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Understanding Ellen White

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    Provide practical advice for relationships

    With the traditional constraints on relationships stripped away by a post-modern culture, our interpersonal relationships have become, if anything, more complex. Love relationships, work relationships, and even our relationship with God can often be confusing and we may need a listening ear. Ellen White wrote many letters of counsel to people, giving practical advice. People quickly came to value her advice in these areas and wrote asking questions ranging from the profound to the ridiculous. 34People sometimes wanted advice on what career path to take or whom to marry. Other people wanted a list of exactly what can be safely eaten. Here is a perspective on Ellen White’s view regarding many of these questions: “When I open a letter beginning, ‘I am sorry to trouble you, Sister White, but I am in trouble, and I wish to know about something in regard to my family and in regard to myself,’ I feel sad at heart. When it is essential for you to know, God will let you know. He has promised that if you ask wisdom from him, he will give it to you. But it is not always essential for us to know all the why’s and wherefore’s. We dishonor God by striving to get some one whom we think understands our case to help us. Is not Christ close beside us, and will he not give us the help we need? His word repeats the promise over and over again. ‘If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it,’ he says. ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments.’” EGW, “Our Supply in Christ,” General Conference Bulletin, April 4, 1901, 36. Ellen White, however, did not want to give all the answers and micromanage relationships. She wanted to wean people from depending on her counsels for quick, mistake-free decisions they faced in their personal lives. Rather, she wanted to encourage individuals to become secure in their relationship with God and be able to recognize His will as He spoke to them individually through Scripture. 35Douglass, Messenger of the Lord, 419. She provided case studies in which she encouraged readers to find and prayerfully apply the principles involved in the relationships. 36Copies of letters written to various individuals are inserted throughout the volumes of the Testimonies for the Church and the three volumes of Selected Messages; see also Merlin D. Burt, “Ellen White and Mental Health,” in A Christian Worldview & Mental Health: A Seventh-day Adventist Perspective, ed. Carlos Fayard et al. (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2011), 55-74. These principles are still relevant to relationships in the twenty-first century.UEGW 248.4

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