Put On the Glasses of Love

Put On the Glasses of Love

by Ruth Robison

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Talking about great things and great love, I think really we can really desire and earnestly yearn to arrive at the place where we love God as much as He loves us. And you know, then when such a thing happens, that will be the kingdom of God. That will be it. And wherever you find mutual love, equal love, any place, that is a little tiny aspect of the kingdom of God. There is nothing that opens the door like mutual love and appreciation of each other. There is nothing that opens the door of my mind and heart to God like my love and appreciation of God. I deeply appreciate God, and the more I know Him, the more my appreciation grows. You know, I have great admiration for God. And as William Law so often tells us, he was a great English mystic and writer and preacher, he often tells us whenever we speak of God to speak magnificently of Him. And these are the words that he uses. So, you see, as we grow in the knowledge of God, we grow in our love for Him and our deep respect for Him and our appreciation for Him. And, of course, when you find between a parent and a child such love, between friends such love, between husband and wife such love, do you know either one or the other would not dare to do a thing to hurt the other?

Never would they do this. Not only that, they’re always looking for opportunities to express love. This is what I see God to be like. And tonight I’m going to continue to talk to you on love. Tommy started this morning so magnificently in the divine, holy, eternal love gift of God through the whole experience of Jesus Christ from God to God. So, you see, this is love. This is divine love. And, you know, when you really catch an aspect, a little glimpse of what God’s love is like, you don’t want anything else. You just don’t want anything else. Except that you want to be always a part of this love of God. And as I see it today, there is nothing, there is nothing else but divine love which is going to enable you and I to achieve our divine destiny, our plan that God has for us, and bring us into a glorious sense of complete spiritual maturity. And so, therefore, it would behoove us that in everything we do to look through the eyes of love. I told you in the beginning that the Holy Spirit said, “Put on the glasses of love and look through them.” When you go home, just, if you forget everything else, just remember that I said, “Put on the glasses of love and see everything through these glasses.”

My goodness, as we were having our lovely conversation this afternoon, and the things the four of us were talking about, we began to see each other in a different way. Two of us were… I was talking about a little white dog that was my little dog, that little white floppy thing that I found on the street when I was a youngster. I was about nine years old. And little poodle, I think they called him, but I think he was many other things. But anyhow, I found him, and he was so dirty, and he was so hungry, and I picked him up and took him home. In my childish heart, I had no idea that my father, my mother and my father, would not love him just like I did. And you know, the thing I remember so much is that they did. And you know, when my father saw this little old dog, I know now that he was a little bit startled. But I didn’t see that. I only saw my father pick him up and say, “Well, come on in, Ruth. We should give him a bath, and I think we should feed him before we bathe him.” This was my father. And my mother came in and saw this little dog, and she said, “Oh, poor little thing.”

You know how mothers do? And you see, let me tell you something. I had forgotten almost everything else about my parents, really. And I could just list, I could write a book on the glories of them. But you see, the thing is this. I never forgot, as a little child, my parents’ reception of a dirty little dog. So, you know, you just never know what channel God is going to use and going to give you through which you can express divine love. I would like to read this affirmation that when I began, when I put on my glasses, so to speak, and I began to really ask the Holy Spirit to teach me so many things through our experience, I wrote this as my morning affirmation. I’d like to share it with you. I will move this day in the current of divine love. I will think and speak magnificently of God whenever I’m called to speak of Him. I will connect myself to the deep, quiet assurance of God’s love spirit in every person that I meet. I will let my ordered life reveal this day the beauty of divine love. I will show love whenever I feel and I see the need of it. But when I don’t see or feel the need of it, God our Father who is divine love will You pour it through me unconsciously.

So this became my affirmation from that time on as I began to think on this. I had this interesting experience. You know, I’ve gotten… these are bifocals. And I’ve just arrived at the place that they think I ought to have bifocals and you know I don’t know what to do with them. But anyway, I’m going to take them… I shouldn’t take them off but I do. But anyway, I am. I have to. Because I’ve got to tell you something.

Anyway, I was working with this young girl, young mother in Kinsale. And she had a mother who was 86 years old and she had been ill for a couple years in the bed, out of the bed. Three times we got… I had been called to her bedside to help her pass over very lovingly and beautifully. And to be with the family as she was going. And each time she’s opened her eyes and said, “Is it morning?” And then I’d say, “Yes, it’s morning.” And she’d be well again. So anyhow, finally she came to a place that she couldn’t get her to bed. So they took her to a nursing home. And we prayed. As a group we prayed. I don’t mean we petitioned. We didn’t petition but once. And that God’s perfect will be done in her. This is at her particular stage of the game. All right, now. Then I said, all right, now just this. Let’s go talk with her and be with her and go to see her. So we did. But nothing happened. She didn’t get any joy. When we wanted her to have some joy, she wasn’t a happy person. She never had been a real happy person. Because she really had never known Jesus, really. So, you know, I thought, well, well, the way we’re working, as I told you in intercessory prayer this afternoon, we realized the way we had been praying was just plain wrong.

