If a kingdom be a great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions. The family is regarded as a natural and reasonable type of small society, designed to provide for the procreation and raising of children and for the mutual good of husband and wife. The main reason why people get married is to raise children, so our approach to the family is child-oriented. There should be but one husband and wife in a family; they should stay together until the children are fully grown and educated; they should deal honestly and charitably with each other as marriage partners. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individual natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. The Savior has set us free from sin, but this is the freedom that comes from being set free from myself by the Son. We tend to rely on our own energy instead of being energized by the power that comes from identification with Jesus Christ. God has written on every side of our nature,–on the mind, on the soul, yes, and in our very flesh,–the interdict forbidding love to have any one direction only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed. #RanolphHarris 1 of 12

God’s being and that of created things do not belong within the same genus, but there is some remote resemblance between divine and nondivine beings. The soul is capable of existing apart from the human body; it is brought into existence directly by God’s creative action; it is without constituent parts and so cannot be disintegrated, that is to say, the human soul is immortal. Moreover, human’s soul is the immediate source of life, existence, and all perfection in the human body. Subsequent propositions emphasize the higher human functions of cognition and volition, and they distinguish sensitive knowledge of individual bodies and their qualities from intellectual understanding of the Universal features of reality. Willing is subsequent to intellect cognition, and the free character of volitional acts of choice is strongly asserted. The presence of the beloved person, the Divine love makes us partake of an Infinite Happiness. One that loves God finds sweetness in every dispensation and the duties of religion are a delight. There is an excellency of charity and pleasure attends the charity in the children of God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

There are despondent thoughts of some newly awakened to a right sense of things, but we must do what we can and depend on the Divine Assistance. We must shun all manner of sin, and we must know what things are sinful. We must resist the temptations of sin by considering the evils they will draw on us and keep constant watch over ourselves. It is also important to often examine our actions so that we fit to restrain ourselves in many lawful thing. Forgiveness does not merely mean that I am saved from hell and have been made ready for Heaven (no one would accept forgiveness on that level). Forgiveness means that I am forgiven into a newly created relationship which identifies me with God in Christ. The miracle of redemption is that God turns me, the unholy one, into the standard of Himself, the Holy One. He does this by putting into me a new nature of excellency of purity and a pleasure and sweetness of a humble temper, which is the nature of Jesus Christ. To beget Divine Love, we must consider the miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

We should meditate on God’s goodness and love. The only way we can be forgiven is by being brought back to God through the atonement of the Cross. God’s forgiveness is possible only in the supernatural realm. Once you realize all that is costs God to forgive you, you will be held as in a vise, constrained by the love of God. Prayer, another instrument of religion, and the advantage of mental prayer are that we experience a union in the soul with God. Prayer kindles in the soul a sympathetic power, and lifts it into connection with higher realms. With its holy fervor, there is blended a natural calmness.  Health and healing are in its influence. To the young, prayer will prove to be the armor of strength; to the aged, perpetual renovation and Christians of all communions will find within it a foretaste of immortality. The life to which it will lead is a Heaven upon Earth, and that is but the commencement of Heaven without end. To all who hold in honor Christ and His gospel, to those who will love God and humans, to each one who will so live in time as to make it the joyous gateway to a glorious eternity, this is the forgiveness of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

I wish I could vent my affection and express my gratitude towards God, Jesus, and all of the World. I am thankful that you have come to honor me with your friendship, and that I am kindly accepted by you, and God’s providence and true religion is a union of the soul with God, a real participation of the divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, it is Christ formed within us. The nature of religion is best expressed by calling it a Divine Life. It is a love which a pious person bears to God and goodness. The holy and religious person do much eye the law of God, and have a great regard unto it, yet it is not so much the sanction of the law, as its reasonableness, purity, and benevolence, which does prevail with them. They account it excellent and desirable in itself, and in keeping of it there is great reward; and that divine lobe wherewith they are actuated, makes them become a law unto themselves. Who shall prescribe a law to those that love? Love is a more powerful law which does move them. Love is in all things a most wonderful teacher. The most interesting and pardonable of human weaknesses—love. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

The beloved lover is always called happy, and happiness is considered as a well-fleshed indifference to sorrow outside it. That simple, primitive love which knits us to the beings who have been nearest to us, in their times of helplessness or of anguish. Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings. Love makes the image God become wrought in the souls of humans by the power of His Holy Spirit; but also in regard of love’s nature, it is a resemblance of the divine perfections, the image of the Almighty shining in the soul of humanity. Love is a beam of the eternal light, a drop of that infinite ocean of goodness; and they who are endowed with it may be said to have God dwelling in their souls, and Christ formed within them. Our state of mind is powerful in its effects. It can be the enemy that penetrates right into our soul and distracts our mind from God. There are certain attitudes we should never dare to indulge. If we do, we will find they have distracted us from faith in God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

