There are days perhaps when you feel a little chilled. There is chill in the air outside, and to some there has been that which is far worse; that most penetrating chill which defies all the armour that you have tried so hard to gather to yourself. The chill on heart and mind, which is nearly always due to a physical condition. That is where God’s children so often go astray; they jump to the conclusion that the cold hand has been so stretched out that it has clutched their very soul as well as their suffering body. But that is not so. Try and put a very distinct dividing line between the physical and the spiritual. Of course, so far as the individual is concerned, they seem so closely attached that what strikes one apparently strikes the other in a way which cannot be over looked. But that is only the attitude of the mind of the body.
Get this matter right. It does not concern one, it concerns the vast majority of God’s children!
Unfortunately, the conditions of life and the power given to evil during past generations make it very difficult for those in the Spirit World to protect those who wish to serve from the constant onslaughts on the physical by those who are out to wreck.
Although your spirit has shown itself to be strong and courageous, at some period you are beset by that form of temptation which comes to all as they climb; the temptation of pain!
All must face it! Sooner or later, in the upward climb, you have got to meet and wrestle with pain, and it is not an easy enemy to overcome. Not the weakness itself, but the effect which that weakness leaves on the physical mind.
It seems hard to you and indeed it is very hard for the Spirits because with all their love and with all the power given to them by God they cannot take from the spirit that which it has undertaken to carry. You have voluntarily taken on this temptation, in order to prove that your spirit is strong enough to bear it!
Faith can lift you out of your pain in a spiritual sense and it can halve that pain in a physical sense, but the spirit holds on to the rest and nothing can intervene.
There are many people who think that the disabilities of the body depend largely upon the attitude of the mind of the sufferer. Do not for one moment take out a single brick of the substantial formation that has been put together by the efforts and the thoughts of a large section. The Spirits are on their side entirely so far as the outward is concerned, and if they differ on the spiritual side then it is entirely because they have been allowed to see the inner working of God's plans, and also the ultimate end of the individual soul.
Get this matter as clear as possible. At the moment you are hampered by the conditions of the earth but, by the grace of God and with the Spirits help, you shall find that what is now absent shall be brought together and that you shall have constructed something of value.
Do not think that anyone on the Spirit side ever mistakes the weariness of your body for the sluggishness of your soul. At times great toll is taken from the body and endurance in a physical sense is stretched almost to breaking point, but that does not apply to the endurance of the spirit within. Keep that clear in your mind. The spirit of anyone who wishes even dimly with their physical mind to do as God would have them do is unconscious of weakness or of shrinking. Those have been struck again and again on the physical side make no mistake; the endurance and the courage and the determination is there, and all the tears, the regret and the wishing that it might be different, does not effect that spirit one bit! But hereafter that extra suffering shall be added on the gain and not on the loss side, as the enemies of God would have you think again and again!
Think then in regard to those who believe that illness of any kind is the result of wrong thinking, or that illness can be swept out of existence by right thinking.
In that theory they have come to the edge of a very great and important truth. By attuning yourself to the spiritual, by trying to keep in touch with your Father, you are giving the Spirits unlimited opportunities of rectifying that which is rectifiable. It is a most important point that has been forced upon the attention of thousands of men and women today, and it has done much to raise the sorrowful, to heal the maimed in mind, and to give in place of the crutch of despair, the strong, outstretched, never-failing Hand of the Christ. All honour to those who have done so much and have persevered on the way they have found, without ever looking behind.
But that is not all. You have got to get back to fundamentals. Certain souls imbued with spiritual ambition have elected to climb the steepest, sharpest side of the hill which leads to God. While the Christ suffers with them in a way impossible for you to imagine and while on His strength you are allowed to do what one day will seem to you an enormous lot to mitigate their anguish, still the pain itself remains.
Think in a spiritual way upon this because pain during the earth's experience does play so large a part and it seems to the outside that, in many cases, it is the last straw; and the end is not only a broken back but what is far worse, a broken heart as well!
Pain in itself is so closely allied to the suffering Christ. Very few who are privileged to take on a physical body are so little developed that they do not choose a certain proportion of that which links them to the Crucified, who suffered so much but never inflicted one pain upon another. There is not one pain that reaches you that is not borne in three parts by the Christ Himself!
Those who have given so much thought to this subject now and again are conscious of a feeling that, in a measure, they have either betrayed the faith they professed or that that faith has betrayed them. This brings about great sadness; it destroys immediately the harmony that should be within, and without which even a meagre form of happiness is impossible.
Be quite sure that nothing has gone wrong, that all your prayers and self-discipline have been building up a wall of resistance against the shadows that would attack. Long ago before you entered into this world at all you were shown pain in all its terribleness, its multitude of ramifications and subterranean channel. In fact, nothing in connection with pain, either with the strain on the body or the still worse strain upon the nerves and the mind, was kept from you. Having spiritual sight you saw beyond the black blot of suffering the Light which shines from God and chose pain; pain as one of your weapons to help on the journey of the Spirit.
Never think that God does not understand! Never think that He withdraws from you and watches the enemy approach, seeking too late to beat it back. Sometimes it looks like that and sometimes, to those so bound and blinded by the darkness of the earth, even the Christ Himself seems to act in that same way. When that thought comes it is anguish indeed.
