Notebook Leaflets from the Elmshaven Library, vol. 1

As Morning Dew

At times you may have a desire to repent. But unless you decidedly reform and put into practice the truths you have learned, unless you have an active, working faith, a faith that is constantly increasing in strength, your repentance is as the morning dew. It will give no permanent relief to the soul. A repentance caused by a spasmodic exercise of the feelings is a repentance that needs to be repented of; for it is delusive. A violent exercise of the feelings, which does not produce in you the peaceable fruits of righteousness, leaves you in a worse state than you were in before. 1NL 134.2

Every day the tempter will be on your track with some delusive, plausible excuse for your self-serving, your self-pleasing, and you will fall back into your old practices, neglecting the work of serving God, by which you would gain hope and comfort and assurance. 1NL 134.3

God calls for willing service—a service inspired by the love of Jesus in the heart. God is never satisfied with halfhearted, selfish service. He requires the whole heart, the undivided affections, and a complete faith and trust in His power to save from sin.... 1NL 134.4

God will honor and uphold every truehearted, earnest soul who is seeking to walk before Him in the perfection of the grace of Christ. The Lord Jesus will never leave nor forsake one humble, trembling soul. Shall we believe that God will work in our hearts? that if we allow Him to do so, He will make us pure and holy, by His rich grace qualifying us to be laborers together with Him. Can we with keen, sanctified perception appreciate the strength of the promises of God, and appropriate them to our individual selves, not because we are worthy, but because Christ is worthy, not because we are righteous, but because by living faith we claim the righteousness of Christ in our behalf?—Manuscript 125, 1901. 1NL 134.5