The Little Yellow Pamphlet

The Little Yellow Pamphlet

by Bertha Jarrett

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I think when we begin to understand what something like that really deeply means… And this wonderful friend that wrote this prayer told me afterwards, she said, “I didn’t write that at all. I just sat there and the words just came through.” And she knew it was a message that she had for others. She was a very faithful CFO for many, many years. We missed her when she went on, but she went on to glory because she had such glory in her heart. And this is the way it’s going to be with all of us. We’ve come to a new dimension of living. I think we realize that. Those of us who are new, who have just come in, are opening themselves, are opening ourselves… And we’re all new in this thing of the kingdom. Opening ourselves to something that is very marvelous. Very wonderful. Something that God has prepared for us from the very beginning of the world. And we’re attaining it through love. Some of you know Emmet Fox and his works. He was one of the very first ones I read. I told you last night that his book, The Sermon on the Mount, was the thing that opened up to me the wonderful teachings of Jesus as applied to me right here, right now.

And I have a little plaque up on my kitchen wall right beside my telephone where I can read it when I sit down at the phone. And this is what he says love is. “There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer.

“No disease that enough love will not heal. No door that enough love will not open. No grief that enough love will not wash out. No sin that enough love will not redeem. It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough, you could be the most powerful person in the world.”

We’ve battered that word love around an awful lot, haven’t we? And love means so many different things to so many people. When I used to go out from Koinonia and talk about how we needed to go out into the world to love our neighbors as ourselves, and I would begin to talk about this thing of love, I would realize that what I must say to many people was that I’m not talking about our human love, wonderful as that is. I’m talking about the fact that you and I can be channels for the Christ love, and that this is the love that can heal and bless and redeem and change and make beautiful all of life. And so we enter into this and trying to live up to it in our daily lives. Oh, what a struggle it can be sometimes. I can remember back there at Koinonia, some of the people that came that were so difficult to love. But I discovered that the ones that were having, with whom I was having the greatest difficulty were people who were hurting inside. I may have told you the story before about this one particular woman who just… She was a brilliant woman, had marvelous talent and ability in linguistics, and she was helping with the literacy program.

She was French, and as some French people are, she was a sort of a volatile person. Well, it just seemed as though nothing was ever right with her. Somebody was always doing something that offended or disturbed her, and she was always blowing up and making statements and making difficulties right where she was. And she didn’t like me one bit. And I didn’t know why. Because back there, I was trying to learn this thing of love. I believed with all my heart that what we give out comes back to us. Jesus said, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” What you sow, you shall reap. And if we sow love, we will reap love. Well, it just didn’t seem to be working, and I didn’t know why. And I prayed about it a great deal. I finally discovered that she didn’t like me because I was too joyous. I smiled too much. In this world where there’s sin and suffering and all the rest of it, we have no right to have that kind of a feeling about life. Oh, what we need to know about what joy can do. How joy is a healer as well as love. And so I would go up into our little prayer room. We had a prayer room there in our house, and I’d go up and sit there, or kneel at the little altar there, and say, “Lord, I want to love her.

“Show me what it is that can bring the response, that can bring her out of this.” I asked a wonderful teacher that came down from New York one time, “How do you change a person who is making herself and everybody else miserable?” And he pulled a little pamphlet out of his pocket, and he says, “I’ve got the answer for you right here.” And I can see it yet. It was a little yellow pamphlet, and on the front of it, it said, “How to change the other person.”

Well, your laughter shows that you know what that said. I had to begin right here and change me to the place where I could see through what seems to be and know God’s children as He knows them. And as I prayed that I might understand that this might happen, I began to realize why she was the way she was. I learned that she had come from France, or she’d been there during the war. Her home had been bombed. Some of her family had been killed. Things had gone wrong for her in so many ways that she was bitter and closed in and hard inside. That soul was hurting. And the only thing that heals a hurt soul is love. And so we continue with love in a difficult situation. And gradually, we begin to see how love works and how it makes of a person a new creature. And I began to sense that we could now communicate a little bit and it grew more and more companionable until finally, before she ever left there, she was one of the very dearest friends I had. And she was a new person. Now, I hadn’t been doing this just on my own. Many others there had felt the same thing. And we’re putting into action this healing power of love.

