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A Living Connection With the Living God, February 17
For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are
God’s building.
1 Corinthians 3:9
.
We must have a living dependence upon a living God. And when there is a
living connection with a living God, Christ abides in the heart by living faith,
and the human agent works after Christ’s life. He is going to change our life
and character, speaking the words that Christ speaks, revealing the character that
Christ reveals. And if trials come to us, we will not manifest a rebellious spirit.
The opportunities will present themselves to every one of us, because we see
oppression and unkindness, and because we see burdens that would be thrown
upon us, and let self come in and exhibit itself.
We let self arise. We want to put the trials in their right place, and where is
it? Christ says to everyone that is weary and heavy laden, “Come unto me.” And
what? “Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.” And notwithstanding
the crush of conflict that we shall have to pass through if we accept the truth of
heavenly origin, there is meekness and lowliness in every move. Hide in Jesus
Christ. Our life and character is hid with Christ in God, so we cannot afford to let
any impulse of passion control our words or control our actions, but we must keep
the Saviour’s example ever before us, and we must do just as Jesus would have
done under similar circumstances. We are not to be revengeful.
Now the work that is before us we want clearly to understand. It is a work of
mercy, a work of love, a work just in Christ’s lines. Just as Christ worked. He says
that the nobleman went a long journey, and to every man he gave his work. The
human agent is to cooperate with the divine. To everyone his work, and this is
Christ’s work. It is not the man’s work. He is not to feel that all he has to do is to
attend to his own individual self. No, there is a broader field. He is to occupy “till
I come,” and what is it to occupy? To be laborers together with God. Therefore,
it is of the greatest consequence that we understand in clear lines what it is to be
laborers together with God.
We must be imbued with the Spirit of Christ. We cannot labor with God merely
from our intellect or our education. We cannot buy the grace of God with money;
we cannot buy it with eloquence; we cannot buy it with the power of our intellect.
It is God’s to begin with.... We are to occupy to the best knowledge that we have,
and sense our responsibility, and let our light shine through us to those that are
around us, and in doing that we are doing the work of God.—
Manuscript 11,
February 17, 1894
, “
Isaiah 58
.”
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