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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
feelings and experience are altogether too narrow, and your labors are
of the same character.
In order to be a blessing to your people, you need to improve
in many things. You should cultivate courtesy and cherish a tender
sympathy for all. You should have the crowning grace of God, which
is love. You criticize too much and are not so forbearing as you must
be if you would win souls. You could have much more influence if
you were less formal and rigid, and were actuated more by the Holy
Spirit. Your fear of being led by men is too great. God uses men as
His instruments and will use them as long as the world shall stand.
The angels who fell were anxious to become independent of God.
They were very beautiful, very glorious, but dependent on God for
their happiness and for the light and intelligence they enjoyed. They
fell from their high estate through insubordination. Christ and His
church are inseparable. To neglect or despise those whom God has
appointed to lead out and to bear the responsibilities connected with
His work and with the advancement and spread of the truth is to reject
the means which God has ordained for the help, encouragement, and
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strength of His people. To pass these by and think your light must
come through no other channel than directly from God places you in a
position where you are liable to deception and to be overthrown.
God has placed you in connection with His appointed helps in
His church that you may be aided by them. Your former connection
with spiritualism makes your danger greater than it otherwise would
be, because your judgment, wisdom, and discrimination have been
perverted. You cannot of yourself always tell or discern the spirits; for
Satan is very wily. God has placed you in connection with His church
that they may help you.
You are sometimes too formal, cold, and unsympathizing. You
must meet the people where they are, and not place yourself too far
above them and require too much of them. You need to be all softened
and subdued by the Spirit of God while you preach to the people. You
should educate yourself as to the best manner of laboring to secure
the desired end. Your labor must be characterized by the love of
Jesus abounding in your heart, softening your words, molding your
temperament, and elevating your soul.
You frequently talk too long when you do not have the vitalizing
influence of the Spirit of heaven. You weary those who hear you.