June
June / 97 he confuses our "views"; he clouds our "illuminations", and so brings us at last to the place where, having nothing of our own,
"we are driven to find our rest in the things of God. _I believe this is the explanation of the dark and perplexing times through which many of God's children are called to pass, when they seem to have lost all the joy and clearness of their earlier experiences and to have been plunged into a fog of darkness and distress. Did they but understand it, they would give God thanks that, in his tender love, he is thus depriving them of all their 'own possessions; since it is only so that he can bring them safely and surely to the place where they will be content to possess him alone. "Having nothing," they will at last " possess all things. mn Let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practice steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord. (Jer 9:24) Have any of us ever come to the place where we have honestly ceased to glory in our own possessions? Never, I believe, until we have been deprived of them. Human nature is so constituted. that while it possesses anything, it can hardly help glorying in it.
As long as a Christian feels wise or strong or rich in spiritual things, that Christian will almost inevitably glory in his strength, wisdom, or riches. But if these are taken away, he will be driven to glory in the Lord alone, simply because there will be nothing e else to glory in.
Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal. (Jn 6:27) eh haa that ee belongs t to ae sphere of ae
98 / Daily He Leads Me therefore, that any of these perishable things, no matter how _good they may be, could really satisfy the imperishable spirit.
But while we labor for and hold on to the perishable things, we shall-have no energy to seek after the "food which « endures to _eternal life."
I do not mean by this that the soul should not have any experiences, no views, doctrines, knowledge, or strength. Paul had all these in greater measure, I suppose, than anyone else ever had, and yet he could declare that he had "nothing." What he meant was that he had nothing apart from Christ, but that he had all things in Christ. That is, Christ was his strength and wisdom and righteousness, and in himself he had nothing. I know this is a little difficult to explain. The illustration that helps me the most, though an imperfect one, is that of steam working through an engine. The engine has no power of its own, but all its power is derived from the steam that works through it.
Could the machinery speak, its language would be similar to Paul's, "having nothing, and yet possessing all things."
He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. (1 Cor 1:30) We must set aside our own wisdom and righteousness in order that Christ may be made wisdom and righteousness and sanctification for us. Practically, this means, that if I want righteousness of any kind I must not try to lay up a store of it within myself, but must draw my supplies of righteousness, moment by moment, from the Lord. remember once feeling the need of a great stock of patience to meet an emergency that was coming upon me. I thought I would be obliged to pray for a long time in order to lay up enough. I think I expected something like a package of patience, done up and labeled "Patience," and deposited in my heart. As I was preparing myself to pray all night long in order to lay in a good supply, suddenly this verse flashed into my mind: whom God made our wisdom, our
June / 99 me in Christ, and I have aly to draw my are momentarily from him." I rose from my knees at once and thanked the Lord beforehand for the unlimited supply of patience that I saw was mine in Christ. I need not say that I found grace (in the form of patience) to help in every time of need.
Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. ... For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. (Phil 3:7-8) The loss of all things meant to Paul the gain of all things. The loss of the nest to the young eaglet, who is just learning to fly, means the gain of the whole heavens for its home. The loss of our own strength means the gaining of God's strength in its place; the loss of our own wisdom means the gaining of God's wisdom; the loss of our own life means the gaining of God's life.
Who would not make the exchange?
One man pretends to be rich, yet has nothing; / another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth. (Prv 13:7)
To which of these two classes do we belong? Are we seeking to make ourselves rich, or are we content to be poor and possess nothing? I used to have a friend who talked a great deal about what she called the "stripping chamber." She was one of those who are continually trying to "make themselves rich" by seeking after "experiences" and "blessings," and she could not seem to understand why the Lord found it necessary so continually to strip her of all that she had gained. A little book called The Saint's Travel to the Land of Canaan thus describes this stripping process: "God in these days is discovering the false coverings of creatures, and so stripping them naked. He is
100 / Daily He Leads Me bringing men to see the great mystery of self in all its supposed glory. He is annihilating creatures, and bringing them to a spiritual death. He is laying low mountains, and is unbottoming creatures from their false rests. Men's lofty looks He is abasing; yea, He is bringing men, who have been as it were Stars, and of great account in their own and in others eyes, even to a loss and silence, confusion and darkness; so that now their light seems to be darkness, their wisdom folly, their life death; and their enlargements and self-actings are hedged up, and they cannot find out any of their former paths. And all this is that the creature may be brought to depend on the Creator, and have nothing apart from Him."
