The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, December 1882: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.; Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific CircleChautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Religion
The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, December 1882: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.; Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
I propose to show how you may all reach it. (May the Lord help me!) I
think I find it in one single expression in this text, “Walk before
me, and be thou perfect. I am the Almighty God.” That is, “I am the
Almighty God, to help you walk before me.” If you please God, you can
take the risk about the rest. Do you say, “I am weak.” God answers it
with his omnipotence. Do you say, “I am poor.” God answers it with his
riches. Do you say, “I am without any useful gift, or I have peculiar
surroundings.” God answers it with that one expression, “I am the
Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
You remember that interview that God had with Moses when he was about
to send him into Egypt. How often God says, “I am the Almighty God. I
am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” What did he say that to him
for? That he might encourage him to believe in him; trust him, and
encourage him to go out under his might. I believe “I am the Almighty
God” answered every excuse of Moses. If we put this matter in the
hands of God, with perfect consecration, faith, and love toward God,
and perfect truth, honesty, and magnanimity to our fellow-men, it will
become easy to us, it will become the joy of our lives, and God will
put us down in his blessed book as among his perfect ones.
Mark what God calls perfect is so different from what men require. We
hear some persons say, “Well, C. is about perfect.” You go out and
tell that thing to somebody that knows her, and does not like her very
much. If I should believe the things I hear said about some men, they
should be put in jail. But you can not find out that way: look up to
God! Knowing how imperfect we are, and how poor we are, in all these
relations of our hearts and lives, God has put it down, “I am the
Almighty God. I am able to make you what you want to be.” That is what
he said to Abram. Look at him. You recollect at one time in his life,
under great pressure, he told a lie. And yet Abram filled the ideal,
but it was in spite of that. Noah was perfect, but he got drunk. Job
was perfect, and upright, and eschewed evil. If anyone will read over
carefully the Book of Job, (and I recommend you to read it), he will
find a perfect answer for all the skepticism of this present age. Job
went so far as to curse the day in which he was born, and the day when
it was said a man-child is born, and yet he was a man that was perfect
in his generation, and that pleased God. He came out of that immature
condition of ignorance of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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