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May 23rd, 1917.
Received by James Padgett
Washington D.C.
I am here, Jesus - Jesus, your brother and friend.
I come tonight to say a few words that you may be encouraged in
your spiritual condition and made to feel that I am with you in
your doubts and despondency.
I was with you last night and realized just what your condition
is, and tried to influence you with my love and sympathy, and when
you felt that you were all alone I endeavored to impress you with
my help and the power of the love that I have received from the
Father.
I know that while you are in the flesh and temptations come to
you, there will be times when you will think that you are forsaken,
or that the Father's love is not in and about you in all its beauty
and sustaining influence, and that then thoughts will come to you,
such as Job speaks of in the book that you have been reading, and
God will seem a long way off. But, my brother, let me tell you with
all the knowledge and love that I have, that God is never a way
off from you in his love and that he is always ready and willing
to help and comfort you, if you will only have faith and let your
longings go out to him for the inflowing of this love into your
soul. It is never absent from you, and awaits only your invitation
for making itself real and consciously present with you. You only
can prevent its coming into your soul, and, if you will believe
that this is true and endeavor to realize how close this love is
to you and how anxious the Father is that you receive it, you will
be able to overcome these thoughts that arise from the weakness
of the flesh, or rather, from the strength of the animal part of
your nature.
So try to remember what I say, and whenever these thoughts come
to you, look upon them as merely thoughts that come in the visions
of the night and have no real foundation for their existence. As
you may not know, real thoughts can arise only from that which is
real, and when this love of the Father comes into your soul, appetites
and passions that arise from the perversion of the animal nature
of your being, cease to be real and are merely the recollections
of what has been - a resultant of that perversion. This love makes
that which aforetime was perverse a genuine thing of truth, in harmony
with God and goodness.
Life is of God and, when not perverted by the will of man, is like
unto the goodness from which it comes; and good and evil are conditions
which are only, as in the one case, God is real, and in the other,
evil is not real as being a part of the creation of God. It, sin,
is the creation of man, and that man disobedient and out of harmony
with his own creation and the laws of his creator.
I write this to encourage your faith in the goodness of God, and
in the inherent goodness of yourself, and to confirm your faith
and knowledge in the truth that in God's universe all is good, and
only that is sinful which man himself, in violation of the will
of the Father, had created and afterwards cultivated and nurtured.
So believe this, that when this love comes into your soul you have
the possession of that which will enable you to forget the creatures
of your own will and make successful your efforts to cease the cultivation
of this resultant of your own creation.
It is only when you, for the moment, forget or cease to realize
that this love is yours, does the existence of the evil, which was
as you may think to be naturally yours, become to you real, at least
in your thoughts appear to be real. You have experienced the condition
of soul when these thoughts had no place in your life, and were
to you as if they had never been; and what you have thus experienced
may, if you let live your faith in the possession of this love,
continue to be your condition without intermission, and you be enabled
to enjoy consciously the reality of its continuous existence.
Add I further know, that this state of freedom from thoughts of
evil requires you to watch and, upon the first suggestion of such
thoughts, pray to the Father for the increased expression of his
love and you will not be disappointed, As in the prayer which I
have given you, you are taught to ask that help may be given you
to overcome all temptations of the flesh and the influence of the
evil ones, so I repeat, let your supplications for this help ascend
to the Father when first you feel the temptation, for so far as
regards your condition of soul qualities, these temptations and
influences are real.
The evil ones are with all mortals, and the condition of the soul
determines whether they, the evil ones, can or not make a rapport
with the mortals; and when this love comes into the soul such rapport
is impossible. Then the secret of overcoming temptations is to have
the soul qualities in such condition that the rapport cannot be
made.
I know that men, sometimes, by their course of thinking of things
good and pure invite this rapport, but this is not to be relied
on as a sure preventive, for thoughts are changeable and the results
of the appetites and emotions, and the natural, as I may say, tendencies
of men are to gratify these appetites when not curbed by the higher
development of their moral qualities, which qualities are very susceptible
to the influence of the sensual natures of man.
I felt the necessity of writing to you as I have, for it is so
important both for yourself, personally, and as my instrument for
the work that has been given you to do, that you acquire more of
this love and the knowledge by which you may be helped so very much
to overcome these temptations and influences. The more love, the
less the power of temptation and the possibility of thoughts that
do not find their source in this love. So I say to you: watch and
pray.
Well, I will not write more tonight, and with my love and blessings
will say good- night and God bless you. I will come soon and write
another message, and hope that you may be in condition to receive
it as successfully and correctly as you did my last one.
Your friend and brother,
Jesus
Note. This message was not published.
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