It just wasn’t any good. So when I was asking the Holy Spirit again in my morning meditation, what could we do for Ms. Parks? Well, the idea came. And so as Betty came by to pick me up to drive, we had to drive 60 miles to the nursing home. To drive to the nursing home, I said to her, “Betty, I’ve got the idea now that we can take this new direction for prayer for your mother. But I’m not going to tell you what it is. I only want you to stand by the bed and see what I do.” She said, “All right.” So when we got to the nursing home, Ms. Parks was lying flat on the bed. She had been very ill all night. And so she hardly paid any attention to us. And I took my paper and pencil like this, my little notebook to write, and I put it over on her tummy right here. And I said to her, “Here’s a pencil, Ms. Parks. I need you so bad this morning.” Well, she raised up. She said, “What did I hear you say?” I said, “I need you so bad this morning. Could you raise up a little bit and could you sit up and do a little thinking for me?”

She said, “Of course I could.” And she sat right up in bed and she reached over and took the pencil and I put the pad here. And then she looked at me. She says, “Ruth, you know I haven’t been able to write for a long time. My fingers are so stiff.” I said, “All right. You talk to me and I’ll write.” I said, now, well, she said, “What do you want me to tell you?” I said, “I want you at your 86 years old to stop and think. What is the greatest need in our world today? What is your greatest need?” Well, she sat and, I mean, she thought and thought a little while. And then she looked at me with tears in her eyes and she said, “I just want to make a statement.” All right. Then I said, “Fine, I’m ready to write it down,” which I have it written right here. She said, “Good people are afraid to show love. Good people are afraid to show love.” And then I said, “All right, that is wonderful. Now,” I said, “would you just make that a little more personal?” She said, “I certainly would.” She said, “I’m so hungry for love. I’m just so hungry for love.” I said, “All right, Ms. Parks, I thank you so much.”

That will be the direction of our messages. And we will see that you get all you need. Then I knew that we had a new direction for prayer. How, Father, could we challenge people in Kilmarnock? People in the nursing home, people in Kilmarnock. Kilmarnock, that’s a little town right on the water shores in Virginia. Tommy knows where that is, don’t you, Tommy? So, all the people there, how could we challenge through prayer these people to become awake to love? Just become awake to love. All the women, the men, the children, become awake to love. So, then on the way home, Betty and I discussed it. So, we knew that there were certain groups of women. The women from the Red Cross, the women from the YMCA, the women from all the different churches, went at special times during the week to just kind of wait on these people in the nursing home and to take them little bits of flowers and to carry them a bit of goodies. But, you see, that was not the answer. I want you to get this. We can carry everything under the sun to people who are in need, but if we do not carry ourselves, we have carried nothing. So, you see, we began to pray for the different organizations and groups that when the women went and the men went to see the men that were in the nursing home, that they would be led by the Holy Spirit, whether they knew it or not.

We gave the Spirit of God a great big job then to express in some way, through some contact, through some physical contact, their own great love and compassion for these people. So, Betty and I agreed in prayer, and I told Lee and Lee agreed with us, which made three. Well, ten days passed and I hadn’t heard anything. And that evening, when evening came on the tenth day, I had a telephone call, and Betty called me and said, “Ruth, you just won’t believe it. But,” she said, “maybe you will. But anyhow, you just won’t believe it. Do you know I never saw such things happening in a nursing home before in my life? When I went down there, do you know that Mother was in the rolling chair? She was sitting up at the table eating her dinner with a group of other people. And I sat down and ate dinner with her. And do you know my mother leaned over and said to me, ‘Betty, you know I love you.’” She said, “You know, Ruth, that’s the first time she said that in 20 years. And then I said to her, ‘My mother, I love you too.’” And then she said, “Every nurse, every person who waited on these people in the nursing homes, came and touched her mother on the shoulder and said, ‘Miss Fox, how are you?’”

Lots of love today. And then as we went down the hall, she said, “As I went down the hall into the different rooms, I passed different groups of women. And all of them were going in the rooms telling these precious people who couldn’t get out of bed how much they loved them, giving them a hug, kissing them on the forehead, and asking them what they could do for them. The whole nursing home was alive. I never saw a nursing home come alive like this before.” I’m telling you this because there might be such a thing as a nursing home in your community. And there might be such a place as a home for elderly people who shut in your community. And you know, this is just one way that we really can begin to express divine love. I’d like to tell you another experience. And this has happened in one of our largest churches in Richmond, our largest Methodist churches. Again, Tommy may know Jim Turner. He’s prominent in our conference. But anyway, he had traded to church in Richmond. For quite some time, for a fact there’s a number of years, Jim has kind of leaned a little bit toward me having a school of prayer in his church. But leaning is not enough for a school of prayer.