Every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. (Mt 19:29)
All that we have, whether outward or inward, must be left behind if we would receive the hundredfold of God. It must be SS left behind, not in the sense of literally getting rid of everything, but in the sense of having everything only in and from the Lord.
SThe real facts of the case are that only God knows how to take f things as they ought to be taken care of, and he alone is she todolethaciees nothing is really safe until it is handed oN over to his care. The most unsafe person in the universe to have charge of my things is myself; and never do I possess them so firmly as when I have transferred them into the hands of God and have left them in his charge. Never am I so sure of my money as when I have transferred it out of my unsafe pockets into the safe custody of a trustworthy bank; and the same thing is true regarding the abandonment of all I possess into the custody of God. It may be considered a very pious thing to do, but it is certainly only good commonsense as well. ah 0 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world: Why do you submit to regulations,
. .
. according to
June / 101 human precepts and doctrines These have indeed an appearance of wisdom ... but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh. (Col 2:20-23) Our feelings, our experiences, our exercises of various sorts often have the "appearance of wisdom," and it is hard for us to count them as really nothing and to say truly, when we seem to have so many things, that we have nothing. But anything that is wrought out by "flesh" in any way whatever, must always be "nothing" in the sight of God; and, as soon as we have learned to see things with his eyes, they will be nothing in our own sight also. The simple fact is that all our own possessions of any kind whatsoever are literally and truly "nothing." No matter how many we may have of them, we still must say with the Apostle, if we speak the truth, that we "have nothing.'
}} l Every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord. (Lv 27:28) Everything that is set apart for God becomes holy. His possession of it is what makes it holy, whatever it may have been before. This is a blessed truth to the poor soul that feels its unholiness and yet longs to be only the Lord's.
Satan continually tempts such to think that they are too unholy for the Lord to accept, and what he suggests about their unworthiness is so true that it seems impossible to argue with his conclusions. But the answer here is simply this, that the altar sanctifies the gift, that anything given to the Lord is made holy by the very fact of being so given. Even our bodies, if presented to him as a living sacrifice, are thereby rendered "holy and acceptable."
— ~ Just as we have sometimes read in our childish tales of a water that changed everything put into it into gold, so here we read of a God so infinite in holiness that everything devoted to him becomes holy by his simple possession of it. Take comfort then, dear humble soul, and transfer at once yourself and all that you have into this grand possession, that it may all become "most holy to the Lord."
102 / Daily He Leads Me I » For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him: So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
(1 Cor 2:11) The one essential for each of us is to have this spiritual man, this resurrection life, born in us. Nothing avails but this. The tiger cannot understand the thoughts of a man because it does not have the spirit of a man within it. Likewise, we cannot understand the thoughts of God unless we possess the spirit of God.
The new birth is a necessity in the very nature of things, for in order to enter any plane of life we must be born into it. No amount of effort can turn a tiger into a man, and no amount it of effort can turn the flesh man into the spirit man. That which i is (born of the flesh is flesh and always must be.
] And rhe ier of Sicheonpadaee will be peace, / and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever. /
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, / in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places. (Is 32:17-18)
There may be storms outside; but within, the "habitation" of the spirit is a "quiet resting place" in God. To sit still or to wait, therefore, does not interfere with outward activity, but is, in fact, the source of its strength. If I am working at anything outwardly and am inwardly at rest about it, I shall do it far more successfully than if I fret and fume and fuss inwardly. This is a matter of universal commonsense experience.
I And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
(1 Kgs 19:11-12)
June / 103 Only in the silence can the "still small voice" be heard. A large part of the difficulty experienced by Christians in hearing the voice of the Lord arises from the absence of this inward stillness.
Our own internal clamor drowns his quiet speaking. We listen for his voice "in the wind" and "in the earthquake," expecting their thunder to sound above all our own clamoring; and because we are disappointed, we complain that he does not speak at all; when all the while, the "still small voice' of his love is waiting for the quiet in which it can be heard. 1am convinced that there are many at this moment hungering for the voice of the Lord, who would hear it at once if they would only be silent before him for a little while. All the saints of old have insisted upon stillness as a necessity of true communion with God and have exhorted their followers to cultivate it; and every saint of the present day knows its value.
