Personal Teachings

SUN., NOV. 21, 1982, 5:30 AM
FARM, STUDY

You return after a short time away, o son, renewed and ready to hear My words to you. This morning you didn’t need the alarm, and you didn’t need Me. You genuinely want to be here for this teaching, and I am glad to oblige. Welcome!

Your reactions to the scattered responses to this Ruminations you have most recently sent out are interesting to Me. On the one hand you do want to stir interest and to get people thinking about the combination of your thoughts and Mine about some theme, in this case one of both ancient and quite contemporary interest. On the other hand you seem almost hypersensitive to criticism and defensive about the content of the teachings on which this issue was based. With patience… I shall tell you again how I wish you to regard these tangible meditations and how they relate to Holy Scripture.

You are a middle-aged, 20th century American, a Christian by upbringing and, importantly, by personal conviction. You are a teacher, a writer… a professional in an important but fringe academic discipline. You know from your own honest evaluation of yourself and from My shared judgments that you are, in what you do, above average, but not outstanding. Because of your accomplishments, your standing in the field, and other reasons of My own I have selected you to receive these teachings from Me. As part of this selection I have caused and allowed and brought your attention to certain shortcomings and failures in your work. Peter was My rock, and yet he had to be unfaithful and vacillating. Paul was My evangel, but he had to be abrasive and unpopular with some. This earth is not destined to be a classicly “perfect place.” Rather, it is perfect by My definition… because it is obviously imperfect. You are My servant by definition, and your imperfections are important to that role.

You must accept your failures and short-comings and yet you must always (still) be seeking ways to improve. It truly is an artistic task that I lay upon you.

This is a long prelude to the subject of this morning, which is the personal nature of these teachings. You know by now that many of My gifts to you in the earth are “both/and.” In My thinking, which does not always square with your Western thought patterns, it is perfectly all right for a personal message to you to have application and relevance to the lives of others. Much of current Christian faith and practice stems from the letters of Paul. These were written as specific letters to individuals and churches, explaining the Gospel and admonishing them about the practice of the faith. Naturally Paul was writing under My direction, but he had no sense that he was writing Holy Scripture. Well, let Me modify that. He would have professed humility in comparing his letter writing to the Torah, to the Psalms, and to the records of the Hebrew prophets. Yet he was hearing Me clearly, and he was more adamant than you will ever be about the truth of what he preached and wrote.