Letters from Norman…
by Norman Grubb

Dear Joan,

The spirit does play His games with you. “The game of life and how to play it”—I remember a booklet I have named that. You can’t return a tennis ball with vigour unless it has been f irst driven over the net to you! Negatives and positives are the two sides of the same thing. Saying “Yes” to something means you have said “No” to the alternative.

(So God is giving His Joan form of His Self-manifestation—The Permanent Positive—by giving you a necessary valuable dose of the negative, valuable, but only negative self-thinking self—Joan!)

That is where the Written Word comes in, as the medium. That Word only conveys THE WORD, whom John reveals to us in his marvelous gospel from its very first phrase—read it. And he starts his marvelous first epistle by precisely the same—manifestation of The Word which is THE PERSON. Read it again.

So, yes, you are in a training stage, to establish you in your fixed REALITY which is you the red hot iron, but what glows is not you, but iron. THAT IS OUR PREMANENT ONENESS, expressed in that marvelous phrase—“They in Me, and I in them.” Both separate entities, but inextricably interlaced as an eternal one!

Therefore James says you start by trials, the pressures of the negative on mind (for you) and body. You “Count them joy”—“ALL JOY”, and “count” is not soul-feeling, but obedient spirit! And why? Because it gives you the constant practice of "faith"—deliberate believing—and that James said “worketh” patience. You can’t hit that ball back except first hit to you. And as you settle into it, it becomes fun, zest—only at first in the practicing rounds feels a bit laborious. But that practice produces stabilised perfection. Again read James 1:1-4. Read those passages even if appearing at present distasteful and boring to you.

And Peter said to beginners, for his letter is to the new-born—“After you have suffered a while, stablish…you.” Read it again in 1 Pet, 5.10.

So you just don’t have glory without suffering, Paul said that in Rom.8.17. GOD said His Son (Himself in His Son form) can only be a perfected Saviour— of others by being the “perfect sufferer”—Wow! And that was God’s way. Read again in Heb.2.10. And so your mental “sufferings” are really love, you being conditioned to help so many others and thus save them as you are in the process of being “saved” yourself. Paul in Heb, said “Labour to enter into that rest!” Again read it in Heb.4.11, and that “labouring” means, not hard outer work, but persisting in believing. See how that verse ended!

So, love, all your “labours” are reactions of your own precious but often interfering human mind how you think or feel this or that. And “YOU are dead and Christ is your life.” Again read Col.3.3.4. so keep saying and BEING what you ARE in Christ and He in you. The more you fling your arms around and shout for “knowing”, the slower it will be in coming, because your “f linging” is blocking the knowing. BE STILL AND KNOW that I am God. So back you come to ACCEPTING (your mind storms), but then believing (what HE says to you in His word), and praising (by word if not yet in feeling).

Now love; send me your next “epistle according to my loved Joan!” I’ll await it!

Loving you,

Norman