I The word of the Lord came to me, saying, "You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me upon the earth. Behold, a son shall be born to you; he shall be a man of peace.... He shall build a house for my name." (1 Chr 22:8-10) To know the indwelling of the Lord as a conscious experience, there must be inward quiet. Where there are wars and fightings inwardly, his presence cannot be realized. I do not mean that when the soul is in conflict the Lord has forsaken it. A thousand times, No! The Lord was with David just as truly as he was with Solomon; but it required a "man of peace" to build the house to his name, and not a man in the midst of wars. What I mean is only this, that his indwelling presence cannot be consciously realized when we are in the midst of internal wars; and that to have the conscious experience of his indwelling, we must be at rest inwardly and must know what it is to "keep silence" from all our fears and anxieties and all our fussings and worryings.
104 / Daily He Leads Me But we beseech you, brethren, that you increase more l and more; and that you study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you. (1 Thes 4:10-11, KJV) "Study to be quiet," that is, study to dismiss all bustle and worry out of your inward life. Study_also to_"do your own business," and do not try to do the business of other people. A great deal of "creaturely activity' is expended in trying to do other people's business. It is often very hard to sit still when we see our friends mismanaging matters and making what we think to be such dreadful blunders. But the divine order is for each one the business of anyone else.
I Sh "Be still, and know that I am God./I am exalted among the nations, / 1 am exalted in the earth!" / The Lord of hosts is with us; / the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Ps 46:10-11)
In order to really know God, this inward stillness is absolutely necessary. I remember when I first learned this. A time of great emergency had arisen in my life, when every part of my being seemed to throb with anxiety, and when the necessity for immediate and vigorous action seemed overpowering. Yet circumstances were such that I could do nothing. For a little while it seemed as if I would fly to pieces with the inward turmoil. Suddenly the still, small voice whispered in the depths of my soul, "Be still, and know that I am God." The word came with power, and I listened. I composed my body to perfect stillness, and I constrained my troubled spirit into quietness and looked up and waited. And then did I "know" that it was
God, God even in the very emergency, and in my very helplessness to meet it; and I rested in him. He was exalted
"among the nations" and in my "earth." It was an experience that I would not have missed for anything. Out of this stillness seemed to arise a power to deal with the emergency that very soon brought it to a successful conclusion.
June / 105 I Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "O man of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Mt 14:31) "Why did you doubt?" This is a most significant question. It is as though our Lord had said, "Knowing me as you do, Peter, and having experienced all my love and care for you for so long, how is it that you can doubt me now? If I have called you to come to me on the water, of course I will enable you to do so. What are boisterous winds or tossing waves to me, the Creator and Ruler of them all? Why do you doubt?'
This question is as full of significance now as it was on that stormy night in Galilee, almost 2,000 years ago. It might well be asked of thousands of Christians living on the earth at the present moment. For when winds are contrary and seas are stormy with us, doubts and fears are as near at hand to overwhelm us as they were near at hand to Peter; and the reproach, "O man of little faith," applies as definitely to many of Christ's disciples now as it did to Peter then.
I And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid: Have you no faith?" (Mk 4:39-40) The disciples of Jesus became frightened when a storm arose at sea. Their fright was not caused by the great storm to which they were exposed, but by their own lack of faith. Storms cannot frighten people who are trusting in the Lord. Doubt is the origin of every fear that can possibly assail the child of God.
"He who listens to me will dwell secure / and will be at ease, without dread of evil." Most people do not listen to God, but instead to their own fears. The soul that really listens to the Lord knows there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of and will declare triumphantly with the psalmist, "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" And it will answer its own
106 / Daily He Leads Me questions with the confident assertion, "Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear!" Not all the hosts of earth or hell can frighten the soul that "listens to God."
He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; but when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink he cried out, "Lord, save me." (Mt 14:29-30) How reasonable and sensible our doubts seem. "Look, Peter," the tempter most probably said, "look at those roaring waves, and remember that such a thing was never heard of—that aman could walk on water. It is really presumptuous for you to try to do so. The Master does not mean for you actually to go to him. It is only a figure of speech; and if you do not want to be drowned, you had better get back to a safe place on the ship as fast as you can." It is amazing to me, however, that Peter could listen for a moment to these suggestions of doubt when he had heard the Master's command. Yet in the face of hundreds of similar commands and promises, Christians now listen to far worse suggestions of doubt and even think they are pious and humble in doing so! It is simply amazing! ws Fear not, for 1 am with you, / be not dismayed for I am your God;/I will strengthen you, I will help you,/1 will uphold you with my victorious right hand. (Is 41:10-14)
The Bible is full of these "fear nots," with their accompanying assurances that God will be with us and will certainly care for us. If we believe these assurances, no enemies and no dangers, whether they are outward or inward, can cause us a moment's fear or doubt; for we will know that the Lord our God is stronger than any enemy the universe contains, and we will say with the Apostle, "If God is for me, who can be against me?" oo For God did not give usa spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control. (2 Tm 1:7)
June / 107 The "spirit of timidity,' or fear, does not belong to the Christian religion. It is never enumerated among the "fruits of the Spirit." It is not given to us from God. On the contrary, it is always condemned as being alien to the whole idea of Christianity and as coming purely and only from unbelief.
