We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are absolutely sure that it is good for us to be, and to be who we are. This means we must have no doubt that the path appointed for us by when and where and to whom we were born is good, and that nothing irredeemable has happened to us or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God's full world.

Bluntly, to serve God well we must think straight; and crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil. And when the crooked thinking gets elevated into group orthodoxy, whether religious or secular, there is always, quite literally, "hell to pay." That is, hell will take its portion, as it has repeatedly done in the horrors of world history.

Jesus' basic idea about this world—with all its evil, pushed to the limit in what he went through going toward and nailed upon the cross—is that this world is a perfectly good and safe place for anyone to be, no matter the circumstances, if they have placed their lives in the hands of Jesus and his Father.

It is desirable to base our beliefs on knowledge wherever possible. Knowledge stabilizes true belief and makes it more effectual for good as well as more accessible and shareable.

Those who understand Jesus and his Father know that provision has been made for them. Their confidence has been confirmed by their experience. Though they work, they do not worry about things "on earth." Instead, they are always "seeking first the kingdom." That is, they "place top priority on identifying and involving themselves in what God is doing and in the kind of rightness he has.

Knowledge is the basis of belief, and, when it is, it gives the belief a very different bearing upon life.

Anyone who can find a better way than Jesus, he would be the first to tell you to take it.

It may seem strange but doing the will of God is a different matter than just doing what God wants us to do. The two are so far removed, in fact, that we can be solidly in the will of God, and know that we are, without knowing God's preference with regard to various details of our lives.

The spirit is able to consider alternatives, and God prompts us to have an interest in what is better and best.

So God uses our self-knowledge or self-awareness, which is heightened and given a special quality by his presence and direction, to search us out and reveal to us the truth about ourselves and our world.

So those who hear me and do what I say are like those intelligent people who build their homes on solid rock, where rain and floods and winds cannot shake them. MATT. 7:24—25 Train them to do everything I have told you. MATT. 28:20 The Course of Studies in the Master Class These words from Jesus show that it must be possible to hear and do what he said. It also must be possible to train his apprentices in such a way that they routinely do everything he said was best.

The right thing would be simply releasing it all and saying, "All right. God knows. I'm living in his world. He can give me what he wants. I will not put these things in the place of God.