finisher of your faith. Turn your attention from subjects
which make you gloomy and sad, for you become an agent in the hands of
the enemy to multiply gloom and darkness and you will make the atmosphere
surrounding your soul dark and forbidding. Although severe afflictions may
come upon you, it is your business to look up, and to see light in Jesus....
If you are exclusively engaged in dwelling upon your own sorrows and
darkness, thinking God has dealt hard with you, your religion is not uplifting
but is depressing. You become a shadow of darkness, hard and complaining,
when exclusively shut up to your own sorrows.
Sister McCalpin was present and she was doing this.
She had lost her son, who was not prepared to die. She spoke, with others,
in the social meeting. Oh, her heart was so heavy and sad, but she said she was
comforted with the words spoken by Sister White. We had a good, profitable
social meeting, then this afflicted sister spoke to me about her son they had
buried a few weeks before, dying without hope, and the sorrow and grief she
had felt. I entreated her to leave the mourning for the dead, which would do
no good to worry over; that she as a mother should wisely and mercifully
care for the living children, and that she had not a moment to devote to vain
regrets, but to gird up the loins of her mind and go to work and try to bring her
children to Jesus and herself surrender to Christ that she might grow in grace
and the knowledge of Christ. Working in Christ’s lines, she would never grow
cold but become identified with the Saviour in all His plans.—
Manuscript 83,
August 12, 1893
, diary.
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