Chapter 39—Brace Your Souls for Action

By Ellen G. White

I ask the believers in Los Angeles to seek for a deeper, higher experience in the things of God. The Father seeketh such to worship Him. Arise, and brace your souls for action. Take an extensive survey of the work that is to be done. Read your Bibles with an increasing determination to have a larger experience in the things of God. Stand in the light of the Sun of Righteousness.1NL 125.1

What could induce the pure, sinless Son of God to tabernacle with men in a world filled with crime and strife and wickedness. He did this that He might better reach the lost and perishing. He suffered, being tempted. Proportionate to the perfection of His holiness was the strength of the temptation. Because of the depravity so revolting to His purity, His residence in the world was a perpetual sorrow. On every hand He saw men and women destroying themselves by yielding to perverted appetite and passion.1NL 125.2

Christ gave His life for the life of the world. He came to this earth in the likeness of man, to present before human beings an example of the character that all must form in order to be saved. He came to bring them power to overcome all the temptations of the enemy.1NL 125.3

O that every soul might be awakened, and led to become a subject of the heavenly kingdom, surrendering all to Christ. The Word of God gives us no encouragement that a sinner is pardoned in order that he may continue in sin. He is pardoned on condition that he receives Christ, confessing and repenting of his sin, and becoming renewed. Many who pass under the name of Christian are not converted. Conversion means renovation. The sinner must enter into the renovating process for himself. He must come to Jesus. He must give up the wrong habits in which he has indulged. He must bring his unsubdued, un-Christlike tendencies under the control of Christ, else he cannot be made a laborer together with God. Christ works, and the sinner works. The life of Christ becomes the life of the human agent. It is through the renewing power of the divine Spirit that man is fashioned into a perfect man in Christ.1NL 125.4

By the character that he is forming, every man is deciding his future destiny. In the books of heaven is made the record. There the character is photographed. There is seen a picture of the unclothed soul.1NL 125.5

The promise is given, “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” It is the striving souls who receive the assistance of heaven, and partake of its elements. It is by test and trial that the followers of Christ are fitted to dwell with Him in the heavenly courts.—Letter 161, 1905.1NL 125.6

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