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Testimonies for the Church Volume 1
do for you that which He has left for you to do. Brother C deserves
pity. He has so long felt unhappy that life has become a burden to
him. It need not be thus. His imagination is diseased, and he has so
long kept his eyes on the dark picture that if he meets with adversity
or disappointment, he imagines that everything is going to ruin, that
he will come to want, that everything is against him, that he has the
hardest time of anyone; and thus his life is made wretched. The more
he thinks thus, the more miserable he makes his life and the lives
of all around him. He has no reason to feel as he does; it is all the
work of Satan. He must not suffer the enemy thus to control his mind.
He should turn away from the dark and gloomy picture to that of the
loving Saviour, the glory of heaven, and the rich inheritance prepared
for all who are humble and obedient, and who possess grateful hearts
and abiding faith in the promises of God. This will cost him an effort,
a struggle; but it must be done. Your present happiness and your future,
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eternal happiness depend upon your fixing your mind upon cheerful
things, looking away from the dark picture, which is imaginary, to the
benefits which God has strewn in your pathway, and beyond these, to
the unseen and eternal.
You belong to a family who possess minds not well balanced,
gloomy and depressed, affected by surroundings, and susceptible to
influences. Unless you cultivate a cheerful, happy, grateful frame of
mind, Satan will eventually lead you captive at his will. You can be a
help, a strength to the church where you reside, if you will obey the
instructions of the Lord and not move by feeling, but be controlled
by principle. Never allow censure to escape your lips, for it is like
desolating hail to those around you. Let cheerful, happy, loving words
fall from your lips.
Brother C, your organism is not the best for your spiritual advance-
ment, yet the grace of God can do much to correct the defects in your
character and strengthen and more perfectly develop those powers of
mind which are now weak and need force. In so doing you will bring
into control those lower qualities which have overpowered the higher.
You are like a man whose sensibilities are benumbed. You need to
have the truth take hold of you and work a thorough reformation in
your life. “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed
by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good,
and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” This is what you need, and