We have heard God's words of wisdom and seen the low place from which we approach it. But the Truth has an effect, it changes those who can hear and remember. The Truth gives power to those who otherwise do not have any; the power to see and to act, to speak the truth and to teach others what we have learned.
52. A Prophesy of Joy
Only the goodness of God endures, so why does the mighty man boast of his deeds? His tongue stirs up mischief, sharp as a razor, making trouble for all that he can. He loves to do evil more than good and would rather tell lies than uphold the truth. So it is.
You love the words that destroy, you with the deceitful tongue? God shall likewise destroy you. He shall take you away forever. He will pluck you out of your home and root you out of the land of the living. So it shall be.
The righteous will see it happen, they will fear the Lord but laugh at the folly of men; at those who did not make God their strength, who trusted the abundance of their riches, and the power of their lies.
But I stand like a green olive tree in the house of God, I trust in your mercy for ever and ever, I will praise You always for what You have done. I will wait on your name in the joyful presence of your saints.
Through forty nine lessons we learned how to act and think and feel on a path of learning that brought us to a vision of the Holy City. It has become our place of refuge, our hometown where we are known and we are safe. God’s throne is there and we have heard his voice and understood. We will always be his people, now and forever, during this life and after but when we wake up every morning it might seem like nothing has changed. We are, in effect, at both places at the same time. The vision of Heaven is ours to keep, to hold onto as we continue to act in this world but it is with a new attitude.
We live in a land where we are free to speak, but that freedom does not give power of making to our words. Only within the Truth is there the energy necessary to create and sustain. We look for God in the world around us even though we know that our flesh is not able to perceive what is spirit. What we can perceive is goodness, though it is not easy to define or hold it in your hand. In this lesson we are told that goodness is the truth which endures. The works of the righteous endure while everything else will fail.
The question posed in this lesson is why, why do people act the way they do? We can say what we believe but our actions show what we trust. We tell our children how we think they should act, but they watch and know what we really believe and they draw their own conclusions. We may want to believe that God is real and that everything will turn out well in the end but unless we act that way it is not real. What we believe can change but how we act is the reality we create. We make our faith real by doing it now and five minutes from now.
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