And so I have not responded to him in this way. As so often you find yourself being held back by the Holy Spirit rather than rushing into anything. You are held back until you feel His push from behind and you’re pushed in. Well, anyway, Jim wrote me a letter and asked if I would have a school of prayer in Trinity Church in Richmond. Quite a large church. A beautiful church. All the equipment that you could possibly want for any reason whatsoever. A wonderful young people’s group. Alive, active, doing great things. Yes, modern things, but great things. Anyway, when Jim finally called me, he said, “Did you get my letter?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, what are you going to do?” I said, “I’ll tell you, Jim, it is not easy. And if you want me to have a school of prayer, I am going to ask some very hard things. If you feel that you cannot follow these, you cannot measure up to them, you cannot give the time for them, you are not willing to put the thought and prayer into it, that’s all right with me. I never have to do anything, and I certainly don’t have to do this, but I just want to tell you, I appreciate your invitation.” And he didn’t hesitate.

He said, “What do you want me to do?” I said, “I want you to jump in your car and drive 150 miles to see me and spend the morning with me and have lunch, because it’s going to take a whole morning for me to tell you the significance of a school prayer.” He said, “I’ll come. But,” he said, “I’ll bring so-and-so and so-and-so.” I said, “No, that’s your second trip.” I said, “Your first trip, I just want you. Because if you and I can’t become one in this great adventure, then there’s no second trip.” So he came. Oh, he’s a great fellow. He’s a tremendous person. And he’s just like I am. He’s growing with leaps and bounds, too. So anyhow, he came. He sat down. And I went over all the list of things that I have in my procedure into school prayer. But I said, “Jim, the first thing is you’ve got to find me ten of your finest professional men. Find me ten men that hold good jobs that are respected by people in their thinking, in their acting, and in their contribution to the community and to the church. You’ve got to find me ten women who are leaders in the church and in the community and the council of church women in your church.

“I want twenty men and women who can think God’s thoughts. Now, if you can’t find me those twenty people, we aren’t ready yet.” And then I said, “You go through this list of things and you will see the requirements.” And I said, “It’s going to take you half an hour to ponder this. And while you do this, I’ll be putting things in order so that lunch will be ready at 12 o’clock.” I promised him he could have lunch because he had afternoon engagement. So while he was looking over the list of things, which I had so carefully under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, felt that the time had come to demand. And when someone spoke about, do you ever demand of God? Tommy, you remember that in there, being there. And I would like to say that we could so often say, yes, if I can meet God’s demands of me, I think I have a right to demand great things of God. So anyhow, I said, these were the things that I had listed for the minister. And so for Jim. So while I was fixing dinner, lunch, he went down and went down the list. And after we ate lunch, then we went back again to sit in the living room. And I said, “All right, Jim, what about it?”

And he looked over at me with tears in his eyes. He said, “Do you know, I am hungry to do something big. I am hungry to do something big.” I said, “Good, so am I. Let’s begin. All right, now. Every step depends on the step before you go home and find me those 20 people.” And not only to be those kind of people, but they are to give me four Sunday evenings, the month preceding the school of prayer, for training in prayer group leadership. The men have to agree to be willing to, after being trained, to take the prayer groups. Ten prayer groups. The women, after being trained, the ten women have to be willing to take ten prayer groups. So he said, “All right, Ruth, I’ll go home and do my best.” And I said, one other person there I’d like to get you to pull in on this is the chairman of evangelism. He’s a perfect and magnificent man, the chairman of evangelism in this church. And so, Jim went to have a conference with him and he was willing. He, too, was hungry. He said, “You know, I’m chairman of evangelism, but I don’t know a thing to do about even beginning to touch a human soul.” That’s exactly what he said.

So when I met with him, I met with Bob and Jim next. And I talked to them. And, of course, we had a time of prayer. But I told them that all this we were doing was prayer conversation. Everything I was demanding of him was prayer. Everything, the whole atmosphere was an atmosphere of prayer. So anyhow, these two precious men went back to Richmond to find 20 people. The first Sunday, they called me after two weeks. They called me over the telephone and said, “We are sending you the names and addresses of your 20 people.” When I looked at them, I got a little bit, just a little bit weak in the knees because I looked at these people. I didn’t have any other educational qualifications or many of these perfectly magnificent periods of preparation that these great people had. But, you know, I knew I had something they didn’t have. I knew I had something so much greater than what they had that I could go and meet them. And they became to me my children. Even every one of these 20 people became my children. And I said to them the first Sunday afternoon, “I am asking the Heavenly Father to bless you because you have given yourself to me.” This was a little bit unusual.

But you see, the fact is they had to know that what I said, I meant. And I could have said, “You’ve given yourself to God,” but God was a little fair piece away at this moment. So I had to say, “You’ve given yourself to me. And I want you to listen to me.” Well, they straightened their legs out, these big men, and the women relaxed in the chairs. And then I began to talk about God. I began to talk about His greatness. And I began to talk about how much God loved these 20 people. And, you know, they listened. And in spite of, and because of too, I think, they really had never heard in depth, a person talk about the love of God with such a demanding consciousness. Do you know what I mean by that? That I knew that I could say this for God’s sake. So, oh, they were so wonderful. Now, I said, this is what you have to do. I had brought this little book, and I had taken 20 of Tom Cruise’s little book, A Hundred Days of Love, because I knew it had to start that way. And I said, “Now, I want every one of you people to take this Hundred Days of Love, and I want you to promise me, no maybe.”