Reconstruct in your mind the position of pain; do not regard it as some terrible thing which has crept in unawares while the guard was sleeping. Do not imagine, on the other hand, that God sent it or that it is His will that you should be tortured by the imperfections of the body you are wearing. Both of these are wrong and both cause added suffering to yourself. Try and get it clear in your mind. You, loving God far better than you know, have taken on this burden, and your Heavenly Father allowed it to be so because of the joy He could bestow in return. Do not think that it is His will or that it is His way of beating down that which is imperfect in the child He has created.
Suffering is perhaps of all things the most cleansing because it is the most devastating, and that is why those who are out to climb have, to their physical minds, taken on a great deal more than they are fit to carry.
There is not one who has watched by the side of another who is soon to be laid aside and in watching has not thought deep and sometimes very terrible thoughts regarding the anguish with which the helpless victim is troubled. It is a dreadful thing to see, but even the looker-on is conscious of a drastic sweeping out of their own mind. The contemplation of pain in another forces self, for the time being, outside the boundaries of thought. Even there it has its uses in building up something for the soul. Next time you hear of this one or of that who is hard-set by the ravages of disease do not think to yourself how can God allow it but instead think of the joy that is in store for them for evermore!
The Christ's side is to heal, and the moment the body is discarded that process of healing sets in. Could you have one moment's vision of even the first stages you would indeed realise that though the price is great, greater still is the result.
Remember the illustration you have in the Bible regarding one who is called Job. It is remarkable to some that after having endured so much the evil was allowed to fall upon his body and to endeavour, literally, to tear mind and soul apart. It was as great as that, and that illustration has been passed down to humanity so that they might understand that, in many cases, pain is the last test, the last test of all. This should give you hope!
Follow his career and remember that after the pain God's gifts descended upon him, and that which was imperfect was made sound again. That which was intended to bring about his spiritual destruction placed him on high for evermore!
Those who suffer, and some of God’s children suffer greatly, should know that in God's sight such afflictions of the body are counted as gifts direct to Him, because of the love of the greater self within. That all-seeing, all-wise self, which is able to look beyond the present and to see in the Great Hereafter what it has brought in the way of holiness.
Help those who come as they will need it. The Spirits cannot work against the physical, but, by God's grace and with your help, that which is missing shall be made good.
There is a terrible lot to oversee one way and another. If that "terrible lot" were magnified a million times over you should do it! There is nothing in the world of Spirit that expresses what, in your world, is called "cannot"; nothing! But sometimes the Spirits have to wait a little while in order to weave in the necessary strands here and there to make the finished article stand the strain when completed.
It is difficult to explain to you what happens. You must remember that in speaking through the body of another, in addition to the spiritual tools lent by God, the Spirits are bound to use the physical ones through whom they speak. When the blood runs slowly, as it does when the body is overtired, that same slowness affects the mind, and although they can use the mind, still the necessary fuel is missing. It is just the same as it would be with an engine if there was insufficient fuel. If by spiritual power the Spirits forced the engine of the physical mind beyond the capacity provided by the physical body, they might do very serious damage indeed.
You cannot work against nature to that extent without doing damage. It could be done, of course, and it has been done by many in the past, with sad results on the one who has been generous enough to put their body at the use of those who have passed over and abused their responsibility.
In taking control the Spirits are not here to rob, but to give. It takes time to replenish that which is absent but by slow means, working through the channels provided by God, those free from the flesh can bring strength to that which was weak, the strength which came from God.
These points sometimes cause confusion in the physical mind, because to some it would seem a sin against nature to hold such meetings when the vitality of the body had already been called upon to a serious extent. Make no mistake, those who want to love God and not themselves always bring to the instrument they use, and do not take away. It is the test that all should have to pass. Eager though they may be to speak to you direct, good in the long run cannot come from that which was tainted by self in the beginning. God does not work on those lines. He protects you far more comprehensively than you could imagine protection could be.
Whatever may happen, the Protector is there; the Great Comforter is never absent from His children, either in days of storm or during those periods when the sun shines bright. It makes no difference. You are gathered in, gathered into a Love and a Care and an Understanding, which changes in the physical or the material never touches at all. Keep that thought close and be certain; certain as you are that in a few hours dawn will follow night. Be certain that the Dawn is here, and once the first signs have appeared soon the Day must be ushered in, and in that Day you will see on either side the result of the handiwork, of the bringing together, of the building in ignorance. You will see it all, and know that the promises have not been in vain and, what is more, that even as you look, the unfolding of new promises will be taking place.
God's Peace is with you; it has descended upon you and gathered you in. Likewise His Joy will be there, and this is but an introduction to that which all covet most; the illumination and the revelation, which starting from small beginnings, expands and grows and unravels its glorious petals, until at last you are able to look into the Centre, the Life within, and that is God! That is God, and that is what everyone is working for, striving for, and certain of attaining in the time to come.
Rest in the security of The Cross, not as a sign of sorrow, but of triumph over sorrow. Pain is not a symbol of the body, but of the Spirit within; the Spirit which sees all, understands all, and takes on all for its bond with God who made it!
This message was first given in 1924 through Winifred Moyes.
© The Greater World Christian Spiritualist Association 2025
All rights reserved. No parts of this message may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of The Greater World Christian Spiritualist Association.
