A FEW EXTRACTS FROM SOME OF JOSEPH PELLATT’S LETTERS
I find plenty to do with distinct encouragement from the Lord. The Lord in His grace is giving much light to His people and is seeking to lead them on, and to build them up in the knowledge and appreciation of Himself. I have much exercise in my own soul, that there may be wrought in me an answer to all the light, and I am counting on your prayers … I am sure of this, we need to give the spiritual the first place. To be spiritual is the great point to reach now, and to promote spirituality should be our chief aim and purpose. Everything in eternity will be spiritual. If we make the spiritual the exclusive object now, we can leave the physical in the Lord’s hands, and He will manage and control all for our blessing and His glory. My desire for you is that the Lord may have His own way with you in spirit, soul and body. We must absolutely surrender to every claim of His. No claim like His, it is one of infinite love, which purposes eternal blessing in full conformity to Himself.
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The Lord is very precious, never more so; it is lovely to be able to bask in the sunshine of His love. In Christianity the spiritual is the supreme consideration, and our trials test us as to this. The unreserved, unconditional acceptance of the will of God is at once the touchstone and proof of the truly spiritual. That is what marked Christ as Man down here, see Gethsemane.
Never make your joy the test of your spiritual progress; God can make you happy in Him, however trying your circumstances; He is testing your faith, He knows just where to touch us and how. He is making no mistake in your case or mine, you may be sure, let us not hinder Him. We are, like Paul, prone to fix our minds on ‘removal’, and we pray accordingly, then when our prayers are not answered our joy gives way under the pressure, but what He says is better than taking away our trials. “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness”, 2 Cor 12: 9. To learn the sufficing of His grace is the point to reach. He WILL and CAN make you perfectly happy and content just as you are and where you are. There is a spiritual emancipation far better than having our trials and difficulties removed. The Lord grant that there may be in you and in me the same response as in Paul. “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me”. When this point is reached we shall live to prove His sympathy as well as His power.
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There is no question that all blessing and blessedness is in the faith and knowledge of God as revealed in Christ, and all unhappiness, doubts and depression are connected with ourselves.
We touch and taste eternal rest and satisfaction in the measure in which, in the faith of our souls, we give up ourselves in every way, and find our all in God revealed and known in Christ. It may seem easy to write or utter these things, but this is the point we must reach, that is, God in Christ (by the Spirit) outside ourselves and our condition and our circumstances. It is well to have the real objective before our souls clearly. When the subjective—that is, faith and knowledge correspond with the objective, that is, God revealed in Christ, then all will be well indeed. Rich or poor, sick or well, lame or leaping all will be well. It is not Christ and something or some one else, but it is:
Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
More than all in Thee I find.
“He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness”, Ps 107: 9.
From Words of Grace and Comfort, vol 8