“If there’s a single maybe in this group, we are blocked. A single person who isn’t willing, we are blocked. Because we’re going to do a great job for God, and it’s blocked.” So anyhow, there wasn’t a single person. Every person agreed. Now, one of the men, of course, he’s a businessman, he said, “How much are they, Ruth?” I said, “Well, I’m so glad. He and I are so glad to give them to you.” He said, “How much are they?” I said, “Really, I think a dollar will do.” Well, I kept getting dollars in every time I met that group. I got dollars in, and I carried home some dollars to leave. He said, “How much longer are you going to meet them?” But anyway, I met with this group four Sunday afternoons out of one month. These precious people had agreed to give this much time and this much thought and this much prayer. And then I had written out some prayers. I had a sheet of prayers that I had written out to give each one. That they should pray nothing but these prayers. I hope I’m trying to help you see that when you want to do a big job for God, it requires big concentration. It really does. So anyway, all right, this was the first day they took them home.

Well, you know, when I met them the second time, I looked them over and their shoulders were straighter. And the men were sitting up a little straight. They weren’t slouched down like this. And I began to see such a change, but I didn’t mention it. I was just saying, “Thank you, Father. You’re working. I know it.” And, well, the third time and the last time we got together, we were in silence for the school of prayer. And when they began to… When the time came that they would pour out their hearts for the school of prayer, they didn’t ask God to bless the school of prayer. This thrilled my soul. They said, “Oh, God, take me. Oh, God, take me. Teach me how to pray so that I can in some way teach somebody how to pray in the school of prayer.” Well, the time came that we went into the school of prayer. And this was on Sunday morning. And, of course, Jim had asked me to speak at Sunday morning service on the school of prayer. I did. And two services on Sunday morning. And then in the afternoon, we started the school of prayer. We had… we didn’t have a church full of people that Sunday evening, but we had 250 people who were definitely deeply concerned in this whole business of learning how to pray and contacting God in a brand new way.

Again that afternoon, I asked them, I said to them, “Now, listen, we are in the school of prayer for business. For definite business for God, because God is wanting to teach us something. He’s a great teacher. He’s wanting to teach us how to pray in a world that we live in there. How to pray for ourselves, how to pray for others, how to pray for our world. If you are not interested in coming to every session of the school of prayer,” because the men worked in the daytime, they came in the evening, “if you’re not interested in coming to every session, you women, these three mornings, and you men, the three evenings, just don’t come. Just don’t come. Because we are flowing in the love of God, the great love of God, and the power of prayer. And it cannot be broken. We have already started this dream. It cannot be broken. We will love you if you don’t come. We will love you. But if you’re not coming to learn, don’t you come.” Well, it was quite an interesting experiment because the group, of course, got a little bit smaller and smaller. But at the very end, there were 75 people who went to the altar to ask the Heavenly Father to fill them with the Holy Spirit, these precious men and women.

I didn’t lay my hands on these people, but these 20 people did, these 20 men and women. I laid my hands on them that they might be filled with God’s Spirit. And then I said, “All right, now it’s your business to pass it on.” And when the time came that the people in the congregation, not the 20, but the people in the congregation, were ready to make their decision to come, the 20 people, the 20 men and women standing in the altar, were ready to be chanced of the prayer of the Holy Spirit. I have never received such letters, really. I’ve received many glorious letters in my lifetime. But such letters of such quick action of the Holy Spirit. And this perfectly magnificent chairman of evangelism of the church came to me to say, “I am new in the love of God. I am new in the love of God.” And I said, “That’s all you need.” And then letter after letter came. “I never thought it could be like this. I just never thought it could be like this.” So, you see, the power of God is working in such marvelous ways. And I want to tell you about the church because this is Sunday. And you know, as you go back to your own church, if you’ll love it enough, I think we haven’t loved it because we have been so critical, so negatively critical, that we have destroyed all the love, perhaps, that we have had for our Christian church.

But if we go back loving it and giving ourselves to it, I’m not necessarily meaning being president of a WSCS, or chairman of a men’s breakfast club. I’m not talking about that sort of giving right now. I’m talking about saying to the Holy Spirit, “I’m going to give an hour this day just to pray for my church. I’m going to give You half an hour today just to pray for my church.” You see, that’s the sort of giving I’m talking about. Now, come back to our experience of love. You know that you know divine love by what divine love does. You know that a person loves you by what that person does for you, with you, and not with you. And, you know, so therefore we know how God loves, by what God loves, by what God’s love does. And I would like to just list a few little things, a few ways that God loves us so magnificently that we might take as our principle of working and letting love act through us. First of all, God’s love listens. We’ve been talking a lot about listening since we’ve been here. You folks don’t realize it, but you’re in a very powerful group of people. This group is a very great group, really. And you are moving very swiftly towards something much larger and bigger than you came with.

