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Vital Principles of Relationship
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unite with their brethren and prefer to act alone. Instead of isolating
themselves, let them draw in harmony with their fellow laborers.
Unless they do this, their activity will work at the wrong time and
in the wrong way. They will often work counter to that which God
would have done, and thus their labor is worse than wasted.
Men to be Counselors, Not Rulers
“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen
thine heart.” Let us each wait on the Lord, and He will teach us how
to labor. He will reveal to us the work that we are best adapted to
perform. This will not lead men to start out in an independent spirit,
to promulgate new theories. In this time when Satan is seeking to
make void the law of God through the exaltation of false science,
we need to guard most carefully against everything that would tend
to lessen our faith and scatter our forces. As laborers together with
God, we should be in harmony with the truth, and with our brethren.
There should be counsel and cooperation.
Even in the midst of the great deceptions of the last days, when
delusive miracles will be performed in the sight of men in behalf of
satanic theories, it is our privilege to hide ourselves in Christ Jesus.
It is possible for us to seek and to obtain salvation. And in this time
of unusual peril, we must learn to stand alone, our faith fixed, not on
the word of man, but on the sure promises of God.
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Among all God’s workers there should be a spirit of unity and
harmony. The Lord has especially blessed some with an experience
that has fitted them to be wise counselors. In our several callings
there is to be a mutual dependence on one another for assistance. Of
this, Peter says:
“Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea,
all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility:
for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”
But this does not authorize any one man to undertake the work
of ordering his brethren arbitrarily to do as he thinks advisable, irre-
spective of their own personal convictions of duty. Nor are God’s
chosen laborers to feel that at every step they must wait to ask some
officer in authority whether they may do this or that. While cooper-
ating heartily with their brethren in carrying out general plans that