"O wicked and perverse generation, have I been so long in your midst and yet you have perceived Me not? Have I not ministered unto you in myriad ways, and you have been blind? Yes, and when I speak to you, you do not hear.
O My children, you go your own way as though you belonged to another; yes, you behave not as sons and daughters, but as strangers. You hold meetings in My Name and give honor to mean, but not to Me. You boast that you serve Me, but in truth you serve your own ego; for that which you do is calculated to enhance your own position and advance your own prestive, and you give it all a sanctimonious cloak.
"See," you say, "we shall pray," while prayer is farthest from your heart. And who shall hear you? Only your own ears. Orayer is for those whose hearts cry to Me in sincerity. Prayer is for those who earnestly seek Me; not for those with only a pretend piety, who, with selfish and unworthy motives and hearts made fat with self-adulation, are only playing with Me as a child would manipulate a puppet on a string!
Get to the prayer closet! This is the reason I have taught you to pray in secret: Because there you are beset by fewer false motives and less temptation. He who does not habitually commune with Me is almost sure to find true prayer impossible in public.
You would make Christianity pleasant and acceptable. Your Savior did not find it so. You would make it comfortable and accommodating to your ow schedule. He knew nothing of such a false religion.
Lonely nights, He wrestled in prayer nor spared Himself physical discomfort. Yes, and the more you pamper the flesh as to bodily comfort, the more it will demand of you, until you become its servant, and your physical needs shall be tyrant unto you in your house.
Do not be deceived. I gave you no such commandment. Hear Me as I repeat to you what I gave to your fathers: "Deny your self and take up your cross and follow Me." Yes, follow Me, not some worldly form of a backslidden church.
Do not think that it becomes blessed because it bears the name "church." My Church is a living body, not a dead form. My people may be recognized by their humility and sufferings; not be social acceptability and self-advertised success; not by extravagant physical appointments of their structures, but by the grace of God as work in their hearts. Sacrifice is My status symbol, and humanity has not been eager to recognize the type of spiritual leadership I had in servant like the prophet Jeremiah and the Apostle Paul.
Do you desire to truly follow Me? Look for the bloodstained prints of my feet. Go, as it were, to the cold, unyielding rock in the Garden of Gethsemane, where self is put aside, and the cup of suffering is accepted. Die to your own treacherous and deceitful heart. Rise with determination to go on unflinchingly, not hoping to spare yourself. Save your life and you will sure lose it. Offer it up to Me, this very day, in renewed consecration to sacrificial living, and I will accept you and you shall know joy as a new wine."
I love God.
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