You may not be conscious of it yet. It may have dawned on you or just beginning to crack. You know, we live in the country where they have lots of crabs. And we have our own crab pots there at the end of the pier. We don’t get soft-shell crabs unless we put them in the floats. But we get the hard-shell crabs. When I first discovered this, and then I wanted to show our little grandchildren, I wanted to show them how life expands and how we have to keep on losing one shell, or crawling out of one shell of life, one pattern of life into another. And the moral of this thing is, just the minute I’m willing to give up an old idea, or to give up an old pattern of doing something, or to give up something that I’ve always done, I grow big. I grow so much bigger like this, the minute I’m willing to give it up. Then I begin to grow on a very different level from which I was a moment ago. Now, this happens to the crab. So I saw one was beginning to let go of his old shell. So I took it up on the little bar in the kitchen and put it in a plate. And I called the children, and I said, “Come on now, let’s watch life work.”

And so, do you know, that was really one of the most magnificent things, because we saw that crab slump off its top part, and then we saw it just gradually draw one claw out of an old claw, another claw out of an old claw, till all four claws were brand new. And he was a brand new crab. Now, I had heard the fishermen and crabmen say that when the crab loses its shell, it may be five inches across the top of the old shell, but when it comes out, it’s at least six or six and a half inches longer. How in the world that happens, I don’t know. And how that six and a half inches could be in five inches and have grown to that, I don’t know and don’t have to. But you know, I had to prove it. I’m just one of these people that I like to prove something and see that something is real. Of course, I have faith if you tell me so, and I believe it, but if I can see it, I believe it much more. So anyhow, I washed it, and I went and got the tape measure, and I put it across that shell’s, that crab’s new back, you see, and right, it was an inch and a half longer than the one, I measured the one it had just left.

And the claws were a half inch longer than the claws that had, that the new claws were living in. I’m trying to tell you this tonight because a divine love, the divine love in you is, you know, we used to say dying to get out. I’m always, these days I’m changing. It’s just living to get out. It’s just living to get out of you in a bigger pattern. God’s love in you wants you to relinquish all of your old life, so to speak, and come out into a brand new pattern of life. Now, what that brand new pattern of life for us is going to include will certainly have to be revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. I wouldn’t know that for anybody but for me. So, but you will ask Him this, that, all right, now, I’m willing to let my old shell go. I’m willing to let old ideas of love go. You know that these past ten years we’ve been talking about love and every kind of group is talking about love, singing about love. And I’m quite sure that many times that people who sing about love don’t know what they’re singing about. Or at least they’re interpreting this, as Tommy said this morning, in their own interpretation of love.

I’m sure of that. But when you come to the place that you are willing to say to the Holy Spirit, the living Christ in you, “I will let my old shell go this day, this moment, this minute. Oh, and I would like You to direct me in the hardening of a new pattern.” Now, what happens when this crab comes out of the shell is immediately, immediately, his whole crust begins to harden just a little. Now, I want to tell you a sad secret, really, because if I can catch that fellow, that minute in between, he’s the best soft-shell crab you ever ate. And you know, I really like to catch him. And when I can catch one, Lisa, I find a soft-shell crab, or some of our friends will come. I run up from the bear and I said, “Honey, here’s your dinner.” Now, immediately, that begins to harden. Listen, if you decide tonight, oh, anytime, that you’re letting all that’s old go, all the old pattern of life which you’ve had, all the handicaps you’ve had, give them over to God, see yourself, your body is new, your mind is new, your spirit is new. But remember this, whatever you let come in your mind from this time on, it’s hardening another pattern. It’s beginning to harden into a whole other pattern.

Whatever you do, whatever you let your hands do, after you go into this new pattern, it’s going to be a part of this new pattern. So be so very careful when you come to the place that you say, “Here I am, Holy Spirit, cleanse me, break off all the old shells, release me from everything that’s bare me.” Then my precious people, be so very careful what you allow to harden in your new pattern. You see, I hope you’ll take this and just think it over. There’s so much involved in this, in building a whole new life experience. When I was a little child, you know, they used to have, could it be any colder in here? Maybe you all are not steamed up like I am, but anyhow, it’s kind of a little bit warm. If you want to take off anything, take it off to get a little bit cooler.

When I was a little child, we used to go on picnics to Buckroe. You all would know this, but it’s one of our beaches. And at that time, the Sunday school would have great big picnics and we’d all, all the families would have great big baskets of fried chicken and all the lovely things. And we’d always get on, go down to the station in Richmond and get on the train and go down to Buckroe Beach. And the wonderful thing on the train for us kids, we were, we were six, seven and eight. I had two sisters. We’re six, seven and eight in my family. And we’d have the best time, but the most wonderful thing at all was to walk the coaches. Did any of you all ever do that? Will you raise your hands? Well, I’m not the only old one in here. Anyhow, but my mother used to always say to us, “Now listen, girls, never let the one foot go before the front foot is safe on the other side. Never let go the back coach before the front foot is safe on the other coach.” I said, and I knew what she meant because I would never get caught in the coupling in between. And I began to see what tremendous spiritual value that had as I began to grow along in this whole spiritual experience.