2 3 He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.
(Rv 21:7-8) It is amost significant fact that among the sins which are here declared to plunge a soul into the lake of fire that of being
"cowardly and faithless" heads the list. All that this means I do not know, but I am certain it must mean this much, that to be fearful and faithless, or unbelieving, is as absolute a hindrance to the spiritual life as many things which we consider fa ar greater sins. This leaves us no alternative as to whether or not we shall go on indulging in the habit of doubt. We dare not do it. We must get rid of our doubts somehow. The only question is how?
To this I would reply that there is only one way. We must give them up. We must surrender them to the Lord and must trust
— ES eS Ts him | 'to deliver er us from their power. Doub Doubts are a "speaking fase moment abou di isobeying 0 our Lord, who sin thet left us, as his last command, this law: "Let not your | "heart. be 'troubled,
————_ Se neither let it be afraid." No matter how plausible our doubts may seem, we simply must turn our backs on the them and refuse to ne nn entertain them for a moment.
"You must hand your doubting over to him, as you do your temper or your pride, and must trust him to deliver you from doubting, just as you do to deliver you. from getting angry. The great point is is to give up the: liberty to doubt. No surrender is
108 / Daily He Leads Me really effective until it reaches the point of saying "T will not.'
Therefore our only hope for victory lies in an utter surrender of all liberty to doubt. _ y 4 Blessed is the man who endures temptation: for when he has been proved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him.
(Jas 1:12, NKJV) The first thing that I would say concerning temptation is that temptation is not sin. The second thing I would say is the same, and the third thing is the same also. It may seem to some as if this hardly needed to be said so emphatically, because everyone must already know it; but I believe, on the contrary, that very few really know it. Our text tells us that it is a blessed thing to endure temptation; but do we really believe it to be a blessed thing? Do we not usually feel, instead, that it is a cursed thing; and that we must be dreadful sinners just because we are tempted? A flood of evil thoughts is poured into our souls, proud thoughts, unkind thoughts, malicious thoughts, jealous thoughts. They are thoughts we loathe, and yet they seem to come from inside us; and we feel that we must be very wicked and very far from God to be able to have such thoughts at all. It is as though a burglar should break into a man's house. When the master of the house tries to resist him and drive him out, the burglar turns around and accuses the owner of being himself the thief! It is the enemy's grand ruse for entrapping us. He whispers his suggestions of evil into our hearts and then turns around and says, 'Oh, how wicked you must be to think of such things! It is very plain you cannot be a child of God; for if you were, it would have been impossible for such dreadful thoughts to have entered your heart." This reasoning sounds so very plausible, that the Christian feels as if it must be true and is plunged into the depths of discouragement and despair. But the divine teaching about temptation is very different.
June / 109
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. {1 Pt 1:6-7)
} | | Temptations try our faith; and we are worth nothing if we are not tried. They develop our spiritual virtues, and this development is essential to our true growth. How shallow would be our spirituality if it were not for the discipline of temptation! There is, therefore, in the divine plan evidently a need for such trials during the "little while" of our earthly life. The "genuineness of our faith" is so much more precious to the Lord and so much more valuable for us than any present comfort or ease, that he is willing to let us suffer these trials. This was his way with the children of Israel. When God took them into the promised land, he did not drive out at once all their enemies, but left some to "prove them," that he might know whether or not they would listen to his commandments (see Jgs 2:21-23; and 3:1-4).
I have sometimes thought that temptation is to our soul's health what vaccination is to our body's health, a process by which we are prepared for the victory over far worse attacks of far worse diseases.
Because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted. (Heb 2:18)
If we believe that our Lord was really tempted, just as we are, we cannot help but be convinced that temptation is not sin, and that it is possible to have temptations of every kind, and yet be
"without sin." We may be sure of this, also, that wherever temptation is, there is the Lord, waiting to help us. "Where were you, Lord, while I was being tempted?" cried the saint in the desert. "Close beside you all the while, my son, giving you the needed grace to conquer your temptation," was the tender reply.
