Sanctification is not a happy flight of feeling, not the work of an instant, but the work of a lifetime. If anyone claims that the Lord has sanctified him, and made him holy, the proof of his claim to the blessing will be seen in the fruits of meekness, patience, long-suffering, truthfulness, and love. If the blessing that those who claim to be sanctified have received leads them to rely upon some particular emotion, and they declare there is no need of searching the Scriptures that they may know God’s revealed will, then the supposed blessing is a counterfeit, for it leads its possessors to place value on their own unsanctified emotions and fancies, and to close their ears to the voice of God in His Word.

Why need those who claim they have had special manifestations of the Spirit, and the witness that their sins are all forgiven, conclude that they can lay the Bible aside, and from henceforth walk alone? When we ask those who claim to have been instantaneously sanctified, if they are searching the Scriptures as Jesus told them to do, to see if there is not additional truth for them to accept, they answer, “God makes known His will to us directly in special signs and revelations, and we can afford to lay the Bible aside.”

There are thousands who are being deceived by trusting to some special emotion, and discarding the Word of God. They are not building upon the only safe and sure foundation—the Word of God. A religion that is addressed to intelligent creatures will produce reasonable evidences of its genuineness, for there will be marked results in heart and character. The grace of Christ will be made manifest in their daily conduct. We may safely ask those who profess to be sanctified, Do the fruits of the Spirit appear in your life? Do you manifest the meekness and lowliness of Christ, and reveal the fact that you are learning daily in the school of Christ, shaping your life after the pattern of His unselfish life?

The best evidence that any of us can have of our connection with the God of heaven is that we keep His commandments. The best proof of faith in Christ is distrust of self and dependence upon God. The only reliable proof of our abiding in Christ is to reflect His image. Just so far as we do this we give evidence that we are sanctified through the truth, for the truth is exemplified in our daily life.—The Signs of the Times, February 28, 1895.
Ye Shall Receive Power p. 121
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Prayer Requests
—-Please continue to pray earnestly for E and her children. R
—-Need a prayer Please for Eddy he’s on critical condition after a surgery. Micheline
—-I have a friend with pneumonia. Please pray for healing and peace. Sylvia
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Dear Friends,

One of the funniest things to me is the birds in the Walmart parking lot. At any time I can hear a sound that was similar to a car alarm going off, an empty can rolling in the wind, and many other of the normal sounds we take for granted. I smile to myself and look around for that very smart grackle that has learned to mimic those sounds. He had heard car alarms so much, he began to make a call like one.
When a bird mimics something, it is so funny. It is not so funny when we are like that bird pretending to be something that we are really not. At first we might fool those around us, but eventually they realize our pretense. How many times we are like the Pharisees upon whom our Dear Saviour pronounced a woe. “Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Matt 23:1-33

May we rightly represent our Dear Saviour and never make a pretense of religion as they did is my prayer.

Rose

Source: https://rosesdevotional.org/not-guided-by-emotions.html

The Holy Spirit always leads to the written Word, and calls the attention to the great moral standard of righteousness. To be honored of God in thus being privileged to testify of the truth is a wonderful thing. Said Christ to His disciples just before He ascended up and the clouds of angels received Him out of their sight, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). They were qualified by the heavenly endowment of the Holy Spirit to testify of Christ.

I wish to impress upon you the fact that those who have Jesus abiding in the heart by faith have actually received the Holy Spirit. Every individual who receives Jesus as his personal Saviour just as surely receives the Holy Spirit to be his Counselor, Sanctifier, Guide, and Witness. The more closely the believer walks with God, the clearer his witness, and, as a sure result, the more powerful will be the influence of his testimony upon others of a Saviour’s love; the more he will give evidence that he prizes the Word of God. It is his meat, it is his drink, to satisfy the thirsty soul. He prizes the privilege of learning the will of God from His Word.

Some souls who claim to be believers have slighted, and turned from, the Word of God. They have neglected the Bible, the wonderful Guidebook, the true tester of all ideas, and claim that they have the Spirit to teach them, that this renders searching the Scriptures unnecessary. All such are heeding the sophistry of Satan, for the Spirit and the Word agree. Say the Scriptures, “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” He only is a free man whom the truth makes free.—Manuscript Releases 14:70, 71.
Ye Shall Receive Power p. 118
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Prayer Requests
—-Please pray that God will especially work for E and children’s best good in the next two weeks. R
—-Please say a prayer for a really good friend of mine. She is 28 weeks pregnant. She has no amniotic fluid and has been admitted to the hospital until the baby is born. Also say a prayer for the family that everything can get situated. Janice
—-A friends co-workers daughter named Kendra is suicidal and just sent a note to her mom detailing her wishes for being laid to rest. Michael
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Dear Friends,

A few years ago, I knew someone who was always sharing with me their inmost thoughts and feelings of doubt and despair. They felt too sinful to be saved. Although they had confessed their sins repeatedly, they came away from their prayer feeling no different than before they prayed. I explained that we must have faith in the Word of God which tells us, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 It didn’t help. They still felt the same.