And so in all of our relationships with one another, if there’s anything that we feel needs to be changed in a person, we look first to ourselves because very often we are resisting in that person something that needs to be healed in us. I think most of us are realizing that nowadays. But along with that comes the fact that when I come to the place where I know that I of myself can do nothing, it must be the Christ within me that does His work. Then I’m able to open up my heart. And with her, it got to be that I’d go up in the prayer room and I’d pray, “Oh, Lord, help me to love her.” And while I was there, I could come up to this lovely high feeling of joyous love and confidence and trust. And then I’d go down and I’d meet her again. And she always had some little remark that she made that threw me off. Until I could look through that, you see. But God is so good. And when we truly want to learn these lessons that He has for us, He helps us in such marvelous ways. And as I understood her and began to feel with her, it was just like a little child that you want to bring out of some tantrum and you bring love.

Well, I saw her begin to unfold and joy come into her life and into her eyes. It’s a beautiful thing our Lord can do. But when I first realized, and this was quite a realization, that God doesn’t work for us, He works through us to accomplish His wonders. We are very part of Him. And our existence here on this earth, as part of Him, gives us the joy, the ability, the challenge, the commission to be Him in action in our world. That’s a great thing that we’re called upon to do. Glenn Clark used to say, “If I could get 300 people who could sit together and pray in absolute love, absolute selfless love, for the world, the world would be redeemed.” We’ve almost got that right here. Because ever since I’ve been in this camp, I’ve been feeling this love. In spite of the hurts that I know some of you are going through, in spite of the anxieties and the anguishes that some people are carrying, we are coming through to understand that He is the only answer.

We talk about the great healers that we have in this world, and we have many. They’ve been mentioned, Rod mentioned some of them the other night in his talk. And we have seen with our own eyes on television, if you haven’t been to a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting, you’ve seen people come up and be healed. And walk off, the people who were lame walk off. A wonderful power in this precious person. But unless the soul of that person was healed, and the enthusiasm of the moment, the faith rises up, and Jesus says, “Your faith has made you whole.” But unless at the same time, that inner being is brought alive, is brought into the kingdom living, it’s just as if that or something else is going to come back. Jesus said that. He said, “You can clear out the one demon, and unless the person is filled with the light, seven more worse ones are going to come in.” And so we have to realize that the whole healing process comes from within us.

And the only one who can really do that for us, that kind of healing, is our Lord Jesus Christ, within our very beings. I have a little confession to make. I began when I first learned that how little I knew about any of the teachings of the Bible. Having been in the church, in the Sunday school classes, and all the rest of it, I went to the Sunday school classes along in my teens because there were some nice boys there. I went to church every Sunday because I loved to sing in the choir. Actually, one Sunday, Starr Daily was the speaker in our church, and he was just no speaker as far as I was concerned then. I hadn’t come awake in the Spirit at all. And so I was going along on that kind of a level. And then when this awakening came, when I came to the place where my heart felt the indwellingness of God in His Spirit, I began to seek, and I was seeking through Jesus. And I asked Jesus to be my teacher. And it seemed to me at that time that Jesus was putting Himself in the background. He said, as we say now, “I of Myself can do nothing. It’s the Father in Me that doeth the works.

“Why callest Thou Me good? Only the Father is good.” And when He asked us to pray, He said, “Pray, Our Father.” And then I got into a CFO camp when everybody was singing the praises of Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, all the time. And my heart began to wonder, are we really following the teachings of Jesus when we worship and give all our adoration to Him? You see, I was still putting Him out here. I was still seeing Jesus, the man whom I loved with all my heart and whom I had appreciated through the years. And so I began to try to center in without Him into a new spiritual relationship. I began to study the power of my own thoughts. I was in control of my thoughts. And I wouldn’t give anything for the training that I had in that Religious Science class that I attended for a while. I learned some marvelous things that have meant a great deal to me. And then somebody gave me the books of Joel Goldsmith. And he went very, very high in his consciousness, in his high consciousness, helping me to know that I am a child of God. The great truth that he began to teach. And it was wonderful. Well, I went to a Religious Science church on Easter Sunday one time.

