Take Care!

JUNE 24, 1979, 5:50 AM

Take care, o son, for you must be continually reminded, by Me and by yourself, that this idea of health that we are now developing has some pitfalls. Those who shall learn will be many and diverse. Some will have means to understand awareness and appreciation of pain, sickness, and misfortune. But more will be too “westernized” and shall see these as bad… as something to be tolerated, with feelings of malice, only until they can be replaced with the desirable. This shall be your task – of being heard as a credible professional and as an orthodox Christian rather than as an “Eastern freak”. (My vocabulary is as capacious as I am.) Of this you must take care.

You understand and feel the truth of these notions, but many do not. You must find or develop examples from medicine, from American life, even college life, and from My Scriptures. (You have not been doing My assignment in the Scriptures. Remember I early suggested Ecclesiastes, Romans, and John as starters. I say again.) Take care. You MUST remain believable. That is why I selected you. Remember this as you plan.

Yes, I shall try a variation today. Get the Living Bible and start through Romans and let Me guide your reading. Mark with pencil certain portions; from them I shall teach. Go to it.

You see right away that Paul has a new gospel, but he immediately wants them to see it in their own, more comfortable context… that Jesus came as a human baby and that he came in David’s line. These are things in which they already believe. Next he praised them for being well known and talked about. He acknowledged their worth as they were. He then told them that not only did he want to share his faith with them, but to be encouraged by theirs. So you, too, shall hear what others believe, and GENUINELY HEAR THEM (not always easy for you). This shall be the ever new base from which you shall teach.

He spoke to the polished and the rough, those educated and those less. So shall you communicate with both the “wise” (graduate students and professionals) and the “less wise” (undergraduates with few professional motivations). There was a reason for that return to 305. Paul was not ashamed of his message, and neither shall you be of yours. Don’t scare people with such an affirmation, but occasionally an affirmation strengthens the faint-hearted.

Paul told them they really knew this already, for God had put this knowledge in their hearts. You, also, shall challenge learners to seek, the knowledge of this concept that is already there, but which has become obscured by other teachings and interpretations.