THANKS & COMMENTS!                DO 157            3/72
        
SECRETARIES
        
         1. GOOD SECRETARIES ARE ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL TO THE REVOLUTION! A Home may be able to get along without a house or a car or even a shepherd for a while, as some have, but it absolutely cannot do without a secretary to carry on the Lord's vital business of communications, keeping records & handling all the details necessary to keep the Home going. She is often also the bookkeeper, Assistant Shepherd, provisioner, girls' overseer, kitchen supervisor, inspirationalist, teacher & witnessing director!
         2. So a good inspired secretary can make a great man out of almost anybody, including me, as I was nobody until maria came along & encouraged my faith & made me produce & made me stick to it, with the lord's help--& she's still at it! Because I'm naturally rather slow & lazy, procrastinating & dreamy, & if it weren't for her & the lord I never would get anywhere! The lord gives me the dreams & the visions & the messages, but it's maria that makes me put them into action in these letters to keep you inspired & fed, encouraged & led. In fact, if it were not for her, you might not get them at all, as she's the one who has to take them down when I'm totally in the spirit, ptl!
         3. So I'm all for recruiting more secretaries, as they are literally the executive officers, the right arms of your leaders! The leaders speak the word, but it's the secretaries that have to see that it's carried out. So leadership is no stranger to them, & in its absence, they are frequently well able to carry on a home without it! And if it weren't for the fact that some of you have such good secretaries for wives, you probably wouldn't be able to run a home at all!--And neither would i!--Not even the revolution! It's the leader who speaks the word, but it's you secretaries who administer it, so you are truly administrators in the finest sense of the word, so you are allimportant to keeping the revolution rolling! You are a vital part of the fulfilment of god's prophecy of us in psalm 68: "the lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it"! You secretaries & your typewriters are some of god's most important instruments in publishing the word & all the words that are necessary for carrying on his work! God bless you!

Encouragement to the chastised!
        
         4. If you have truly learned your lessons & been humbled & broken by the lord through your mistakes, he will usually use your humiliating experience, as he says, to make of you a better vessel in the potter's hands, even better fit for the master's use! When grandmother once asked the world-famous evangelist, paul rader, why god never seemed to be able to get enough good leaders for his use, he wisely replied: "they can't seem to be broken fast enough, & god can only use truly broken men & women!" Unless you have been broken, humbled, humiliated & come to the end of yourself & have nothing left but god, god will never be able to use you as greatly as he would like!
         5. But as with king david, though his was a great sin, his was also a great repentance, a great humbling & breaking; therefore there was also a great forgiveness for him & a final exaltation even far above his former glory! So you who have truly learned your lesson & have come through these refining fires of bitter mistakes & god's consequent judgements in burning out the dross should come forth as gold, even better leaders than you were before! You are still a part of the family & we love you more than ever & believe god is going to use you mightily more than ever before, as he is already beginning to do with some of you! Hallelujah! Amen? So we're expecting even greater things of you than ever before, as some are already proving to be true! Gby!
         6. May I recommend to you a passage which has always been a great encouragement to me when being chastened by the lord in his loving discipline, & his spirit has often spoken it to me when he has so often had to deal with me, sometimes a little sternly, for my many mistakes: hebrews 12, especially the 5th, 6th & 13th verses: "my son, despise not thou the chastening of the lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him, for whom the lord loveth he chasteneth, & scourgeth every son whom he receiveth...Let it rather be healed."
         7. I SUGGEST TO YOU WHO ARE PRONE TO STUMBLE, MEMORISE THIS PASSAGE, particularly the 1st through the 15th verses, & it will be a great encouragement to you & to others who have similar problems. May the birds with the broken pinions, having learned their lessons from the snares of the Enemy, now learn to fly even higher than before! We hope so! But if your breaking process is not yet complete, don't leave school before the bell rings. It took Jacob 21 years in the school of Laban before he was broken & liberated & ready for leadership. We hope it doesn't take YOU that long, because we need you NOW. Maria also suggested that you who have had these problems read again "Did God Make A Mistake?" for your encouragement! GBY! We love you & are expecting God's best of YOU! Please don't disappoint us again! There's so little time left! We need you!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family