Prayer and Promises

THE PROMISE 

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

— Ephesians 2:10, NIV 

THE TESTIMONY 

You should seek God with all your heart for yourselves, that the faith which you possess may be a working faith,—a faith that is genuine,—a faith that works by love, and purifies the soul. 

You will put away all self,—self-importance, self-love, self-esteem, envy, evil-surmising, and jealousy, and plead for the Holy Spirit to come into your hearts and abide with you. As you taste and see that the Lord is good, you will hunger and thirst after more of the Holy Spirit, and will make an entire surrender of your will and your way, your plans and ideas, to God, and will keep the way of the Lord. Your words and deportment must be guarded. 

The mighty cleaver of truth has taken you out of the quarry of the world. You were rough stones with jagged edges, bruising and marring whoever you came in contact with; there is a work to be done to smooth off the rough edges. If you appreciated the value of the work that is to be done in the workshop of God, you would welcome the blows of the ax and the hammer. Your self-esteem will be hurt, your high opinion of yourself will be cut away by the ax and the hammer, and the roughness of your character will be smoothed off; and when self and carnal propensities are worked away, then the stone will assume proper proportions for the heavenly building, 

Christ is our model; but unless we behold him, unless we contemplate his character, we shall not reflect his character in our practical life... We are to be in the world, but not of the world. We are to be representatives of Jesus Christ. As the Lord of life and glory came to our world to represent the Father, so we are to go to the world to represent Jesus. He says, “I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” “Thy word is truth.” We need, then, to become familiar with the word of God; to study and to practice it in life. Then will the word become to us personally the power of God unto salvation. 

— The Youth’s Instructor, January 3, 1895 

THE RESPONSE 

Seek God with all your heart that the faith you possess may be a working faith that works by love and purifies the soul. 

Put away all self-importance and plead for the Holy Spirit to come into your heart and abide with you. 

Make an entire surrender of your will and your way, your plans and ideas to God. 

Behold Christ, contemplate His character. Become familiar with the word of God and practice it in your life.