From Heaven With Love

How to Ignore Christ

But Christ sees it all, and He says, It was I who was hungry and thirsty. It was I who was a stranger. While you were feasting at your bountifully spread table, I was famishing in the hovel. While you were at ease in your luxurious home, I had nowhere to lay My head. While you pursued your pleasures, I languished in prison. When you doled out the pittance of bread to the starving poor, when you gave those flimsy garments to shield them from the biting frost, did you remember that you were giving them to the Lord of glory? All the days of your life I was near you in the person of these afflicted ones, but you did not seek Me. You would not enter into fellowship with Me. I know you not. HLv 431.2

Many visit the scenes of Christ's life on earth, to look on the lake beside which He loved to teach, and the hills and valleys on which His eyes rested. But we need not go to Nazareth or to Bethany in order to walk in the steps of Jesus. We shall find His footprints beside the sickbed, in hovels of poverty, in every place where there are human hearts in need of consolation. HLv 431.3

All may find something to do. Millions of human souls bound in ignorance and sin have never so much as heard of Christ's love for them. Christ's rule of life, by which every one of us must stand or fall in the judgment, is, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Matthew 7:12. HLv 431.4

The Saviour has given His life to establish a church capable of caring for tempted souls. Believers may be poor, uneducated, and unknown, yet in Christ they may do a work in the neighborhood and even in “the regions beyond” whose results shall be as far-reaching as eternity. Because this work is neglected, many young disciples never advance beyond the mere alphabet of Christian experience. The restless energy that is so often a source of danger might be directed into streams of blessing. Self would be forgotten in earnest work to do others good. Those who minister to others will not be longing for exciting amusements, or for some change in their lives. The great topic of interest will be how to save souls ready to perish. HLv 432.1

To make us children of one family, the King of glory became one with us. “Love one another, as I have loved you.” John 15:12. When we love the world as He has loved it, then for us His mission is accomplished. We are fitted for heaven, for we have heaven in our hearts. In the great judgment day, those who have not worked for Christ, who have drifted along thinking of themselves, will be placed by the Judge of the whole earth with those who did evil. HLv 432.2

To every soul a trust is given. Of everyone the Chief Shepherd will demand, “Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?” Jeremiah 13:20. HLv 432.3