Virginia Brandt Berg (1898-1968)
God bless you as we fellowship together! I want to thank God for the privilege of coming to you in this way! Any service for the Lord is a privilege, but this is one of the greatest because it is so far-reaching!
We've tried so hard to keep our message to the Gospel only, we have given hardly any time at all to the needs of the Work. We've rarely ever mentioned the finances, we so long to use all the time for your encouragement and for God's Glory!
Perhaps you wonder why one would be willing to appeal like this to support such a work? What is the motivation behind it if they don't get anything out of it for themselves? -- In fact have to give toward it themselves? Why does one keep on and on year after year? What's the motivation behind it all? Behind the sacrifice? Why would people do things like that?
Well, I know why! They're so dedicated to God and want to sacrifice for His Cause! As for myself, I want you to know that years ago when a helpless invalid without hope and without God, I found the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior.
Then He healed me and raised me up in such a miraculous way that I've had one great over-powering desire to tell others that He is so real! That God is real and His Word is true, and that He'll do just what He says He'll do in that wonderful Word of His!
It is real, and it's all so because God says so! It works! And I long to tell others that, just like someone came and told me. I seems you'd give your very life to let people know that every promise in that Bible can be taken at Its face value!
The living God, our Father God, stands behind His Word with His Love and His mercy, His truth and His power, and you have such a yearning to let people know that, you just want to give more and more as the years go by.
For you have learned that there isn't any real joy anywhere except in being right with God and in fellowship with Jesus Christ. And there is nothing in all the Word as satisfying as serving Him and seeing lives transformed through His power!
If you want to have real joy, just tell the good story of His Love and His mercy and healing power to someone, and see their lives transformed, and the joy will come in your heart! It's like the song we used to sing:
Sweet Savior mine! So full, so free,
Thy pardoning Love has been to me!
Were I possessed of boundless store,
My heart would long to yield Thee more.
The World is not apart from Thee,
Sweet Savior mine,
And crusts are kingly fare for me
Since I am Thine.
My life, my all to Thee I give,
Sweet Savior mine, for Thee to live!
Can I withhold the trifling deed, the paltry gold?
Oh no, Lord, at Thy feet I fall,
Sweet Savior mine, I give Thee all!
-- And that's the cry of your heart.
As you learn to know Him better, you long to give more and more as the years go by, because there's such joy in the Christian walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. More and more you love His Word; and these verses from the Psalmist, I would say they are my testimony. Listen to them as we read them.
If you're discouraged or you're sick in body or weary in soul, take these verses for yourself: Listen carefully as He speaks to you through them: "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? Though an host should encamp against me, my heart will not fear, though war should rise up against me, in this will I be confident. (Ps.27)
For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion, in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me, He shall set me up upon a rock." -- And that rock is Jesus Christ! I hope you know that old son, "Rock of Ages Cleft for Me!" Some of the new ones are beautiful, but these old Gospel songs are so precious:
Rock of ages cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee,
Let the water and the blood
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me pure!
-- But the thought I wanted to bring from this is, and you find it in the second verse:
Could my tears forever flow,
Could my zeal no languor know,
These for sin could not atone
Thou must save and Thou alone,
In my hand no price I bring
Simply to Thy Cross I cling!
And that's the way you have to come for Salvation, That's the way you have to come for healing! If you are sick in body, or if you are suffering, the Lord will do for you just what He did for me! Oh, how I remember that day, it still throbs my heart, the thrill of it all! How He answered prayer and so marvelously healed my body.
They tried to tell me that the Lord doesn't do that today, but that the Power manifested then was just to usher in His ministry and to open the Gospel dispensation! But He's doing it just the same today, and you come the very same way! If your tears could ever flow and your zeal never languor know, that couldn't bring you this from the Lord!
You just come through the Rock of ages. You come through the price that Jesus paid -- simply to the Cross you cling, that's all. your heart right with God and your sins washed away in the Blood of Calvary, you can come to Him, and He's so willing!
He said He was wounded for your transgressions. He was bruised for your iniquities. The chastisement of His peace is upon you, and yet He says in that very same passage, By His stripes we are healed! Then you find over in the 103rd Psalm, and the little word I want to impress in closing here is that it's "all." He said:
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases." -- Ps.103:2&3. -- And that includes the very thing which you have right now, I don't care what it is!
God said all and He means all! -- Then there's another very wonderful "All!" He says, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all." -- Ps.34:19
I don't care what your trouble is right now or what that suffering is, just take that little word right there, that "all": And that includes that trouble right now, or that sickness, that suffering, that affliction.
"He delivereth him out of them all." -- Then in Mat.8:17 you find these Words: "That it might be fulfilled which is spoken by Esaias the prophet saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our sickness." -- That's a repetition from the Old Testament, but up here further It says, "He healed all that came to him."
He healed all that came to Him! That includes you, doesn't it? He went through the kingdom to heal the sick. It says in Luke 9: "He sent them out to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And they departed and went through the towns, preaching the Gospel and healing everywhere."
Oh, this unchanging Christ! If you'll just confess your faults! As it says in James 5:16, "Pray one for another that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." -- God bless you and help you and give you the faith, strengthen your faith, to reach out and touch Him today. Amen! He's still on the Throne and prayer does surely change things.