And it sounds like a paradox, but the kingdom of God is full of paradoxes. I’ve told you to let everything go, but I would also tell you to be so careful to evaluate in your old pattern that which is big and holy and good and build your new pattern upon that. Now you see, it’s the foundation that you build a new pattern upon. So it’s not only letting everything go, it’s choosing that which is holy and beautiful and lovely in your past life. Holding on to that because it’s not preciously says that he believes heaven is our chosen memory. The memories that I choose to keep that have given me such joy and happiness. Selective memory is the term that Lee uses. And he thinks heaven, to be able to select and to keep in memory only those things which are creative and good that have happened in our lifetime, certainly would be heaven to most of us. But anyway, we take these fine things and we look at them and if you really are serious in this, you’ll get a little notebook and you’ll write down things in your past that you really loved and things that you knew helped you to grow spiritually. Now, you never put anything down that you wish you hadn’t done or that you felt that you did wrong that God has forgotten a long time ago and you should forget too.

So, you begin a new pattern here and you begin to grow in your new pattern. Now, in this very paradox of moving on and yet holding on a little bit to that which is creative and good, one begins to build a new life of divine love. And, now, why does listening come in? It’s a new kind of listening. I think it’s a wonderful thing to listen to me grow. Listen to yourself. I’m not talking about listening to anybody else now. I’m talking about listening to yourself. Oh, have you ever been out in the garden at nighttime and you sat there in the midst of vegetables or flowers and you just listened and you can hear something popping here and something popping here and popping here? I used to love to go when we had a garden at night and just sit in between the rows of snaps or anything else or corn and listen to the poppy. Do you know that vegetables, earthly things, grow much faster at night than in the daytime? Do you know that in what you think is your dark period of life you grow much faster than you do in what you think is your joyful period of life? Of course, it’s hard to see that. And you’ll hear all of us who speak to you say this same thing over and over again.

But if you will only be able to, well, can I put it like this? To get the capacity to step outside of yourself, so to speak, and look at you and listen to you and see you and then hear you grow. And hear, as I said again and again, the Heavenly Father speaking to you as you grow. So, but you’ve got to… I believe in listening to God outside of me. Yes, I do that. I love the birds. I love the wind. I love every aspect of the movement of God. But I’ll tell you, there is nothing like listening to God inside of you. And so you have to learn to use your spiritual ears to listen. And when I’m talking about divine love listens, of course, I know you listen to each other, but I’m not thinking of that really tonight. We do learn to listen, and we’re doing that so beautifully today in our conversational groups. And we really were interested in each other. We were listening at each other. But go home and practice of just sitting down, and somebody asked me about the silence in the prayer group. One of the most wonderful ways of really being still in the presence of God is to listen to God inside of you.

Because if you’re listening to God inside of you, you certainly can’t speak to anybody. You can’t do it. And you will get into the depth of stillness that I think it means when we read, “Be still and know that I’m God.” I think we have only touched the hem of the garment in that “Be still” yet, because we haven’t come to the place where we realize the significance of stillness in God. Not stillness in the presence of God, but stillness in God. So God listens. All right, shall we go on just a bit?

Divine love learns. You know, I appreciate Jesus so much when He was at the well talking to the Samaritan woman. He was learning from her, and I see Jesus learning from everybody that He touched. And of course, I wonder if any of you all, of course, I don’t know how many of you have been in contact with different things that have come through me in various times. Have any of you ever read Holy Saturday that I wrote some years ago? Anybody here? Well, anyway, I have to just speak of that just a little bit because that experience comes back to me in that as I was leaving the three-hour Friday service, I was utterly miserable. Utterly miserable. And I said to myself as I sat there in the church and saw the cross draped with black and the candles draped with black, “I’ll never come in the church again on Good Friday. I just won’t do it.” And I left the church with such a deep sense of guilt because I knew that right or wrong, I would never come back on Good Friday. So, and of course my husband was a minister, but I went, I was wondering how in the world I was going to tell him I wouldn’t be there on Good Friday again.

Because you can’t put black on my Christ’s cross, you can’t put black on His light. And so therefore I couldn’t have any black there. But anyhow, I went on out and was walking down the street quite slowly and very, very heavy. The Holy Spirit said to me, “You don’t have to. You don’t have to. Really, take it for what it is. I dare to give it to you.” Anyway, He also said to me, “The day will come when nobody will do it.” And I said, “Thank God for that. Then this is all right. But I’ve got to have something to come in to this.” And then He began to show me the fact that every Christian church, every group, and when I say Christian church, I mean every group of people who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Oh, every group of people really do, as Tommy Gaines said this morning, they don’t belong there. They belong in the resurrection. I’ve been so interested that God is, the Holy Spirit has guided us, both of us, in some of the same directions as we share with you. Perhaps it’s really to make it more, make more emphasis upon these things. Well, anyway, I got on working and thinking, and I said, “All right now, that being the case, what did Jesus do on Saturday?”

