Of course, after consecrating and doubting you have lost confidence in
yourself; but this, too, should end quickly, and it will if you pursue
a right course. To recover your self-reliance, self-balance, dismiss all
the discouraging and doubtful thoughts about yourself. Take a real
inventory of yourself. What are you, anyway? Are you honest? Does your
word mean anything? Can you carry out a resolution? a decision? Very
well then, refuse to be bothered about the past. Quit thinking of the
past; utterly dismiss it from mind, and calmly and deliberately consecrate,
and mean it.

Another difficulty in regard to consecration is that you may think you
have lost yours when it is a trial sometimes to live up to it. You may
think that to be consecrated means that every duty will seem delightful.
In this you are mistaken. Did not Jesus, at one with the Father in will
and mind, pray three times, 'O my Father, if it be possible, let this
cup pass from me. Nevertheless not my will, but thine be done'? Some of
the things God may lay on you or allow to be laid upon you are hard
things, things which you will have to ask God for grace to do or bear.
The crucial test, however, is will you do or bear them? If, in spite of
the temptation to evade or go around God's will, you do obey, then your
consecration is perfect.

Then, soul, end all this uncertainty, end all this unreality by coming
now to the altar of God and placing thereon your whole self-life, body,
soul, spirit, heart, talents, time, goods and gold, will, and all else.
Tie it securely by one strong indomitable, irrevocable decision of your
will. Count yourself all the Lord's. Begin to reckon and consider every
event of your life in this light.