I decided to make up a story that might help them to see their attitude. I said, “Asking forgiveness, but not believing you’re forgiven is as if Ron were to take me to see a beautiful log cabin located by a mountain lake. This large cabin was exquisitely furnished and even had new dishes, utensils, and linens. A baby grand piano was in one corner of the living room. I was thrilled! Taking me outside, he showed me a lightweight canoe with the finest paddles. Thoughts of hours of pleasure exploring every nook and cranny of that mountain lake filled my head. Then he told me that it was all mine. He had paid for it all. While he was away on a business trip, I was to move our personal belongings into this ideal place and enjoy it for it was to be our new home. Time passed. Finally, Ron’s business trip was over and he returned to the cabin. I was not there. Everything was the same as it had been when he had left. He panicked. What terrible thing had happened to me while he was gone? Driving as fast as he dared down the mountain road, he went to our former residence to see if he could find someone who had seen me. Just as he drove into the driveway, he saw me come out of our twenty-one year old mobile home. With disbelief and shock written all over his face, he asked me why I was still living in that old trailer. I told him that I just didn’t feel like that beautiful cabin was mine, I couldn’t believe that I could really have anything so nice, and I felt like I wasn’t worthy of such a wonderful gift.” Then I asked the person, “how do you think Ron would feel at my ingratitude and lack of trust?” I explained that when we confess our sins to our Dear Saviour but refuse to believe that our sins have been washed away, we are doing just as I did in my little parable.

How it must break our Heavenly Father’s heart when we do not believe His promises and say, “The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.” He assures us, ” Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” Isa 49:14-16 Praise God!

Our Great Redeemer has promised, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” “And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me.” Jer 31:34; 33:8 “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isa 1:18 “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” Eze 33:11

Isaiah shares his experience, “Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.” Isa 38:17 Micah adds, “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity. . . and thou wilt cast all [our] sins into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:18,19 “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. . . . He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children; To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them. The LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all.” Ps 103:8-19 May we joyfully accept God’s free gift of salvation is my prayer.

Rose

Source: https://rosesdevotional.org/guided-through-the-written-testimony.html

You are accepted in the Beloved. I have had the most earnest desire that you should perfect a Christian character, not in your own strength, but in the strength and in the virtue and righteousness of Christ. The donation of the Holy Spirit was the greatest gift God could bestow upon finite man. This is free to all and in this gift there could be no computation; this endowment specially signalized the enthronement of the only begotten Son of God in His mediatorial kingdom. In this, the gift of the Comforter, the Lord God of heaven demonstrates to man the perfect reconciliation which He had effected between Himself and men. “Which hope,” says the apostle, “we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered” (Hebrews 6:19, 20).

Has not God said He would give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? And is not this Spirit a real, true, actual Guide? Some men seem afraid to take God at His word, as though it would be presumption in them. They pray for the Lord to teach us and yet are afraid to credit the pledged word of God and believe we have been taught of Him. So long as we come to our heavenly Father humbly and with a spirit to be taught, willing and anxious to learn, why should we doubt God’s fulfillment of His own promise? You must not for a moment doubt Him and dishonor Him thereby.

When you have sought to know His will, your part in the operation with God is to believe that you will be led and guided and blessed in the doing of His will. We may mistrust ourselves lest we misinterpret His teachings, but make even this a subject of prayer, and trust Him, still trust Him to the uttermost, that His Holy Spirit will lead you to interpret aright His plans and the working of His providence.—Manuscript Releases 6:223, 224.
Ye Shall Receive Power p. 114
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Prayer Requests
—-Please Pray for a very dear friend of ours she is a newly widow and she is taking it very hard. we fear for her life please pray that she will discover the real Jesus and not the surface one. she has a heart of Gold always helping others . Cecelia
—-E and children continue to need your prayers. R
—-Please pray for me and my sons. We are in extreme danger. Connie
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Dear Friends,
In my grandparents’ yard was a very old and neglected apple tree. The apples were small and not good for eating. I can still remember the smell of those rotting apples as they fell and lay untouched below the tree. Because of its age, unusually large size, and the neglect it suffered; it was hollow inside. To look at it, you would never know that is was hollow. It was still alive with green leaves and was still producing small, sour, wormy fruit.
Often I would gaze at that tree and think about the many warnings of my grandparents to stay away from it. I especially liked a story that my mother had once told me about that old tree. Before I was born, she had been standing under that tree talking to my dad. Suddenly, he grabbed her roughly and held her tightly while running down the driveway a little way. She was quite upset with him and about to get angry, when he stopped and pointed toward where she had been standing. As my mother looked, she saw a large part of that apple tree had split and had come crashing down right where she had been standing. He explained that as they had been talking, he had heard a cracking noise. Instantly he knew what it was. He knew that she was in danger and reacted quickly. Her anger was replaced by gratitude.
Even though that ancient apple tree could have split again, my grandparents never asked the landlady to cut it down. They just warned me never to play under the tree. The warnings only made the tree more fascinating, more desireable.
How often we have old, rotten “apple trees” in our lives. We fear them but allow them to take root and grow in our heart even though they should have been gotten rid of years ago. They produce rotten, wormy fruit in our lives that does us no good. That fruit of sin leads to disappointment and death. Often, we wish we had the victory over that sin that is so deeply ingrained within us, but we have allowed that old, familiar sin to remain inside our hearts so long that it has grown large and difficult to deal with.
How often we try the pleasures of this world to forget that they soon become a rotten “apple tree” of sin. Paul speaks of the fruit of a heart that has been allowed the heart to become overtaken by the wormy fruit of unrighteousness.” Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Gal 5:19-21 Jeremiah adds, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” He, then, gives the answer, “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.” Jer 17:9,10
How much we need the Master Gardener to cut down that “rotten tree” that is ever growing within us and producing fruit to our destruction. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.” James 4:6-10 “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.” “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isa 57:15; 1:16-18
Let us come to our Dear Saviour that He may help us to cut down the old, “rotten apple tree” that we have allowed to grow within our heart for so many years, that we may be free from the fruit of iniquity that we have produced for so long.
Rose

Source: https://rosesdevotional.org/believing-in-his-guidance.html