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What True Surrender To God Involves, April 4
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
John 17:3
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Wait not for some magical change to be wrought in you, without taking the
requisite steps yourself. Life must be with you a humble working out your own
salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to will and to
do of His good pleasure. Halt not, but escape for your life....
Christ requires that we shall press together, that we shall be one with Him as
He is one with the Father. You must depend on God, be disciplined and trained
for the higher life. Yes, depend on God; wait His pleasure; follow Him; rely in
obedience on the strength of His Word.
To obey when it seems the hardest is true surrender to God. This will quicken
your moral nature and subdue your pride. Learn to submit your will to God’s will,
and you will be made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.—
Manuscript
12, 1888
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A general faith is not enough. We must put on the robe of Christ’s righteousness
and wear it openly, bravely, decidedly, exhibiting Christ, and not expect too
much of finite man, but keep looking unto Jesus, and become ravished with
the perfections of His character. Then we shall individually make manifest the
character of Jesus, and make it evident that we are invigorated by the truth; because
it sanctifies the soul and brings into captivity every thought to the obedience of
Christ.—
Letter 14, 1891
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Every missionary will have hard battles to fight with self, and these combats
will not become fewer. But if we are constantly growing in Christian experience, if
we continue to look to Jesus in faith, strength will be given us for every emergency.
All the powers and faculties of a regenerated nature must be brought into constant,
daily exercise. Every day we shall have occasion to crucify self, to war against
inclination and a perverse temperament that would draw the will in a wrong
direction. The repose and triumph of victory are not yet ours, except as we by
faith enter into the victory that Christ has gained for us.—
Letter 4, 1892
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The promises of God accepted in genuine faith have a fragrant influence upon
the life and the character, making the human agent to reflect the image of the
Divine.... God works on His part..., imparting grace to the one who imparts in his
life the graces given him in representing genuine sanctification to the world in his
own character.—
Manuscript 45, 1900
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