Until we get back into a quiet mood before Him, our faith is of no value, and confidence in the flesh and in human ingenuity is what rules our lives. Our eyes should be riveted on God and we should focus on His Scriptures. This is how knowledge of God’s countenance is gained and how God reveals Himself to us. Our spiritual strength begins to be drained when we stop lifting our eyes to God. Our stamina is sapped, not so much through external troubles surrounding us but through problems in our thinking. The glorious things that are spoken of in Heaven, may make even a carnal heart in love with it: the metaphors and similitudes made use of in the Scriptures, of crowns and scepters, and rivers of pleasure, will easily affect an individual’s fancy, and make one wish to be there, though on neither understand nor desire those spiritual pleasures which are described and shadowed forth by them: and when such a person comes to believe that Christ has purchased those glorious things for one, one may feel a kind of tenderness and affection towards so great a benefactor, and imagine that one is mightily enamored with him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

Pay attention to the external Source and the internal power will be there. We lose power because we do not focus on the right thing. Concentrate on God’s focal point. We have to focus on the great point of spiritual power—the Cross. If we stay in contact with that center of power, its energy is released in our lives. If we are to share in Christ’s glory, we must be willing to share in His sufferings. The suffering the Scripture refers to occurs when we have to say no to our flesh, when we remain calm after we do not get out way, and when we stay in faith even when life seems unfair. Our character is being developed in this way. Our gold is being polished. What are the irritants in your life that God is using to become Gold and Diamonds? The love of God is a delightful and affectionate sense of the divine perfections, which makes the soul resign and sacrifice itself wholly unto us, desiring above all things to please God, and delighting in nothing so much as in fellowship and communion with God, and being ready to suffer any thing for his sake, or at his pleasure. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

*Purity means that we find pleasure in more divine and intellectual aspects of life. Through this affection may have its first rise from the favors and mercies of God toward ourselves, yet it does, in its growth and progress, transcends such particular considerations, and ground itself on God’s infinite goodness, manifested in all the works of creation and providence. A soul thus possessed with divine love, must needs be enlarged, toward all humankind, in a sincere and unbounded affection, because of the relation they have to God being His creatures, and having something of His image stamped upon them; and this is that charity called the second branch of religion, and under which all the parts of justice, all the duties we owe to our neighbor, are eminently comprehended: for He who does truly lobe all the World, will be nearly concerned in the interest of every one; and so far from wronging or injuring any person, that God will resent any evil that befalls others, as if it happened to Himself. My enemies have betrayed me, have overtaken poor Bob at last. And there is one thing certainly, they have stones all in my pass. Now you trying to take my life, and all my lovin’, too. #RandolphHarris 9 of  12

You laid a passway for me, now what are you trying to do? I am crying please, please let us be friends, and when you hear me howling in my passway rider, please open your door and let me in. I have three lanes to truck home, boys, please do not block my road. I have been feeling ashamed about my rider, baby I am booked and I got to go. Humility imports a deep sense of our own meanness, with hearty and affectionate acknowledgment of our owing all that we are to the divine bounty; which is always accompanied with a profound submission to the will of God, and great deadness toward the glory of the World and applause of humans. These are the highest perfections that either humans or angels are capable of—the very foundation of Heaven laid in the soul; and one who hath attained them, needs not desire to pry into the hidden rolls of God’s decrees, or search the volumes of Heaven to know what is determined about his everlasting condition; but one may find a copy of God’s thought concerning one, written in one’s own heart. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

One’s love to God may give one assurance of God’s favour to one; and those beginnings of happiness, which one feels in the conformity of the powers of one’s soul to the nature of God, and compliance with His will, are a sure pledge that God’s felicity shall be perfected, and continued to all eternity; and it is not without reason many would rather see the real impression of a God-like nature upon our own souls, than have a vision from Heaven, or an angel sent to tell me that my name was enrolled in the book of life. We all face situations that seem impossible, and it is easy to become discouraged. We might think that things will never work out, but the Scripture says God is going before us making our difficult places more beneficial to us. You may not have the right connections now to accomplish your dreams, but you do not have to worry. God is going before you and lining up the right people, opportunities, and situations. God has already written every day of your life in His book. “The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God’s salvation” (Luke3.5-6). #RandolphHarris 11 of 12Are just now, until we start again. We travel alone, this is not the end. You have to let it go. All alone. Because buried in the sand, the bones of man. Everything you know, carry on in us. Somewhere in my dreams is everything I lost. Follow that road. Meet me. Ashes burning. The smoke settles on my skin, someone save me, help me breathe. Fire spreading everywhere, I feel we are running out of air. This loved was cursed some lone ago, to play with fire you will never win. We are burning. We must never allow anything to interfere with the consecration of our spiritual power. Consecration (being dedicated to God’s service) is our part; sanctification (being set apart from sin and being made holy) is God’s part. We must make a deliberate determination to be interested only in what God is interested. In the heart of the city, where you and I are free, I do not know what this means, but let us choose to believe it. And wait till the light will guide us home. Take me to a life I have never know. I have been waiting it all my life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12