2012 New Message Encampment Day 4 – Learning To Be A Living Letter

During the first three days of the Encampment of the New Message from God, my mind was buzzing, along with other participants, as to how to have the New Message reach a larger audience, even with limited resources.  The American Methodists of the early 19th Century had a similar problem.  Their solution was to use “circuit riders,” ministers who rode on horseback around a circuit of locations.

The circuit riders were dedicated individuals.  They gave rise to the expression “The weather’s so bad outside, there’s no one out but crows and itinerant preachers.”  I had a vision of being the Minnesota New Message circuit rider, going to various cities in Minnesota with my packages of tracts, except that I wouldn’t ride a horse.
I shared this idea with a lady on the afternoon of Day 4.  This dear lady has been a friend and mentor to me in my study of the New Message, for a little longer than a year now. While she appreciated my enthusiasm, she had an alternate suggestion.  She suggested that I engage in a practice called the Four Pillars, which comes from the teaching “Building the Four Pillars of Your Life.”

In truth, your life is only as strong as the weakest of your Pillars.

There are Four Pillars to your life. They represent the strength of your life and the stability of your life. They represent your ability to withstand change and to take advantage of opportunity. They represent your ability to face disappointment and uncertainty. Like the four legs of a table, they uphold your life.

There is the Pillar of Relationships; there is the Pillar of Work and Providership; there is the Pillar of Health; and there is the Pillar of your Spiritual Development. Each of these Pillars is of equal value, and even though at any particular moment you may be focused on one of these Pillars, the truth is, they all must be built.

My friend said “Become the tract that people read, and to which people respond.”  As she said this, I recalled the words of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians. “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?  You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

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