Positive Influences on the Mind
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wrong, a principle in your heart to choose the right, and now you want
to turn your face away from the briers and thorns to the flowers.
Let the eye be fixed on the Sun of righteousness. Do not make your
dear, loving heavenly Father a tyrant; but see His tenderness, His pity,
His large, broad love, and His great compassion. His love exceeds
that of a mother for her child. The mother may forget, “yet will I not
forget thee” (
Isaiah 49:15
), saith the Lord. Jesus wants you to trust
Him. May His blessing rest upon you in a rich measure is my earnest
prayer.
You were born with an inheritance of discouragement, and you
need constantly to be encouraging a hopeful state of feelings. You
received from both father and mother a peculiar conscientiousness
and also inherited from your mother a disposition to demerit self
rather than to exalt self. A word moves you, while a heavy judgment
only is sufficient to move another of a different temperament. Were
you situated where you knew you were helping others, however hard
the load, however taxing the labor, you would do everything with
cheerfulness, and distress yourself that you did nothing.
Samuel, who served God from his childhood, needed a very dif-
ferent discipline than one who had a set, stubborn, selfish will. Your
childhood was not marked with grossness, although there were the
errors of humanity in it. The whole matter has been laid open before
[810]
me. I know you far better than you know yourself. God will help you
to triumph over Satan if you will simply trust Jesus to fight these stern
battles that you are wholly unable to fight in your finite strength.
You love Jesus, and He loves you. Now, just patiently trust in Him,
saying over and over, Lord, I am Thine. Cast yourself heartily on
Christ. It is not joy that is the evidence that you are a Christian. Your
evidence is in a “Thus saith the Lord.” By faith, I lay you, my dear
sister, on the bosom of Jesus Christ.
Read the following lines and appropriate the sentiment as your
own: