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Concerning The Author Preface Reprint Publisher's Foreword Talk One. What It Means To Trust The Lord Talk Two. The Blessing Of Dissatisfaction Talk Three. Why I Believe The Old Book Talk Four. He Maketh Me To Lie Down Talk Five. Blighted Blossoms Talk Six. Meeting The Lions Talk Seven. Egg-Shell Christians Talk Eight. Two Ways Of Seeing Talk Nine. The Living Bible Talk Ten. Heeding Intuitional Warnings Talk Eleven. Doing Something Worth While Talk Twelve. Home-Made Clouds Talk Thirteen. It Pleased The Lord To Bruise Him Talk Fourteen. Putting Clouds Over The Sun Talk Fifteen. What Is Your Word Worth? Talk Sixteen. How To Keep Out Of Trouble Talk Seventeen. What The Redbird Told Me Talk Eighteen. What Old Bill Could Not Do Talk Nineteen. Divine And Worldly Conformity Talk Twenty. Baptized With Fire Talk Twenty-One. What To Do With The Devil Talk Twenty-Two. Waiting On The Lord Talk Twenty-Three. Three Necessary "Rations" Talk Twenty-Four. A Retreat, Or A Rout? Talk Twenty-Five. My Dream Message Talk Twenty-Six. When God Withdraws Himself Talk Twenty-Seven. What Happened To Solomon Talk Twenty-Eight. Fighting The Good Fight Of Faith Talk Twenty-Nine. How Are Your Ear Connections? Talk Thirty. Fret Not Thyself Talk Thirty-One. Being Easily Entreated Talk Thirty-Two. Following "Whithersoever" Talk Thirty-Three. Paul's Persuasion Talk Thirty-Four. In Christ And In Ephesus Talk Thirty-Five. The Practical Side Of Religion Talk Thirty-Six. Do You Need Patience? Talk Thirty-Seven. Stumbling-Stones, Or Stepping-Stones? Talk Thirty-Eight. Use What You Have Talk Thirty-Nine. Where The Joy Is Talk Forty. Blowing The Clouds Away Talk Forty-One. How To Fertilize Love Talk Forty-Two. How To Overcome Disappointment Talk Forty-Three. The Big End Of Trouble Talk Forty-Four. Self-Made Barriers Talk Forty-Five. How To Work God's Joy-Machine Talk Forty-Six. Be Brave Talk Forty-Seven. "But Jesus Sent Him Away" Talk Forty-Eight. Getting The Kernel Talk Forty-Nine. Two Sunsets Talk Fifty. The Sculptor's Work Talk Fifty-One. The Helplessness Of The Gospel Talk Fifty-Two. He Careth For You Talk Fifty-Three. Three Tests Of Love Talk Fifty-Four. Two Ways Of Rising Talk Fifty-Five. Getting Even Talk Fifty-Six. Do You Know Yourself? Talk Fifty-Seven. Balkers Talk Fifty-Eight. Sponges And Watering-Cans Talk Fifty-Nine. The Final Retrospect Footnotes

C. W. Naylor

Yet he has not lost the joy out of life. He still does what he can to build up the kingdom of God and bless his fellow men by his words of good cheer. He is still interested in the events of the world, and especially in the progress of God's work. He has demonstrated the efficacy of God's grace to sustain one and give joy in the very discouraging circumstances of life. Though a firm believer in divine healing, and instrumental in the healing of those who kneel at his bedside for prayer, yet he has not received permanent healing, because, as he believes, this is God's method of developing his heart and making him more useful in helping others.

During the last five years, especially, he has contributed regularly to a religious periodical articles on subjects similar to those in this book, besides conducting a "Questions Answered" and information department, and writing a number of books.

PREFACE Most of the miscellaneous writings of which this volume is composed appeared originally in serial form. The widespread interest produced by them, the hundreds of letters of appreciation, and the numerous earnest requests for their publication in permanent form have been the moving cause for their presentation in this volume. They cover a very wide range of topics, are written in a popular style, and deal with phases of life and personal experience that are all too much neglected but which every Christian needs to understand. Each paper is complete in itself, though all have a general relation. They are pastoral in nature and have by the blessings of God comforted, encouraged, strengthened, and enlightened many souls. That they may by divine help continue to be a blessing to many is the earnest desire of the Author.