So then I went back and I tried to study, oh, I got hold of some of the oldest books I could find. And interestingly enough, I found one very old book and it was called Holy Saturday. But it didn’t have anything in it that I was thinking about, so I thought I’d write my own. So anyhow, I began to see Jesus leaving the cross and being immediately when He said, “Into my Father’s hands, I will, I give You my spirit. I place my spirit in the Father’s hands.” Immediately, He was with God. Immediately. And then I could see them in a perfectly lovely sitting room. And you know, the sitting room that I could see, we have to have human patterns. And the pattern that I took was an experience I had again in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when I was asked to go way up on this perfectly lovely penthouse apartment overlooking the ocean to see a very, very great man in the business world, but a very, very starved man spiritually who was ill and the doctors had given him up. I have never walked into such beauty of a home in my life. I may never see anything as beautiful as that. But as I opened the door and walked in, the crystal lights, the crystal, everything, this perfectly magnificent crystal.

If you know anything about the lovely crystal that’s made at the Corning factories, you’ll know something about that. And the crystal had its colors, just radiated the colors of the rainbow. All the furniture was covered in satin and very delicate colors. And all of its woodwork was perfectly magnificent, like maple. I can hardly describe it to you, but it was plain heavenly. So when I began in my imagination to see Jesus and His Father coming to each other again and the Father receiving His Spirit, which meant receiving Him, I could see them sitting in this perfectly lovely living room and I can hear God projecting the first question. I dare to tell this to you tonight because I’ve had so many comments, pro and con, and a little bit of argument about this from people who have read it in the years past. But anyway, I can hear God say to Jesus, “Nia, You tell Me something. You just tell Me something. I’ve never known what it was really to live in human form. See, this is total God I’m talking about. Nia, would You please tell Me what it’s like for God to live in a human body?” And then, of course, in my imagination I began to write on that and Jesus to tell Him about the sorrows and the hardships and the struggles that the human body has had to have and that the human mind had to go through with.

And just for fun, I put there when Jesus said, “Listen, I don’t think You’d like it.” And then the Father had so many questions to ask Him. “How did My love get through to people? How did My love get through?” And then, you know, there was a sad moment in my story when Jesus would say, “Father, to some very deeply, but not to too many.” And then I began to see also that I would be so sad that there were so many more millions of people in the world today than there were at Jesus’ time and still, He could almost say the same thing. It hasn’t gotten through too deep to too many. And then finally, I could hear the Father said, “All right, Son, You’ve done a magnificent job. You’ve done a magnificent job. You’ve represented Me completely. All right, but You haven’t finished Your job. Now, tomorrow, you see, this is Saturday and Sunday we’re talking together. Now, taking just our human time, Monday, I want You to go back because, you see, these people You left have got to know that You still live and that You still live in such a way that You can live from now on in all of Your magnificence and beauty and resources in each person.”

So, you see, here is a picture to me of God listening, God learning from humanity. And I’m quite sure that God does learn from humanity and He learns from you and me. And if you just want to have a lot of little fun, and I think it’s so much fun in being like Jesus, so much joy, that you can study that a little further for yourself. All right, divine love is aware of the danger of convictions. Now, don’t misunderstand me this, but you know, we lovely people, we beautiful people as we call us today, we can have convictions that become just simply things that destroy us. They can make us antagonistic to other people. And I have learned that at least every two or three years, I like to take all my strongest convictions, and I like to let the Holy Spirit break the shells of my convictions and bring me out into something new and bigger.

Always open and receptive to the unexpected. Let me tell you another little experience here. I was in Shrine Mont, Cain. And I bring so many of these from the CFOs because we’re talking to you about CFO. There are other experiences like the one I shared with you about the church, but this was Shrine Mont. I had gone there and we had had a wonderful day and we were up kind of late and I went on in and we just, you know how we have wonderful days that came. And so I was all ready and had tucked in bed, gone to sleep. Two o’clock, I woke up. And I got this sort of feeling, you know how you say, everybody says, I got this sort of feeling that I ought to go down to the chapel. Have any of you been to Shrine Mont, Cain in Virginia? Well, there’s a little, there’s a beautiful little chapel, very little chapel and then there’s a larger outdoor chapel where we have, where we speak and have our services. But I got the direction to go to this little chapel. So I went, I just slipped on my robe. I didn’t take off my pajamas and I slipped on my robe and my high slippers and I went on up the hill to the little chapel.

Everything was very quiet because, of course, everybody had gone to sleep and gone to the rooms. And so finally, I went on in the little chapel. As I got to the back of the door, up front was one lady kneeling at the altar. And as I stood there a minute, I just quietly said, “All right, Father, oh, what’s this? What’s this?” Now, that’s the best way I could talk to Him when I come in front of something. “What’s this?” So anyway, I went quietly up to the altar. I put my arms around her and she was sobbing. And so I knelt by her and we knelt there, I know, for 15 minutes because I looked at my watch. We just knelt and knelt and knelt. And, you know, then finally she got quiet and began to tell me her very great difficulties and the fact that she saw her husband had divorced her. She had a young son and she really saw no hope for the future whatsoever. He had just really, really didn’t divorce. He just left her and gone off and left her with a boy. Well, anyway, we sat down, we talked and we prayed and then, when I saw a little bit of new light come in her eyes, we left and I took her back to her room then I went back to mine.

