Cheryl: Freedom From Desire vs "Freedom From A Self-Centered Life/ Dying to Self -- Selections From The Writings Of William Law," Edited By Andrew Murray: A Reading Suggestion

Cheryl Craig said that several of her reading cohort insist that we should have no desires. I joked that they should address this idea at supper time. Life, as Neville Goddard observed, is simply the appeasing of a hunger. Cheryl has a good hunger: "I wanted to get to know this Being that I was to turn my will and my life over to." That is not just a desire, that is our ASSIGNMENT, the fulfilling of which is our life's PURPOSE. This is the sacred undertaking: "The food that I came for is to satisfy whom sent me and to adhere to his mission" (John 4:34 Alexander). What Jesus was doing in the Illustration is what we should be doing 24/7.

Cheryl mentioned that she keeps track of my reading suggestions, and here is a big one: Freedom From A Self-Centered Life/ Dying to Self -- Selections From The Writings Of William Law, Edited by Andrew Murray (1977, Minneapolis: Dimension Books, Bethany Fellowship, Inc.). I was walking by one of my bookcases and the word freedom caught my eye. The book is actually a commentary on Law's Spirit of Love, specifically on the dialogue between Theogenes and Theophilus in the third part of that text.

"There in nothing that darkens the hearts, even of God's children, so universally and so effectually as the spirit of the world or worldly-mindedness--seeking or delighting in the pleasures, the pride, or the wisdom of this world" (p. 56).

"Now covetousness, pride, and envy are not three different things, but three different names for the restless workings of one and the same will or desire...it must covet, because it is a desire proceeding from want; it must envy, because it is a desire turned to self; it must assume and arrogate, because it is a desire founded on a real want of exaltation, or a higher state" (p. 62).

"For nothing is the way to God but our heart. God is nowhere else to be found, and the heart itself cannot find Him, or be helped by anything else to find Him but by its own love of Him, faith in Him, dependence upon Him, resignation to Him, and expectation of all from Him" (p. 109 emphasis in the original).

"If I desire anything but that which God would have me to be and to do, I stick in the mire of covetousness" (p. 118).

"He is the eternal love and meekness that left the bosom of His Father to be the resurrection of meekness and love in all the darkened, wrathful souls of fallen men (p. 114)...Love is the Christ of God (p. 131)...(T)here is but one salvation for all mankind, and that is the life of God in the soul. God is one, human nature is one, salvation is one, and the way to it is one, and that is the desire of the soul turned to God" (p. 136).

"But the light of God cannot arise or be found in you by any art or contrivance of your own, but only and solely in the way of that meekness, humility, and patience, which waits, trusts, resigns to, and expects all, from the inward, living, life-giving operation of the Triune God within you" (p. 135 emphasis in the original).

You used to get a lot for a dollar ninety-five.