Anderson, Ind., May 14, 1920

REPRINT PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD

This volume has been read by a number of saints and ministers who have recommended that it be reprinted with a very few footnote corrections and deletions. Therefore, we submit this book to the reading public with the prayer that the Lord will make its contents a blessing to many precious souls.

TALK ONE. WHAT IT MEANS TO TRUST THE LORD

Throughout the Bible we are exhorted again and again to trust in the Lord. We are warned against trusting in princes, in riches, or in ourselves; for all such trust is vain. Trusting in the Lord is represented as being safe, as blessed, and as producing very desirable results. In it is our hope, our strength, our safety, and our help.

But what does trust mean? It does not mean carelessness or indifference. Just to let things go and say, "Oh, I guess it will come out all right," is not trusting. Just drifting heedlessly with the tide is not trust. Neglect is not trust. Trust is something positive. It is a real something, not a mere happen-so or maybe-so. It is a definite attitude of soul and mind, a realization of our own need and of God's sufficiency. It is the reaching out and anchoring of ourselves in God.

The soul who really trusts is not driven about by every wind. The waves beat against him as they beat against the anchored ship, but they can not dash him upon the rocks; for he who trusts in God is strong, because he has the strength of God.

Trust does not mean shutting our eyes to facts. There is no such thing as "blind faith." Trust looks at things as they are. It sees the dangers that threaten, and assesses them at their true value. It sees the need, and does not try to disguise it. It sees the difficulties, and does not discount them. But seeing all this, it looks beyond and sees God, its all-sufficient help. It sees him greater than the needs or the dangers or the difficulties, and it does not shrink before them.

There is no fear in trust: the two are opposites. When we really fear, we are not fully trusting. When we trust, fear gives way to assurance. Fear is tormenting. How many there are who are constantly agitated by fear! They fear the devil, trials, temptations, the wind, lightning, burglars, and a thousand other things. Their days are haunted by fear of this thing or that. Their peace is marred and their hearts are troubled. For all this, trust is the cure. I do not mean to say that if you trust, nothing will ever startle you or frighten you, or that you will never feel physical fear in time of danger; but in such times trust will bring to us a consciousness that the Lord knows and cares, and that his helping presence is with us.

When John Wesley was crossing the Atlantic from England to America to become a missionary to the Indians, the ship on which he was sailing encountered a terrible storm. It seemed that those on board would be lost. Many were much alarmed and were in deep distress. Wesley himself was one of this number. In the midst of the storm his attention was attracted to some Moravians who sat calm and undisturbed by the dangers about them. Wesley greatly wondered at their untroubled appearance. He inquired why it was. Their reply was that they were trusting in the Lord and that they had in their souls the consciousness of his protecting presence and care. They felt no fear because there was nothing threatening that a Christian had need to fear. Mr. Wesley did not have such an experience, but what he learned from those simple-hearted people caused him to seek a similar experience.

There is no worry in trust. When we worry about anything, we have not committed it to God. Trust takes away the anxiety. So many people use up a large portion of their energy in worry. There is always something troubling them. Their days and nights are full of anxiety. Worrying becomes a fixed habit with them. Peace and calmness and assurance find but little room in their lives. The cure for all this is trust. Trust brings confidence. Trust whispers to our souls that there is no cause to worry. It tells us that God holds the helm of our vessel. It bids us to be of good courage, assuring us that God is our refuge and strength, that our lives and all are in his hands, and that he will work out for us the things that are best.

O soul, stop worrying, and trust. It is so much better. If you find yourself worrying, stop right there. Take your eyes off the things that trouble you; look up, and keep looking up till you see God and his infinite care for you. Remember that when you worry you are not trusting, and that when you trust you are not worrying. Worry depresses, discourages, and weakens. It never helps us in any way. It is always a hindrance to us. God wants to bring into our lives a peaceful calm like that of a summer evening. He would have us without anxiety, as care-free as the birds or the lilies. It is trust that brings us this experience. Will you not learn to trust? "Casting all your care on him; for he careth for you."

