[4] I said: “O, with these meaningless excuses of yours you will achieve nothing with Me. You are lacking nearly completely faith and a real living trust in God, and therefore God does not answer your prayers and does not pay attention to your sacrifices. Why actually do you not pray yourself with full faith and trust? Because this seems too uneasy for you. That is why you have in the congregation certain people who pray and beg for you, who are authorized by the temple and whom you pay, so that they would beseech for you this or that from God. If you can give your faith and trust to these hypocrites, who are always letting themselves be well paid for their pretended effort and whose praying and begging have never given you any help, then why do you not prefer to put your faith and trust in God the Lord and Father Himself?
[5] I say to you: this is because of your own laziness. You are earthly wealthy possessors of goods, and already since your youth you are used to let your helpers and maids work for you for a meager salary, and with that you like to play as severe lords, and you also believe that those prayers and beggars must also work for you with God successfully because you pay them well for that. But then God turns His face away from you and will never listen to the disgusting, senseless and spiritless bawling of the lips of your hypocritical servants of God. And that is then also the reason why God cannot, will and may not help you. For if God would do that, then He as the highest, eternal wisdom, love and power, would let you sink down even deeper into full ruin, which is only caused by your laziness. [6] Therefore, awaken your faith in God and the real, inner love for Him and firm trust in Him. Pray and beg yourself in spirit and in truth to Him, then He certainly will hear you. Thus, pray yourself without ceasing, do real penance and endure also the suffering, which has come over you for good reasons, with patience and true dedication to the godly will, as you can learn from the patience of Job, then God will help you out of every distress, as far as this will be good for the salvation of your souls. [7] Although you have begged Me now yourselves to deliver you from your distress, because you think that I am a prophet to whom God has given a great power, and look, I can and will hear and help you as less as God Himself, for I and God – whom you do not know, for which reason you also do not believe in Him – are one in spirit, one in will and one in mind. What you can never achieve with your manner of praying and begging to God, that you will also not achieve with Me. Therefore, do first what I have advised you, then I will help you also, even if I will not stay overnight with you. (GGJ Book 20, chap. ) BUT when we had left the village already quite far behind us, the disciples asked Me: “Lord and Master, why actually did You not help these Jews at all, while they still asked You very explicitly and have sent no one to pray and beg You?” [2] I said: “Did I have to strengthen them even more in their old laziness and in their unbelief and superstition than they are in already now since a long time? I only have shown them the way they have to go. If they will do it, they also will be helped at the right time, but if they will not do it, then they also may remain as they are and build their houses on sand. It will not really confuse us, for if a person, against the advice of wisdom, wants to harm himself, no injustice is done to him. [3] With these people, whose request I did not grant, an affliction with all kinds of distress and suffering is necessary, for through this they will wake up from their old laziness and be trained in patience, and their hearts will become softer and more merciful than it has been the case until now. For I am not always a helper, but wherever this is necessary, also a righteous judge.
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Chapter 185 - A Gospel On Prayer Pleasing To God
WHEN CYRENIUS had heard this from Joseph, he turned to the little Child resting on his arms and said to Him, 'O my life, my all! May I then not pray to You, my Lord and my God?' And the little Child answered, 'Oh yes, you may indeed do that - but not with all manner of never-ending exclamations, but only in your spirit, which is your love towards Me, and in its truth, which is the true light that streams forth from the flame of love! Do you really suppose that I become more opulent, mightier and greater by the prayers of men than I already am without such prayers? 'Oh see, that is just why I have appeared out of My eternal infinity in this body, so that men should pray to Me more with their love - and should therewith spare their mouth, their tongue and their lips! For that kind of prayer degrades the worshiper as well as the worshiped, because it is dead nonsense, a characteristic of the heathen! What after all do you do with your good friends and brothers when you gather with them? See, you are delighted to see them, greet them and offer them hands, breast and head. Do the same with Me also, and I shall eternally ask nothing else of you! And now be wholly of good spirits, look around a bit after your children and inquire of them a little as to what they have already learned, and you will have greater joy thereat and will also prepare Me a greater joy than if you were to sigh and exclaim a hundred times on end!' 'Oh see, that is just why I have appeared out of My eternal infinity in this body, so that men should pray to Me more with their love - and should therewith spare their mouth, their tongue and their lips! For that kind of prayer degrades the worshipper as well as the worshipped, because it is dead nonsense, a characteristic of the heathen! What after all do you do with your good friends and brothers when you gather with them? See, you are delighted to see them, greet them and offer them hands, breast and head. Do the same with Me also, and I shall eternally ask nothing else of you! And now be wholly of good spirits, look around a bit after your children and inquire of them a little as to what they have already learned, and you will have greater joy thereat and will also prepare Me a greater joy than if you were to sigh and exclaim a hundred times on end!' (The Childhood of Jesus) "[1] Thus, such spirits – although they are not of a good and pure kind – cannot become dangerous for man, and it is good to pray for such souls. Because the prayer of a soul who is filled with love and compassion and in full trusting love in Me has a good influence on such truly poor souls in the beyond, for it forms a certain element of life’s ether around them in which they can see as in a mirror their faults and shortcomings, are improving themselves and by that they can come more easily to the light of life.