And don’t think I’m downgrading Religious Science because it is helping thousands and thousands of people. But in that Religious Science church on that Easter Sunday, the music was the Rhapsody in Blue. And I wanted to sing, “He is risen, He is risen, Christ is risen today.” Well, you see, I, myself, and we’re all different, I’ve got to have both. I’ve got to have the consciousness that I have within me, the Christ, with that power of mind, body, and spirit to reach out into the world. But I can’t get along without my Jesus. I had to have Him to talk to, to ask Him to teach me and bring to my consciousness the things that He wants me to learn. And oh, He’s so wonderful about it. He never lets us down. He says, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. And you shall find rest unto your souls.” And then He said, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” I love that. I love that part there in the book of John in the 14th chapter. “I am the true vine. My Father is the husbandman.

“Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh away. And every branch that beareth fruit, He pruneth it.” Some translations say He purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit. And that’s what happens to us. We aren’t supposed to have everything just be smooth and lovely. We need to be pruned. We need to have the things of the earthly taken away from us in order that we may fulfill more completely His plan for us. And He goes on and He says, “Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me.” Now this abiding is really something, isn’t it? Most of us are very busy people. Most of us are not people who are continually and always in a religious climate of work. We have other work. But I think every one of us are being called to be full-time workers in the kingdom wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, because if we abide in Him and His light, His life abides in us and we’re conscious of this, there’s nothing that’s impossible. We have our times of strain when I began to realize that my eyes were getting dimmer. I wasn’t able to see as well as I could.

I was still driving a car, but if I was going down a single-lane highway, I had to stay behind the car in front of me whether he was going too slow or not, because I couldn’t see far enough down the road to see if another car was coming, and I didn’t dare take a chance on it. And then I realized I was coming to the place where I shouldn’t drive a car anymore. I finally got a letter from my automobile insurance company saying that they wanted me to report to them a full physical examination by my doctor saying that I was capable of driving a car. You see, when you get to be my age, why, they look you over to be sure you’re going to be able to do these things. So I went to my doctor and he passed me in every way except he said, “You’re going to have to do something about your eyes.” And I said, “Well, do you know of an ophthalmologist?” This was in the little town of Fallbrook. And he says, “Yes, I do happen to know that in July we’re going to have one of the finest of doctors come to Fallbrook. He’s going to make his home here. He’s going to open a clinic in here.”

And he said, “I would advise that you go to him. Otherwise, I would have to go down to Vista or Escondido or somewhere far away.” Well, to me, this was just God saying… I’d been praying and I’d had all my dear loved ones all over the place praying for my eyes. Now, I had to accept the fact that it was right for me to go and have someone who knew take care of them. Well, I finally had an appointment with this young doctor. Beautiful soul. I walked into his office and he just simply radiated love and light and kindliness. And he sat me down and showed me exactly what had happened, how this cataracts form and behind the cornea of your eyes, the little lens that has to be removed in order that that clouding doesn’t obscure your vision. He explained it so lovingly and so kindly and so… first of January I went, I wanted to wait till after Christmas. I went and had that first operation. While I was waiting to do that and praying a great deal, this was at Christmas time, my son sent me a record at Christmas. The record was one of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s records. And I don’t agree with Tennessee Ernie Ford in all of his theology really, but the first song on this record was simply a repetition over and over and over.

“I love you.” I hear this said, and when I pray, I hear Him say, “I love you.” And then the second part of the second song on the record was, “I’ve got confidence. God is going to see me through. No matter what comes to me, God’s going to show me the way through it.” And I sat there and listened to those records and my spirits rose and rose and rose and I thought, why in the world should I worry about this? I’ve offered myself to God for His doing. And so I made my appointment to go and have my eye operated on. And then came a time of testing of my sort of restless spirit. I don’t like to have to stand still and not do anything. You know, they used to, when you have a cataract operation, they used to lay you down on a pillow and put sandbags on both sides of your head, and make you hold your head and your eyes perfectly still for several days at a time. They don’t do that anymore, but my doctor warned me that I must do this and that. And so, as I said last night, I went through a time when being quiet… Dorothy read to me, bless her heart. She would have if she was… she was such a wonderful blessing.

