June 8th.

"If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." John 13:17

If you do not cut the moorings, God will have to break them by a storm and send you out. Launch all on God, go out on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and you will get your eyes open. If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the smooth waters just inside the harbour bar, full of delight, but always moored; you have to get out through the harbour bar into the great deeps of God and begin to know for yourself, begin to have spiritual discernment.

When you know you should do a thing, and do it, immediately you know more. Revise where you have become stodgy spiritually, and you will find it goes back to a point where there was something you knew you should do, but you did not do it because there seemed no immediate call to, and now you have no perception, no discernment; at a time of crisis you are spiritually distracted instead of spiritually self-possessed. It is a dangerous thing to refuse to go on knowing.

The counterfeit of obedience is a state of mind in which you work up occasions to sacrifice yourself; ardour is mistaken for discernment. It is easier to sacrifice yourself than to fulfil your spiritual destiny, which is stated in Romans 12:1-2. It is a great deal better to fulfil the purpose of God in your life by discerning His will than to perform great acts of self-sacrifice. "To obey is better than sacrifice." Beware of harking back to what you were once when God wants you to be something you have never been. "If any man will do . . . he shall know."

When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead —Revelation 1:17 It may be that, like the apostle John, you know Jesus Christ intimately. Yet when He suddenly appears to you with totally unfamiliar characteristics, the only thing you can do is fall “at His feet as dead.” There are times when God cannot reveal Himself in any other way than in His majesty, and it is the awesomeness of the vision which brings you to the delight of despair. You experience this joy in hopelessness, realizing that if you are ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God.“He laid His right hand on me . . .” ( Revelation 1:17 ). In the midst of the awesomeness, a touch comes, and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. You know it is not the hand of restraint, correction, nor chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it gives inexpressible peace and comfort, and the sense that “underneath are the everlasting arms” ( Deuteronomy 33:27 ), full of support, provision, comfort, and strength. And once His touch comes, nothing at all can throw you into fear again. In the midst of all His ascended glory, the Lord Jesus comes to speak to an insignificant disciple, saying, “Do not be afraid” ( Revelation 1:17 ). His tenderness is inexpressibly sweet. Do I know Him like that?Take a look at some of the things that cause despair. There is despair which has no delight, no limits whatsoever, and no hope of anything brighter. But the delight of despair comes when “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells . . .” ( Romans 7:18 ). I delight in knowing that there is something in me which must fall prostrate before God when He reveals Himself to me, and also in knowing that if I am ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God. God can do nothing for me until I recognize the limits of what is humanly possible, allowing Him to do the impossible.

that the animal God will watch her and all my other dead pets!!!!!!!!!!!

that they will be my friend

Pray for Mission Needs.

DREAM

There's an autobiographical picture-book written by a dentist in the deep south. It's found on the New York-Tokyo plane train. Miles Brown works for the dentist at his general store that's being opened. The dentist specially designed the store and its location so that Miles could get there even with his bad leg. The dentist is white in an almost all-black town. Some of the young folks in town are angry at him for their state of living, even though he's among the poorest residents. His extended family lives together in a three-room house near the railroad. His elderly mother-in-law prays loudly each night after watching the news to die quickly and painlessly. He is happy.

DREAM

I'm at an incredibly luxurious, elite private high school, in 1959. There are others that have traveled back in time with me. We're in some hybrid of New York, Seattle, and San Diego. I take busses everywhere. You can get the most amazing taffy from a future man, on the corner of the park.

I've been studying for too long, and something inspires me to tell a girl at dinner that she's the same age as my mother, to frighten her, I suppose. We're overlooking the main dining hall under the great dome; we're just barely within range of the sweet potato that's thrown at us. The other time traveller with me is very angry, but the girl says "I know." She's wearing her burial suit, square and elaborately painted, with a spherical hat, with a date of earlier that year on it. Part of the painting is her spirit after death flying perfectly level with the ground. Ahead of her is a gliding magnifying scope into which various reels can be inserted to allow her to read after death. It was invented by her aunt. The girl is a little unhappy that this suit won't be the suit she wears for her actual death, since this was for a mistaken, small death. We talk about how she (now I) substitutes reading for sleep and adjusts to a 32 hour daily schedule. The eight extra hours are spread over a time-shared body.

On the bus ride back to the taffy man's shop, which has the brain scanning device I use to report to the future, I peruse the catalog. I'm surprised there aren't more games without dice and timers, to be played during the day of rest.

(17 Jun 02001)
DREAM:

Mr. Hall is about to tell me his real name is Mr. Haljoud. He's a tall, thin man in his late sixties, in good shape. I'm walking down the stairs with a large package containing an unassembled crib, and he's describing to me exactly how my body will deteriorate as I get old. First my knees will go, he says, and then I'll get some tiny bone fractures when I am carrying a package down the stairs and have to sit down too quickly. He says he can help me through this when it happens, that he can tell me exactly what to do. "That will be fifty years from know, you said," I say. "I know," he says, "I'll be long gone. Let me help you up now instead."

(earlier) The brother and sister of my neighbors on the island were practicing with robins, imitating their sound so that they could make a proper trio. Derick stayed with them, and Howard Stern talked on the radio about what it was like, driving with them, with Derick doing vocal percussion all the time and the trio of bird sounds and their stunningly beautiful older sister that never spoke and always rode shotgun. The mother is driving me home because it's on the way to where they have to drop off a friend's robin and maybe catch a new one, on Wilson St., and she's describing what it was like to study with Howard Stern, and how hard it was to actually learn anything. We find another robin on the grass, with its bird's feet removed and lying beside it, and another in the nest above it, that won't move at all but its heart is still beating.