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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
sometimes deal with them in an unsparing manner. You have not been
a tenderhearted, pitiful, courteous man, as was your Exemplar. You
need to soften your spirit, to be more courteous and kind, and to have
greater disinterested benevolence. You need to bring your soul into
closer communion with God by earnest prayer mixed with living faith.
Every prayer offered in faith lifts the suppliant above discouraging
doubts and human passions. Prayer gives strength to renew the conflict
with the powers of darkness, to bear trials patiently, and to endure
hardness as good soldiers of Christ.
While you take counsel with your doubts and fears, or try to solve
everything that you cannot see clearly before you have faith, your
perplexities will only increase and deepen. If you come to God, feeling
helpless and dependent, as you really are, and in humble, trusting
prayer make your wants known to Him whose knowledge is infinite,
who sees everything in creation and who governs everything by His
will and word, He can and will attend to your cry, and will let light
shine into your heart and all around you; for through sincere prayer
your soul is brought into connection with the mind of the Infinite. You
may have no remarkable evidence at the time that the face of your
Redeemer is bending over you in compassion and love, but this is even
so. You may not feel His visible touch, but His hand is upon you in
love and pitying tenderness.
God loves both of you and wants to save you with an abundant
salvation. But it must not be in your way, but in God’s own appointed
way. You must comply with the conditions laid down in the Scriptures
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of truth, and God will as surely fulfill on His part as His throne is sure.
Because the admonitions that God sends to His people are humiliating
to human nature, you must not, my brother, rise up against these
reproofs and warnings. You need to die daily, to experience a daily
crucifixion to self.
According to the light that God has given me in vision, wickedness
and deception are increasing among God’s people who profess to keep
His commandments. Spiritual discernment to see sin as it exists, and
then to put it out of the camp, is decreasing among God’s people; and
spiritual blindness is fast coming upon them. The straight testimony
must be revived, and it will separate those from Israel who have ever
been at war with the means that God has ordained to keep corruptions
out of the church. Wrongs must be called wrongs. Grievous sins must