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“knocked at the door of the entry”. Rhoda had not fallen asleep
in that prayer meeting; she heard that knock. What it brings
out—and this is what I want to encourage you young people
about—is that when you are young your faculties are all, so to
speak, on the alert, you are doubly usable by God. If your
youth, your energy and your intellectual capacity were
harnessed in relation to the testimony in this place, what
meetings we would have! Rhoda was like that; she was a
maid, but everything about her was on the alert in regard to
the progress of the testimony. She knew Peter’s voice.
How did she know Peter’s voice? She went to the meetings, of
course, when Peter was there, that is how she knew his voice.
And it brings out the importance of being at the meetings, to
hear Peter’s voice, so that you recognize it. He knocked at the
door and she “recognised the voice of Peter”. Obviously there
was no generation gap here. Is that not one of the difficulties
these days, the generation gap? I am speaking simply, there is
nobody that has had a family but knows what these things
mean, the difficulty of bridging the gap, so that the work of God
is reached and you can set something in motion in a spiritual
way in a soul. Then some day you see your son or your
daughter, when they have a spare moment, lifting up the
Scriptures, lifting up the ministry. Something is coming, you
see. Scripture speaks of the “half-open flowers”, 1 Kings 6. We
would like to see the flowers burst into full bloom. We are glad
to see the half-open flowers, but we want to see the flowers in
full bloom. Wonderful it would be to see them all in full bloom,
yielding their fragrance. Did you all read, you young people,
that poem in ‘Notes of Ministry’ * about the sunflower?’ It
* August 1985, p.20
speaks about the big sunflower and how it moved around with
the sun. It is a wonderful sight to see the big sunflower. But a
sunflower has no perfume. Then there is the little flower
unseen, scarcely noticed, but with a lovely perfume. So you
young people, when you go to the office, different from others