110 / Daily He Leads Me No temptation has everaken you that is not common oy to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
(1 Cor 10:13) Fenelon says concerning temptation: "We must never be astonished at temptations, be they ever so outrageous. On this earth all is temptation. Crosses tempt us by irritating our pride, and prosperity by flattering it.
Our life is a continual « combat, but one in which nich Jesus Christ fights for us. W] While > temptations rage around us, we must pass on 1 unmoved, as the traveler overtaken by a storm simply wraps his cloak more closely about him, and _pushes < on more vigorously towards his destined home." y) Hear, O Israel, you draw near this day to battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint; do not fear, or tremble, or be in dread of them; for the Lord your God is he that goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory. (Dt 20:3-4) "The Lord your God is he that goes with you, to fight for you
/ against your enemies.' This is the whole secret. I once asked a \\ Christian, whose life of victory over temptation had greatly
/ impressed me, what his secret was. He replied that it all lay in this, that the Lord fought for him and he held his peace. "Once,"
) he said, "I used to feel that I had to do the fighting myself; and it \\ always seemed to me that the Lord was behind me to help me if | the emergency became too great, but that for the most part he
' looked on and left the fighting to me. But now," he continued, "I put the Lord in front, and he does the fighting, while I look on and behold the victory." ws Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace;
June / 111 besides all these taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph 6:14-17) All this is the armor of faith. Our Lord used this armor in his conflict with temptation in the wilderness (see Lk 4:1-13). This story gives us a vivid insight into the reality of the declaration that he was "in all points" tempted as we are. His example shows us how we are to conquer. The weapon he used was the "sword of the Spirit,' which is, the Apostle tells us, the "word of God." He met each temptation with some saying from the Bible, introducing each by the words "It is written." I believe that the truth as it is revealed in scripture is always our most effective weapon against temptation. I say weapon, because I do not mean that it is our power. The power to conquer comes from the Lord alone, but the weapons are put into our hands; and, to my mind, chief among these is the one used by Christ, i.e., the word, or truth, of God. I believe that there is nearly always some "It is written" with which we can meet and conquer every form of temptation.
Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And 1 appoint unto you a kingdom, as my
Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Lk 22:28-30, KJV).
One great mistake we make about temptations is to feel as if the time spent in enduring them was all lost time. Days pass, perhaps, and we have been so beset with temptations that we feel that we have made no progress. But it often happens that we have been serving the Lord far more truly while "continuing with him" in temptation, than we could have done in our times of comparative freedom from it. Temptation is as much an attack against God as against ourselves, and we are fighting his battles quite as much as our own when we resist it. Moreover the "kingdom" which has been "appointed" to us can only come through this pathway of manifold temptations.
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July v/ I have loved you with an everlasting love; / therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. (Jer 31:3)
Another law of divine love is that it is everlasting. It has had no beginning and can have no end. So little is this understood that many people have a rooted conviction that God only begins to love them after they have shown him that they love him; and that he ceases to love them the moment they in any way displease him. They look upon his love as a fickle sort of thing, not in the least to be depended upon, and are always questioning whether they may reckon it to be theirs or not.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (Jn 13:34-35)
We all have an ideal about what love between human beings ought to be, and we experience a sense of condemnation whenever we fail to come up to our standard. Now if it is true that we are to love one another as Christ loves us, the converse
114 / Daily He Leads Me must also be true, that Christ must love us as we know we ought to love one another. In other words, the law of love from God to us is exactly the same as the law of love from us to one another; and what love demands from me to my brother or sister is what love demands from God to me. This is a far more important point than might appear at first. 1 am convinced that wrong views of the love of God lie at the root of most of our spiritual difficulties. We take the worst elements in our own characters—our selfishness, our impatience, our suspicion, our hard thoughts of one another—as the key to interpret God, instead of taking our best elements—our love, self-sacrifice, and patience, as the key. And so we subvert every single law of love in our interpretation of God, who is love itself.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor 13:7) Still another law of love is that it is not easily provoked and that it thinks no evil, but bears all things and hopes all things.
Mothers understand this law and are always thinking the best of their children, believing and hoping, and enduring until the end of their lives. If the child is naughty, they say, "Poor darling, she is sick", or, "Poor boy, we must remember his temptations." But these same mothers, perhaps, will think of God as if he were always looking out with an unfriendly eye for the least imperfection in themselves, and were even putting the worst possible construction upon their motives, thinking evil of them even when they really meant well.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven...
You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt 5:44-45, 48) The perfection here spoken of is the perfection of love. In order to be children of our Father in the only true sense of this expression, namely, oneness of nature and character, we must