THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH LECTURE THE LAW IS MY SHEPHERD

In the majority of people I meet there appears to be great concern about their inability to understand and follow Divine guidance. They are afraid, perhaps, instead of hearing and following the voice of God, they are hearing and following their own thinking. I can understand their concern. I know how it affected me when I started out in Truth. I used to think "How will I know what God wants me to do? How will He approach me? How will He bring His idea into my consciousness? And if He does, will I be able to understand it? Will I have the courage to do and to dare in His name by following that guidance?" I can tell you now that if you have prayed to God for guidance and you think that you have received it, but still feel you have to go to others to make sure, it is not God's guidance. God speaks so deeply to you that you know what He wants you to do. Your heart is entirely secure in the knowledge that it is His voice. I know most of you have affirmed "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" and have tried to live in the consciousness of it. For a long time, perhaps, you receive no answer, then out of the blue you get some spiritual guidance and your heart says to you "This is it! This is what God wants me to do. I know this is what God wants me to do," and without any hesitation whatever, without any fear, even though it may be a question of life and death, you take your first step.

You know that God cannot make mistakes, that He sees the end from the beginning, and that you are on the right path. But does the answer to your problem come? No. Nothing seems to happen and the weeks drag on into months. You begin to feel disillusioned and bitter, and you dare to say to Omnipotence "Have I not trusted You? Have I not staked my whole life on Your guidance? Have I not cut myself off from all material help?" If I know you as I know myself, fear tries to enter your heart. But, because of your persistence, you say to yourself "No, I must not allow this monster to enter. Though I die, I must hold on to Truth. I must learn, I must be one-pointed, I must keep my eye single to the guidance God has given me. In spite of these appearances, which seem to be greater than God at the moment, I must go on." And your whole task from then on is to quell your doubts. You have taken your step in faith. Your whole self - spirit, mind, soul and body - pushes out every negative impulse that tries to enter.

You resolve that you will hold on to Truth until It manifests. Literally by God it must and will manifest. Have you got this inner courage to go on? I am speaking now to those followers of Truth who feel completely cut off, not only from God, but from His world. Do you fear that it is now too late? That there is nothing anyone can do for you? The Lord is my shepherd, but where is the Lord? Where is the Power that has guided you and now is silent? Is He perhaps like a person sitting on his throne watching to see whether you have the courage to go on, testing you to the utmost? No, He is universal Spirit functioning through His law. "The Law is my shepherd," the Law which I have set into operation, the Law of love and trust, which brings Omnipotence into my mind, my emotions, my body and my affairs, despite all appearances to the contrary. In reality, once we have received Guidance and have acted upon it, there is no reason to doubt or to fear. We have no alternative but to go on. All-knowledge possesses us, wants us to develop the consciousness that nothing can destroy, consciousness of Himself-in-being through us. Even though we faint, we have to get up and go on, and say with Job "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." Truly, we are seeking one thing - awareness of the Presence of Love and Life in us. Truly, it is not the material things which our hearts desire, but the realisation of the power of Love through and for all humanity, the realisation that It is vitally interested in you and me. But you cannot know this without experience. Just as a kite rises against the wind so, only by the overcoming of the opposing influences that you have yourself drawn into your life, that you expand in faith.

You might go on to the eleventh hour, you might at times even quake in your heart but, when God has spoken, when He has given you His guidance, there is no real cause for fear. God cannot fail. He, the Spirit of Intelligence in you, is making you a worthy channel through which He may manifest. Blind faith will also see you through, but it is the hard way. Blind faith may recognise the will of God as good, but faith that has developed through application and experience is an understanding faith and is unshakable. Then man who says "Though He slay me, yet will I trust him" knows that God will never harm or slay him, but will fulfil his trust. And later on he will look at his life in retrospect and say "How grateful I am for that experience. Now I am able to pass on so much more knowledge to my fellows. I do not talk from book knowledge - I am quoting the authority of Soul within me." When I refer to the man who has overcome, I do not mean the overcoming of minor problems. I mean the type of problem where no human being could help him, where to all appearances he was beyond even God's help. Yet he tried to believe in his heart that the Law was his shepherd, that the Law of Understanding and Intelligence was guiding him and that he had no need to seek any external aid.

God has many names. Law is also Love. I hear people talk very glibly of God as Love but they do not appreciate that the word Love really does mean that Power we call God and is not like a person who expresses love. So Love is my shepherd and, just as the shepherd needs receptivity in his sheep, so must there be a channel in me through which It can lead me. I must try to show in my every thought, feeling, word and action that from the very depths of my being that I earnestly believe Love is guiding me. And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil - because even in the depths of despair there is no evil. That is the promise, not my promise but the promise of the universal Power that is God, that is Love. Love lifts you out of the morass into which you have fallen. Love is Omnipotence therefore It cannot fail. Love is Omniscience therefore is the answer to your every problem. Your cup of livingness will be filled up to overflowing, enough to share and to spare. This is the promise of Life Itself - a promise that has been fulfilled uncountable times in the lives of people. Believe it.