Weed Your Own Garden, December 18

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? 2 Corinthians 13:5.UL 366.1

To speak the word of God with faithfulness is a work of the greatest importance. But this is an entirely different work from continually censuring, thinking evil, and drawing apart from one another. Judging and reproving are two different things. God has laid upon His servants the work of reproving in love those who err, but He has forbidden and denounced the thoughtless judging so common among professed believers in the truth....UL 366.2

Those who are working for God should put away all unkind criticism, and draw together in unity. They need to study the Lord's teaching in regard to this. Christ desires His soldiers to stand shoulder to shoulder, united in the work of fighting the battles of the cross. He desires the union between those who work for Him to be as close as the union between Him and His Father. Those who have felt the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit will heed the lessons of the divine Instructor, and will show their sincerity by doing all in their power to work in harmony with their brethren....UL 366.3

It is the one who has every reason to distrust his own principles who is keenly alive to the failings of others. If there were not some lack in our own experience, we would not be so suspicious of our brethren. It is he whose conscience condemns him who passes judgment so readily. Let everyone tremble and be afraid of himself. Let him see that his own heart is right with God. Let him weed his own garden; he will find enough to keep him busily employed. If he does this work faithfully [he] will not have time to find fault with the gardens of others. Instead of judging others, let us judge ourselves. Let us make sure that we are among the number who are “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2). “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently” (verse 22)....UL 366.4

God has placed us in this world in companionship with one another. Let us walk together in love, bending our energies to the work of saving souls. As we thus serve God in holy companionship, we shall prove that we are laborers together with Him.—Manuscript 75a, December 18, 1900, “Judge Not.”UL 366.5