There is no murmuring in trust. When all is trusted into God's hands, it brings to us a feeling of satisfaction concerning God's dealings with us. We can sing from our hearts, "God's way is best; I will not murmur." When we trust, it is easy to praise. When we trust, the heart is full of thankful appreciation. If you are inclined to murmur, it is because you do not trust.

There is no feeling of bitterness when things do not go as we think they should, if we are trusting. Bitterness comes from rebellion, and there is no rebellion in trust. Trust can always say, "Not my will, but thine, be done."

In trust there is peace, the peace of God which passeth understanding. There is calm in the soul of him who trusts. There is no doubt in trust, for doubt is swallowed up in assurance, and assurance brings calmness and peace.

I have told you something about trust, but I now wish to speak of some other things that belong to trust. Trust implies submission. Very often God fails to do things for us because we do not permit him to. We want to plan for ourselves. We want things to be done in the way that seems best to our finite wisdom.

Too many of us are like a woman whose husband recently said that they had often gone driving together, that their horse would sometimes become frightened, and that when it did, his wife would also become frightened and would almost invariably seize the lines. Thus, he would have to manage both his wife and the horse, making his task doubly difficult.

How many of us are just like that woman! When anything threatens, we become alarmed and try to help God. We feel that it is not safe to leave all in his hands and let him manage the circumstances. Our failure to submit to him often complicates matters, and it is harder for him to manage us than it is to manage the difficulties. To trust God means to keep our hands off the lines. It means to let him have his way and do things as he thinks best. It may be a hard lesson to learn, but you will hinder God until you learn it.

"It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" . If your life is submitted to him, he will work in you to will as well as to do. He will help do the planning as well as the working out. He will aid you in the choosing, no less than in the doing. If you can not submit to him thus, you have not reached the place where you can trust. You must first learn to take your hands off yourself and off circumstances; then trust will be natural and easy. How can you trust him if you are not willing for him to do just as it pleases him? When you have submitted all and he has his way fully with you, then the blessed fruitfulness of trust will come into your life.

Trust implies patience. Even God can not work everything out immediately. We are told that "ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise" . So many times we want the answers to our prayers right away. If they do not come thus, we grow impatient and think God is not going to answer. There is no use trying to hurry the Lord; we shall only hinder him if we do. He will not work according to our plans, but according to his own. Time does not matter so much to the eternal One as it does to us.

When Luther was summoned to meet the diet for trial on a charge of heresy, his friends, fearing for his life, tried to persuade him not to go; but he declared that he would go even if there were as many devils there as there were tiles on the housetops. He trusted God, and that trust gave him an unwavering courage. Three Hebrews trusted God, and the fiery furnace could not even singe their garments. Daniel trusted God, and the hungry lions could not touch him. Many thousands of others have trusted God with similar results.

But trusting God is an active, positive thing. A passive submission or surrender to circumstances is not trust. Trusting the Lord to save us means to definitely rely on him to do it; to confidently expect that he will do it. This leads directly to the confident trust that he does do it. It brings the conscious assurance that it is an accomplished fact. We are not left to doubt, to hope, or to guess; but we have a positive trust that brings a positive result.

The same is true of sanctification. A positive faith brings a positive experience; and so long as our faith remains positive, the experience remains positive. It is only when faith begins to waver and doubts appear that the experience becomes uncertain. If you will maintain a positive faith, God will take care of your experience. Here lies the secret of continuous victory. There may be conflicts, but faith is the foundation of sure victory.

Trusting the Lord for healing means more than refusing to employ a physician and to take drugs. People who do not trust God at all often refuse to use drugs. They may at no time during their sickness really exercise an act of faith for healing. They simply surrender to existing conditions and hope that it will come out all right. In many such cases nature will overcome the disease, and the person will recover. The "prayer of faith," however, is positive; it saves the sick; it brings healing. Sometimes the sick person, because of the mental effects of his sickness, is not able to exercise faith; but when he is able, faith will be an active, positive thing with him, if the desired results are to follow.

