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Selling the Birthright
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your life; to deny yourself, and eat and drink to the glory of God.
Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. You need to
practice temperance in all things. Here is a cross which you have
shunned. To confine yourself to a simple diet, which will preserve
you in the best condition of health, is a task to you. Had you lived up
to the light which Heaven has permitted to shine upon your pathway,
much suffering might have been saved your family. Your own course
of action has brought the sure result. While you continue in this
course, God will not come into your family and especially bless
you and work a miracle to save your family from suffering. A plain
diet, free from spices and flesh meats and grease of all kinds, would
prove a blessing to you and would save your wife a great amount of
suffering, grief, and despondency.
You have not pursued a course which would assure to you the
blessing of God. If you would have His blessing attend you, and His
presence abide in your family, you must obey Him, doing His will
irrespective of losses or gains or your own pleasure. You are not to
consult your desires, nor the approbation of worldlings who know
not God and seek not to glorify Him. If you walk contrary unto God,
He will walk contrary unto you. If you have other gods before the
Lord, your heart will be turned away from serving the only true and
living God, who requires the whole heart, the undivided affections.
All the heart, all the soul, all the mind, and all the strength, does
God require. He will accept of nothing short of this. No separation
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is allowed here; no half-hearted work will be accepted.
In order to render to God perfect service, you must have clear
conceptions of His requirements. You should use the most simple
food, prepared in the most simple manner, that the fine nerves of the
brain be not weakened, benumbed, or paralyzed, making it impossi-
ble for you to discern sacred things, and to value the atonement, the
cleansing blood of Christ, as of priceless worth. “Know ye not that
they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run,
that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is
temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown;
but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so
fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body,
and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have
preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”