How do you interpret the will of God, “Thy will be done, not mine.” God speaks to me through the language of desire. That’s his will to me. I may not abide by it, because I look out on a world and see facts denying the fulfillment of my desire, and therefore I deny that he has the power to give me what he first gave to me in the form of desire. Now, when it comes to “thy will”…you’ve taken it out of context…but it’s good. Man has to pass through all the horrors of the world, as taught in scripture. “I have afflicted you. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another” . So, “Whom God afflicts for secret ends, he afterwards comforts and heals and calls them friends.” But first, he puts me through the furnaces of affliction. That’s his will and no one is going to violate the will of God. If man thinks he’s going to avoid the hurts that come, say, with the passing of a loved one, unless you go as you’re born, then you will not know the contacts and the loves and the hates of life. But if you mature to my age, you must say goodbye to friends as they depart this sphere. And so, that’s a hurt, that’s an affliction. And so everyone…you need not be afflicted in the sense of going to jail and being beaten, or having a disease, but you are afflicted in numberless ways. Tonight you sit up with your loved one and you laugh together, and tomorrow you wake. She doesn’t. Isn’t that an affliction? The will of God…accept it. These are the furnaces through which man goes. And after we are through the furnaces, we are pure gold. We are as holy as the Father is holy. We are made as perfect as the Father is perfect, but only by these purgings are we made perfect. So, that’s the will of God. And if that be my Father’s will, give me the cup and I’ll finish it. I will ask, as he asked to take it from him, but not my will, thy will be done. Would I not bring back my brother Lawrence, who, last August, closed his eye and departed this sphere? Well, that’s the Father’s will. I know definitely that he is now gaining towards the awakening. Because, it’s to fulfill scripture in my book, for it was he who found the child the night that I was born from above. And it’s told in scripture, he who brings the child into the temple, then makes the statement, “Now let thy servant depart in peace, according to thy will; for mine eyes have seen the salvation of Israel” . And so, it was the Father’s will then, and he departed. But where did he go? He is restored to life, a young man. I see him, a young handsome man, not more than twenty-three, and now he’s going to have the experience; for you’re just as solidly real in this sphere into which you go as you are here. And so the whole wonderful play is on. It’s a play, but within the framework of the play you and I are free in this kindergarten to have money or not to have it, to be known or not to be known, and all these little things that are like toys. All of these are toys. And then we come into the great[...] that is predetermined and we’re moving towards the fulfillment of God’s will, which is “Let us make man in our image.” To accomplish that feat, which is a miraculous thing, he has to put us through the furnaces of affliction. But in the end, it will all be wiped away and not be remembered, just as though we suffered from total amnesia. All the tears are wiped away, everything belonging to this sphere which is for a purpose.381 ¶40