It is safe to trust in the Lord. Isaiah says, "I will trust and not be afraid" . That is the way God wants us to trust. He would have us be confident in him. But sometimes we get to looking at circumstances, and they loom up so threateningly before us that in spite of ourselves we tremble and shrink before them. We believe that God will take care of us and help us, but we can not quiet our fears. Our feelings are very much as they are when we stand just outside the bars of the cage of a ferocious wild beast. We know it can not reach us; we know we are safe from those powerful teeth and claws; but still we can not help having a feeling that we should not have were we somewhere else. When he comes to our side of the cage, we shrink involuntarily, but still we trust the iron bars and do not run away.

The Psalmist tells us what to do when we have such fears. "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee" . Still keep trusting. God will not chide you for the fears you can not help, but only for those that come from unbelief. Trust in God. It is the safest thing you have ever done; and he will never fail you.

TALK TWO. THE BLESSING OF DISSATISFACTION

A young sister sat in a room one beautiful summer afternoon. The sound of the birds chirping on the lawn and other noises of the out-of-doors came in through the open window to her. There was a look of melancholy upon her face, and her gaze rested steadily upon the floor. It was clear that she was troubled about something. Just then a minister entered the room. Noticing her forlorn appearance, he said cheerily, "What is the matter, sister?"

She looked up at him and answered wearily, "O Brother A, I am so dissatisfied."

"Well," he replied, "I am glad of it."

She almost gasped with astonishment, and exclaimed, "Why, Brother A! what do you mean?"

He then sat down in a chair near her and explained to her the substance of what I am going to say to you.

We have all thought how good it is to be satisfied. How many times we have heard people testify and rejoice that they had reached this experience! I would not depreciate this sense of satisfaction, for out of it come many enjoyable things. It is a very pleasurable feeling and one that most people very earnestly desire. There are times, however, when such a feeling would be anything but a blessing. Perhaps this surprizes you as it did the sister. God has made provision to satisfy us. Christ said that he who would drink of the water of life should thirst no more; for it should be in him a well of water, and thus his thirst should be continually quenched. So there is a continual satisfaction in God. It is a good thing to be thus satisfied with God and his plans and ways and with our salvation, and dissatisfaction with any of these, if we are saved, is an evil to which we should not give place; but hardly any greater evil could come upon us than a complete and constant sense of satisfaction relating to our attainments in grace, the development of our spiritual powers, or the measures of our service to God.

Dissatisfaction is the mother of progress. The Chinese for centuries have been taught to be satisfied with having things like their fathers had. As a consequence they have almost entirely lost the inventive faculty. Long ago they were an inventive nation, but now an invention among them is a rarity. As long as people are satisfied, they are content to remain as they are. Satisfaction is the foe to progress. As long as you are fully satisfied, you are like a sailing-vessel in a dead calm. The sea about you may be very smooth. Everything may be very peaceful and serene. But all the time this calm prevails you are getting nowhere; you are at a standstill. It is only when the wind rises and the swells begin to move the vessel up and down and the sails begin to strain that good progress begins. You may feel very comfortable in your satisfaction. It may be very delightful and dreamy, but it may be dangerous also. Those who are fully satisfied for very long may be sure that there is need for an investigation. It is only when we become dissatisfied with present conditions and attainments that we are spurred to effectual effort to make progress.

Suppose God had been satisfied with the world-conditions before Christ came. We should now have no Savior and no salvation. He was dissatisfied, thoroughly dissatisfied, and so he made the greatest sacrifice that he could make to change existing conditions. Paul was once very well satisfied with his place in the Jewish religion; he was not looking for anything better. His dissatisfaction arose from the fact that some other people were not satisfied thus but were finding and advocating something different. This aroused his severest condemnation. What he had was good enough for him and ought to be good enough for them.

