Unity Among Different Nationalities
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power of God. I beseech you to draw nigh to him that you may realize
his rich blessing before this meeting closes.
There are those here upon whom great light in warnings and re-
proofs has shone. Whenever reproofs are given, the enemy seeks to
create in those reproved a desire for human sympathy. Therefore I
would warn you to beware lest in appealing to the sympathy of others,
and going back over your past trials, you again err on the same points
in seeking to build yourselves up. The Lord brings his erring children
over the same ground again and again; but if they continually fail
to heed the admonitions of his Spirit, if they fail to reform on every
point where they have erred, he will finally leave them to their own
weakness.
I entreat you, brethren, to come to Christ and drink; drink freely
of the water of salvation. Do not appeal to your own feelings. Do not
think that sentimentalism is religion. Shake yourselves from every
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human prop, and lean heavily upon Christ. You need a new fitting up
before you are prepared to engage in the work of saving souls. Your
words, your acts, have an influence upon others; and you must meet
that influence in the day of God. Jesus says, “Behold, I have set before
thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” Light is shining from that
door, and it is our privilege to receive it if we will. Let us direct our
eyes within that open door, and try to receive all that Christ is willing
to bestow.
Each one will have a close struggle to overcome sin in his own
heart. This is at times a very painful and discouraging work; because,
as we see the deformities in our character, we keep looking at them,
when we should look to Jesus and put on the robe of his righteousness.
Every one who enters the pearly gates of the city of God will enter
there as a conqueror, and his greatest conquest will have been over
self.
“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he
would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened
with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in
your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may
be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length,
and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth
knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.”