FJWL_01:387
         Your heart that was broken but yet had many places of unyieldedness, your heart that was stony but yielded itself to Me--you took the step so long ago to ask Me to change it, to make it soft and moldable in My hands. Do you remember when you asked Me to do this? I have been answering your prayers! You asked to be made humble, to be used of Me, to find happiness and fulfillment. Perhaps you did not know how I would answer you, and that My answer would be to wash you with tears, to massage your heart with trials, and to make you a new creature through pain. But these lessons learned in this difficult way are some of the sweetest and most precious of all, because they bring forth beauty for ashes, joy from sorrow, and a smile that is more beautiful because it is surrounded by tears.
         That is what I have been bringing forth in your life: the sweet spirit, the quiet spirit, one that is content only in loving Me and serving Me and in the simple things of life. How complicated life can be when analyzed in the flesh, when thought through with the mind instead of accepted and loved with the heart! So have you learned that everything that seems so right and so perfect can crumble around your ears, and things that seem crazy, insignificant and stupid will stand strong if they are supported by My Spirit. All these truths have I shown you through the things that you have experienced, through the heartbreaks, the longing, the loneliness.
         You have found that you can stand strong with Me beside you, and that you do not necessarily need to have a human being to lean on. This realization is one that you will need in the days to come, for I will require you to lead others, and there will be times when only I will be there to lean upon, to counsel with, to ask questions of.
         This is also the reason why I have sometimes made you a lonely soul, why you feel nobody understands your deepest longings. Have you not run to Me at such times? Have you not in the end clung to My bosom and realized that only I can satisfy? Are not these precious lessons worth more than a few years of comfort and ease?
         Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in Heaven! Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, and joy in these trials and tribulations, for they work for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Rejoice, I say, for My purpose will be completed in you. As you yield to Me, I will make you what I want you to be, and that is what I am doing with you.



Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family