There are many today who are just like Paul was. They are fully contented in their present situation, and should any one try to show them its insufficiency and the need of higher attainment, it would only arouse their opposition and indignation. That is why so many people oppose holiness. Just as soon as Paul saw Christ and the higher and better things for which Christ stood, he suddenly lost his satisfaction and became an earnest seeker for those better things. Sometimes it takes a rude shock to break through our self-satisfaction and to show us our true needs; but when it comes and arouses a dissatisfaction, it is truly a blessing.

Suppose Luther had been satisfied to continue in the Romish church, approving and submitting to her teachings and practices. Where might the world have been today? He became dissatisfied and gave voice to that dissatisfaction. Others heard and became dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction made their hearts hungry for God, and out of that heart-hunger came the Reformation.

Dissatisfaction has brought us the multitude of new things which we have to use and enjoy. It has been because men became dissatisfied with old methods and old implements and old ideas and customs and old attainments that they have toiled in painful research, that they have labored night and day to invent new things. In some places, people still plow with a crooked stick and grind their flour in hand-mills. What their fathers had is good enough for them. Some people are like that about religion. What their fathers had is good enough for them, and they are indignant if we even suggest something better; they are satisfied. There are others who sought and obtained a real experience of forgiveness, but right there they stopped. Years have passed. They were satisfied when they were first saved ; the only trouble was that they remained satisfied and never made any further progress. They hear entire sanctification preached, they accept the doctrine intellectually, but they can never be persuaded to press on into the experience themselves. They go on from year to year to year and never make any real spiritual advancement. What is the trouble? Oh, they are just satisfied, that is all; and they will never get any further till their sleepy satisfaction is rudely broken in upon by something that startles them out of their security and awakens them to their needs. That will bring dissatisfaction and that in time will set them to seeking to have those needs supplied.

Some people are content just to drift with the tides. They go along with the crowd, whichever way sentiment goes, and are quite content. They are no real moral force in their community or in the church. They are aware of the fact, and they seem to be satisfied to have it so. They will never amount to very much so long as they are thus satisfied. Getting dissatisfied is the only thing that will ever make anything worth while of them.

There are those who know that they are less spiritual than they used to be; still, they are not much concerned about it. They are resting very easy. Such satisfaction is a curse. What such folks need is a good case of dissatisfaction; for that is the only thing that will keep them from drying up and withering away. I know of people who once had a glorious experience but who for years have been so satisfied with themselves that they have not progressed an inch. Instead, they have gone backwards, with the result that today they are cold and formal. They are still satisfied, they still profess to be justified and sanctified, but they amount to practically nothing for God or the church. There is no moral force radiating from their lives. To such persons the coming of dissatisfaction would be a great blessing. So long as they are satisfied with their present condition, so long they will be cold formalists.

Some people know that they are coming short both of their duty and of their privileges in the Lord, but in spite of this they seem content and are making no effort--at least no effective effort--to do better. O brother, sister, if you are satisfied where you ought to be dissatisfied, it is time you awakened, it is time you looked toward better things until your hunger for them stirred you to action to obtain them.

To those who are dissatisfied, who realize your needs and lacks, I say: Do not be discouraged. God means by this very feeling of dissatisfaction with yourself to spur you on to seek diligently for higher and better attainments. If you allow yourself to be discouraged, it will only hinder you. God will help you to obtain that which you need. Do not falter because your need seems great; God's supply is more abundant than your need. Cast off every weight. Press forward. God will help you. When once he has aroused you to effort, you will find him ready to help. Your dissatisfaction is most encouraging. Do not stay dissatisfied; press on till you obtain what you need. You will never attain your full measure of desire in this life, but you may obtain much, and what you do obtain will prepare you for that fulness and satisfaction which only eternity can bring you.

Dissatisfaction is never welcome, but it is a true friend. Through it you may reach blessed attainments and soul-enriching grace. Value it and use it rightly, and it will prove a great blessing, though it may often be a blessing in disguise.

TALK THREE. WHY I BELIEVE THE OLD BOOK

Do I believe the old Book? Do I really believe it? My heart answers that I do. The deepest consciousness of my soul testifies that it is true. I will tell you some of the reasons why I believe it.

The Oldest, and Still the Newest, of Books.

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