She read to me and some friends sent me some tapes to listen to and that was very helpful. But in the meantime there was time, time to think, time to listen, time to learn a little bit more about what it means to commune within myself with God, who is always there, who is always so close, and to whom we can take all of our troubles, who loves us in every situation, through everything that happens to us. He’s there. We don’t need to worry about it. And then how can I tell you what the thrill was? I was driving up to Barstow. They wanted me to come and open a little new CFO group up there in Barstow. And the bandage had come off of my eye and I was seeing. And to go up that trip and see those mountains and those great rocks and the beauty of it all clearly for the first time in years, to be able to see the feathers on the little birds instead of a little brown ball. To see each individual flower. Can you imagine what that was?

Then I had to have the other eye done. So this is what I’ve been doing in this last year. But through it all, my confidence, my trust, has only grown. Now why was it necessary for me to have the physical thing done? Why couldn’t it just have been a perfect healing right away? We can ask ourselves these questions. Maybe we come up with answers and maybe we don’t. I came up with an answer that has satisfied me absolutely. I learned that in all things I’m going to be content. I can’t dictate to God what way He’s going to heal me. I just know He’s going to heal me. Because that’s His love for us. That’s His way with us. He does heal us in His own wonderful way. And if He needs to use us in a physical condition that doesn’t seem to be right to us, He has a purpose and a plan in that. Because He is God. He is love. And loving us as He does, we can trust Him in everything that happens to us. Do you believe that?

We haven’t quite realized how great is our God in us. And this is the thing that is growing in my heart and mind now. We no longer are looking afar off for our God. We’re very part of Him. Honey, is there something you want? Charles Coe. He’s my love. Charles Coe. Charles Cook. Charles Cook. The awareness grows that I am my beloved’s and He is mine and we are one. And I’m never out of His keeping. I’m never out of His care. No matter where He puts me, no matter what happens to me. I told some of my friends this morning, I had some of these notes up here with me last night, intended to give the talk last night that I had planned for. I didn’t even open them. Somebody needed what I said last night. I don’t know who you were. But we can trust the Father in these kind of things. I can’t give a talk. Am I going over my time now?

I don’t know because we started at a different time. But I’ve got one more thing that I just want to say to you because it comes to me right now. I am not a speaker. I never could possibly get up in front of a group of people and talk. It’s absolutely impossible. I got the panic that just shook me. My hands, my knees, my voice.

And when I was there at Koinonia, they decided, the board decided, they wanted to send out a field representative. And they came and asked me to do this. To go out and talk to groups of people and recruit people to come to Koinonia and give themselves for a time of service overseas. And I said, “I simply can’t do that. That’s one thing that you can’t ask of me because I’m unable to get up in front of a group of people with thoughts, my thoughts just go blank. I can’t think. I can’t remember anything I’m supposed to say.” And our wonderful Glenn Harding, our director there, looked at me and he said, “Bertha, we’re not going to ask you to do this. We’re going to ask you to let God do it through you.”

So I worked. I outlined all my talk, everything I knew about Koinonia. I’d been there for two or three years. Got it all marked out on little cards ready to give it, and went out to give my first talk on Koinonia. All my notes prepared. Got up in front of just a little group of Methodist women. And that old panic hit me. And I shook. And I couldn’t remember whether I’d talked about this or this. And it just all got muddled up in my mind. It was… I was a mess.

Do you know about the grace of God? I found about the grace of God that day because something within me had me just lay all my notes down on the table and turn to those people and say, “I have something wonderful to tell you and I’m scared to death. Will you pray with me that I can get me out of the way and let God give you the message that He has for you?”

The startled looks on the faces of these people who had asked a speaker to come who couldn’t speak was quite something. But they were very sweet. And we prayed together. And my dear ones, from that day to this, I have had no fear. Get up in front of a group of people here or there without sometimes any concept of what it is that God wants me to say. And something comes. And somebody may come and say, “What you said was just what I needed.” And that’s all that’s necessary. And so we learn by these strange, sometimes challenging things, that we can trust Him. I could go on with story after story about things that have happened to me along through the years where we have to walk right up against simply a blank wall sometimes with faith, sticking our chins up in the air and saying, “I know that my Redeemer liveth. Because He lives, I can do this thing.” And it comes through for us. He never fails us. He’s never failed me. Not one time have I ever felt that when I asked Him to use me or when He asked me to be used of Him, that anything was… that no one was helped by it. That’s the way I’ll say it.

