Desire, Not Suffering, Is Sufficient for Your True Stimulus
Stimulus being what keeps you going in life, desire is sufficient. You probably think this world is full of true sufferings and pains, a real deal of attacks and struggles. But carefully ponder it, and you would find that everyone who holds that kind of thinking is necessarily under the influence and apprehension of these fears. But they are not the creation of God, nor in God’s world. They are in the world of the person who creates sufferings for themselves in their thinking.
If there is any real purpose of sufferings, if there is any true use of and justification for problems and difficulties, it is always wrapped in this: ‘Sufferings build you. Problems help you get stronger.’ And that is how they should be — suffering and everything in life is to build you to your full extent of God’s Sonship. But to think that sufferings are necessary before you can be built is to limit how God can work with you. Once God is limited in your perception, the support He sends your way is limited. There are no limits to the grace of God, but your reception is limited. It is like the rain, and a bottle must fetch differently than a pail because of their openings.
You can pray for sufferings in thought as your path to building strength — but understand that God does not require it to work in your life. A country need not be on the verge of war before its army parade and train. They may so do to represent the simple virtue of strength and diligence in the country. We find that suffering achieves its purpose not even by itself, but because it forces Desire for a better life upon the willing. It is this Desire that now inspires the building up, the getting stronger. Desire, therefore, is the real deal.
Desire to mean an aspiration, the idea to grow and outgrow a present level of fulfilment, is the driving expression of Life everywhere. God is Life. You are here because God at first desired it. If at all you are in God’s Image, if God lives within you and your body is anywhere His temple, then it is all natural that you have desires. Thus the apostolic words, ‘God works in you to desire and to achieve.’
The true expression of Life and Livingness of Spirit is Desire, or Expansion. Everywhere in God’s world, there is expansion and growth. There is the desire to express more perfection, give more gifts. God never tire of this. Today, as from the beginning, He gives His every best in even newer modes and structures of life. In your individual life, today is new with new experiences available and gifted to you. In the humanity as a whole, today is another grace to do more creative things and bring forth newer growth levels than we have seen before. It is God who upholds this, who gives without any shadow of turning. Do we not understand that God thus attains from Glory to Glory in and out, over and above us all? Because He desires for all men to be saved, and ushers every opportunity for salvation every moment. Being inherently in God’s nature, we cannot escape Desire. Anyone who does has quit living and must necessarily be made to depart.
Think of the Highest among us, the Master and Lord. His desire was for the salvation of His sheep, and for them he was willing to be and do all that he must. But for the heartfelt desire, nothing of salvation could have come. Your urge for eternal life or for any present expression of life in material things is enough to cause you growth and expansion. Do not seek sufferings. Do not honour them.
Do not commend them as representing strength. Nowhere have we read Jesus himself commend any person for their sufferings. If at all he praises in these lines, he praises their becoming of strength and growth. God tempts no man with evil — how can we suppose that He has need of your sufferings then? If He is Love and Perfect Love casts out fear, how can we imagine Him to send any pain for us to live? He who gives us His Son while we thought ourselves to be His enemies, ‘shall He not freely give us all things’?
Understand, my dear friend, that your desire is sufficient for God to work with. Anytime you attach a heroic feeling to suffering or pity anyone under sufferings, remind yourself: ‘God does not send sufferings. God does not require our suffering sacrifices but our humble and loving obedience to Him. His desire through us is sufficient to make us strong and heroes.’
Now, I encourage that you set yourself a true desire. Something your heart longs for — and where your treasure is, your heart longs to be. God is only with your heart of hearts; and that is the only way to know God is with you in your adventure of life. Again, I encourage you: What do you Desire? Turn the tables now and understand your desire to be God’s expression of His creative powers through you. Have no fear. Think not it is too great or too small. It is God’s perfect instrument to pour His overflow. Therefore, turn the table and say: ‘My desire is God’s Desire. My love is God’s Love. Since I have surrendered, God’s Will is manifest in my heart as My Will. Therefore, I Am Happy that I Am Now Fulfilled, and God works through me.’
I persuade you to read this over and again in study, and your heart pick a definite lesson to ponder on for the day. Until tomorrow on our journey together. State your desire. Ask-Seek-Knock — Desire!
Peace.
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