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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

"That We Shall Be Made Able to Serve Him"

"This is the end of the testimony of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, that we may all come to partake of His life, and that by partaking of it, we may live upon it, and being made alive to Him, we shall then be made able to serve Him." (From a sermon preached by Robert Barclay at Grace Church Street, Sixteenth of Fifth Month 1688. Source: The Concurrence and Unanimity of the People Called Quakers as Evidenced by Some of Their Sermons, first published by Andrew Sowle, London 1694)

Those who do not yet know Christ, either from never having heard his name, or those who have heard the Truth but not believed, or have heard what someone was claiming to be Truth but was not and so have hardened their hearts and stopped their ears up to the Truth, all these people yet have Christ within them, to show them the Measure of the Truth that God has given them, and providing opportunities to live up to their Measure of the Truth. In my experience, and I have been two of the three types of those who do not know Christ, in his great Mercy, God yet allows us to be shown the Truth by our Inward Guide, Christ Jesus, the Light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world (John 1:9). So why, then, would one need to know Christ, if he is available anyway, the Light in everyone, the Inner Guide available to anyone? For certainly, in the years before my convincement, my Inner Guide was prodding, pushing, making things known to me. What I have found, and what has grown within me since I have come to know something of the Truth of Christ, since I have been living up to the Measure of the Truth that I have been given, is my ability to be useful to Him. I am more attuned to Christ guiding me to act in the world, more open to the Truth of my own weaknesses and errors. I am being made more able to serve God as he deserves to be served, becoming more capable of worshiping him and glorifying him in Truth. God deserves our love, our respect, our hearts and our minds. Deserves us to be single-eyed (Matthew 6:22,23). And in His great love and mercy, he sent his Son to show us how to see, how to love.

I have great love and compassion for people who do not know Christ, particularly those who, like myself, thought to know the world through their mind and not their heart, where Christ resides. It is so easy for intelligent, resourceful people to believe their intelligence and resourcefulness will bring them everything they need in this world, and that the mind can suffice, even as the heart calls out for more. God bless the lonely seeker, the heartbroken former believer, the spiritually destitute people of this world. They have his Mercy, may they find his Grace. I pray they find their way to the fulfillment of their purpose in this world, to live up to their Measure of the Truth through strife, hatred and darkness into peace, into love, into joy.

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Tags: quaker, quaker.christian, quaker.conservative

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