Some people have resisted things that I’ve said. And one time they told me that I wasn’t even being scriptural in some of the things I was teaching. That’s not my business. I have to come and say what comes to me to say and leave the rest to God. And you know, it takes a great weight off our shoulders when we get that place. I’m no longer responsible for my life. It’s His. And when we give ourselves to Him, then He takes the responsibility. And we find the joy, the joy and the peace and the wonder of life that this guy’s filled with over here. That’s what happens to us. And we each have the talent that God can use in His own way. So don’t ever think, “I’m not very much… I’m not… don’t amount to very much.” Every one of us is a vitally important part of God. Every one of us has a perfect plan outlined for him. Did you ever see a butterfly kit?

Glenn Clark’s… It was read to us the first morning in our meditation, The Divine Plan, in which he talks about the whole plan of the great oak tree in the tiny little acorn. Someone brought to Dorothy and me one time a butterfly kit. And this kit consisted of a little glass, a little plastic glass, with some milkweed leaves in it and a tiny, tiny little worm. And then there was a little standard on which were hanging some butterfly chrysalis. One of them, that one end was still the worm that hadn’t formed his chrysalis yet. Then there was the next one, then these beautiful jade green one with the gold beads around it. Have you ever seen that butterfly chrysalis? They’re beautiful. And then one that advanced a little further and was getting a little bit darker and you could barely see the outline of the monarch butterfly’s wings in it. And we fed that little caterpillar and he grew a certain number of days. And this is all timed in perfect order. He ate for a certain number of days and he stopped eating and he climbed up that glass and suspended himself with a little web work.

The next thing that happened was that this butterfly down at the end whose wings we could see emerged from his shell and clinging to it with little weak feet. The wings were all there but they were all kind of crumpled up, but he began to pump the fluid from his body out into those wings until they became perfect wings. And when he was ready to leave that little perch I put my hand down and he came upon my hand and I took him outside, and without ever having flown before, that butterfly took off and flew way down the road, and then he came back to some flowers that were right beside the house. The whole process of the transmuting of this little worm into that glorious creature gave me a whole new vision of what is happening to you and to me. We are the chrysalis. We are the seed. And Jesus said the seed must die. It must be put in the ground. And when it is, and when this happens, that which is within, which is now right now within us, being transmuted into the Christ that’s going to break forth in all its glory. For you and I are destined to be Christ.

Does that sound like blasphemy to you? It did to me for a while because Jesus was the Christ, but I think if anything in the world He wanted to teach us was this very thing, that within us is also this light of Christ which He had attained to so highly, and then was willing to come and reenter a physical body in order to show it to us. And that’s what’s happening with us. We are, as we stay in that consciousness of Christ, loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, loving our neighbor as ourselves. This is the pattern. This is the plan. Love is the great way. And as we do this, we are going through this process of transmutation, and we’re going to come out full-fledged butterflies.

Shall we pray. Oh Father, You give us such tremendous challenges. Some of these things that a few years ago, a very few years ago, would have seemed so almost sacrosanct, almost sacrilegious, some of the wonder of life is beginning to break through to us. We’re beginning to see here and there, more and more often, little glimpses of who we really are.

We love to say it as Glenn Clark did, we’re angels, but we’ve been having amnesia. We haven’t known who we are, but now You’re breaking it through to us. We’re coming aware, alive, alive in the great reality of the wholeness of Your Spirit manifesting itself in me as me. And when I say me, I am part of the whole. I’m saying all, because that is the great plan that You have, that You have. We have established in Your divine imagination, in Your great overarching plan.

And oh, how we do love You for it. How glorious it is to know that You wanted us to have a part in Your creativity. And so we praise You and thank You. And now we give ourselves to You to go out in joy. And put into motion some of the feeling that has come into our hearts. Of how great Thou art in us. Thank You, Lord. Amen.