All together an hour and a half. I was back in the room by 3:30. Well, you know, divine love listens. I listened that night but I really wasn’t listening to Hilda, that was her name. I was listening to what God was telling me about Hilda. I could see, I could hear God say, “She has a great future. Oh, really, quite a remarkable future in the area of education.” And I said to her, “What’s your educational background?” She says, “I’m very well trained.” Well, since that time, that was some years ago, she has had one of the largest private schools in Virginia, has done a magnificent job in this private school, and has used advanced methods in education, and has just sold her school for $500,000, and is now retiring. You know, the fact is that God, our Father, is so concerned about other people, and He’s also concerned about the unexpected. Do you know there’s some things, really, that surprise God? I think so. I think so, because having a mind of my own, I just don’t know exactly, God doesn’t know exactly what I’m going to do next. You know? And now listen, well, maybe you don’t go this way, but I kind of think it’s a little like this, and I think He’s very happy when what I do really gives Him a joyful surprise.

All right, let’s jump along. Divine love makes life worthwhile, gives new meaning to life. I’m going to share, when I get with the young people, I want to share many experiences about young people who have felt today that there wasn’t any good reason for living. But I want to talk to you about this one tonight. Again, this is just a young girl in our Kinsale community. Oh, I got this call from her mother, and this precious girl hadn’t gotten along too well in high school. High school, it never meant very much to her. Practice high school didn’t mean much to our two children, and if we had judged them by what they, thinking about your handicapped boy, Tommy, you were talking about, if we had judged our children by the high school reports, we had certainly taken them into the institutions in Virginia. But you see, we knew them better, and so, when these reports came, some of them came to us, why, we just didn’t show them to the children. So, anyhow, when time came that they weren’t to go to college, well, we just expected them to do a great thing in college, just like the mother and father, Jane, was expecting her to do the same thing. But Jane, Jane went on to junior high, to junior college the first year, and from September to Christmas, she had a very hard time.

High school had been a failure, she thought. Grammar grades had been a failure. Grades were not very good. Also, her social life from her standpoint had been a failure. She wasn’t popular with the boys. And, oh, she got dates. She had dates sometimes, but they weren’t with the boys that she had great respect for. So, that was all gone. So, Christmas time came, and she came home for Christmas holidays. Well, it was during Christmas that her mother called me one morning and said, “Ruth, please come around.

“Last night, we had to rush Jane to the hospital, to the doctor’s office in Kinsale, because when we went in her room, we found we could not raise her, and we found a bottle, empty bottle, where sleeping pills had been. She had taken the whole bottle of sleeping pills.” So, anyhow, I went around and found that the doc, since he got to the doctor, he used a stomach pump and felt that she was all right to go home. But, she did not get all, I went around and talked to her. Well, before this time, because I was confronted with this business of suicide in young people, tempting suicide, I had to sit down for quite some time with the Holy Spirit to ask Him to give me some light on that which would relieve a person of guilt, under these circumstances. I think one of the most horrible things in the world is to fasten a deep sense of guilt, or to let a deep sense of guilt grow in any soul, because it will ultimately destroy them. So, anyhow, I went to talk with Jane. I sat by her bed, and I, a precious-looking 16-year-old girl, I said to her, “What’d you do it for?” And she said, “Why not? There’s nothing in life.

“I’ve got nothing to live for.” Now, she didn’t like any material things, and many of our young people don’t today. It isn’t the material things. It’s the challenge for a great life that they lack, really. And we haven’t given it to them. They don’t see it about us, you see. There’s nothing in… But listen here, people. We are not happy and enthusiastic and joyful about this Christian living so that anybody would look at us and want it. And this is what we need to be and to do. So I said, “Jane, why?” She said, “Well, it’s just no use. There’s nothing to it.” And I said, “I’m going to tell you something. Now, whether this is right or wrong, if some of you feel it’s definitely wrong, I wish you’d tell me because I’ve been using it.” Anyway, I said, “I want to tell you something. You don’t think you can ever destroy your life. God does not give a single soul the privilege of destroying life. You can kill your body, yes. Anybody has the privilege of killing a body. I can destroy my body right now, tonight, if I want to. I can make it utterly useless. In other words, I can place it in the position that it will return to another substance if I choose to.”

“But let me tell you something, little girl. Your mind and your spirit, your mind and your spirit are the two parts of you that face this problem. And your mind and your spirit are going to face your problem whether you’re in body or out of body because your Heavenly Father has predestined that you grow in spirit like Him.” And I sat back in my chair. She took a deep breath and she looked up and she says, “Oh heck, then it wasn’t worth it.” I said, “No sir, it wasn’t worth it and it never will be worth it and don’t you forget it.”

Divine love has strange ways of answering prayer. Prayer groups can come to the place and individuals can come to the place that they leave the method of answering prayers to God and hold on to the ultimate that is that the answer will be achieved in the end, then I think we’ll get a real relaxed peace about our experience of prayer. And we’ll get to the end. Yeah.