[2] And I am offering you this possibility Myself, so that you can truly benefit your deceased brothers and sisters. [3] But then how should you pray for them? [4] This is quite easy. When you are praying, you should not be of the opinion that by that you can stir Me up to greater mercy, since I truly am endless more merciful than all the best and most loving people of the whole world together. But submit faithfully the gospel to them, out of the true foundation of love of your heart – thus in your heart. Then they will hear it and will also conform themselves to it. And in this way you will also announce the gospel to those who are truly poor of spirit, which will be a great benefit for them. « 4. Say I, 'You I have prepared through word and teaching. When I came to you a few days ago you took Me for a very wise and highly accomplished physician and when you saw Me accomplish unusual deeds, you began to take Me for a prophet through whom God's Spirit acted. But being a man of much experience, you felt prompted to find out how I had achieved such perfection. Thereupon I revealed to you what man is and what is in him, besides what can become of man when he has fully recognised himself, achieving fullest life-liberty of his spirit therewith!
5. But then I also showed you how God Himself is a Man and whence you too, as well as all beings like you, also are men. I then also showed you confidentially that I Myself am that Man and that every man is called to become and be forever what I Myself am. You were astonished, knowing from then on Who I am. 6. And behold, this was a purposeful preparation of your soul and spirit, so that you could now watch Me create an earth, or men from stones, without being harmed. Because you accepted freely, and that in a fully scientific way, that God can be a Man and man can be a god! And so it can no longer trouble your soul and spirit to fully comprehend that I alone am the One true God and Creator of all things from eternity. 7. But it is quite different with other people, who on the whole are not accessible to the scientific approach. These only have faith and otherwise little understanding. 8. The faith of the soul however is nearer to life than the most perfect intellect. If the faith is a coerced one however, then it also becomes a shackle to the soul. If however the soul is shackled, then there can be no talk of the development of the spirit within it. Man, as God's complete image, must also have a perfect free
"[2] He who has not yet created a sun, a moon, a habitable Earth, plants, animals and men, knows certainly not how all these creatures have to be guided, sustained and brought to their ultimate goal. I, however, know all this and have established an eternal order, without which nobody could achieve anything. [3] Man, as My complete image, must also have a perfect free will by which he has to – as far as his spiritual part is concerned – transform and strengthen himself, and make himself free from My omnipotence, so that one day he may stand next to Me and live and act as a strong, free, independent and arbitrary being. [4] Look, all creatures are subject to laws, which are established by Me. Also man, where his body is concerned. Only the soul and the spirit of man are not. That is, as far as his will and the freedom of learning and the realization of everything are concerned. The form and the structure of the soul in all its parts is of course also subject to laws which are established by Me, but only in such a way, that, precisely because of the free will in man, he can become either very noble and strong or very ignoble and weak. Why sometimes the answer to prayers is delayed
"[10] Believe Me: our Jehovah is since eternity the only true, good, living God and has never failed to answer the supplications of those who without doubting believed in Him, who have kept His commandments and thus also who loved Him above all and their fellowman as themselves. Even if He sometimes delayed to completely answer their supplications in order to purify their souls all the more, but He still has never failed to answer them completely and has always fulfilled them, often at a moment when those who prayed for it thought about it in the least. [11] You yourselves – I know this very well – have often prayed in your need to God that He would take away your misery, but because you previously lived in great wealth as men who were in high esteem, but have thereby manifested physical and spiritual laziness in every respect, He let you go through a serious and hard school of life for a few years, so that you would not only experience the attractiveness of the earthly life but also that you yourselves would experience its bitterness, so that from then on you would search in yourselves and come to know the real value of life and its purpose. |
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