Week 11 Sunday
Week 11 Sunday
First Step in Deliverance: Complete Honesty
Acts 5:1-22
We now turn to the more joyous task of setting up a ladder so that the defeated and harassed may climb to peace and poise and power.
(1) Let us clearly understand that any step we may suggest is to be an honest step and real. There will be no attempt to deceive the mind, no effort to entice it into entering a fool’s paradise of make-believe. No one can play tricks on the universe, least of all on the universe of mind. There can be no waving of a wand over fears, no telling the mind that they are no more. That is the way of opium. It has an inevitable letdown. The Christian way is the way of complete honesty. The verse that most clearly expresses the spirit of this way is: “See and do not be alarmed” (Matt. 24:6 Moffatt). Jesus did not try to teach people to win release from alarms by refusing to see them. He told them to “see”—to look fears straight in the face—and yet not to be alarmed. His way is the way of open-eyed honesty.
(2) Be sure you want to give up the thing you are afraid of. Very often your fears produce bodily ills, which in turn determine your life strategy. Some people use their illnesses to gain attention or to gain power over others. A girl had a large purple lump on her forehead. This lump had come as the result of a great fear. When counseled by a doctor, she surrendered the fear, and the lump disappeared. On seeing her again, the doctor remarked about the lump being gone. “But,” said the girl, grabbing her middle, “I’ve got terrible pains in my stomach.” She was afraid to let go of her fears, for she lived by the attention these illnesses brought her. So she invented the stomachache. She was afraid she would be without attention and without sympathy if she should let go all her maladies. She “enjoyed” bad health!
I know a family that lived by recounting to one another their various ailments, each bidding for sympathy from the others. They nearly all died before their time. The one member who survived found interests outside that circle of self-commiseration.
O God, I want to be completely delivered from fear and from the results of fear. I know how fears mark my soul and body. Help me then to be perfectly whole. My subconscious mind plays tricks on me. Save me to complete honesty. Amen.
Week 11 Monday
The Will to Be Well
Luke 8:50; 18:4, 41-42; John 4:49-53; 5:6
Yesterday we saw that the first step toward deliverance from fears and anxieties was the desire to be free. We may subconsciously desire the attention and sympathy that our maladies bring. If some people couldn’t talk about their ills, just what would they talk about? You may have heard this definition of a bore: “a man who talks about his rheumatism when you want to talk about yours.” Talking about one’s maladies focuses attention on one’s self, even though that self is a shabby, shattered self. Still, the center of interest is the self; and when one is self-centered, one will use any means to gain attention.
So Jesus went straight to the heart of self-centeredness when he confronted the sick with this question: “Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:6 KJV). “Do you really want to be well? If not, I cannot do a thing for you.” The will to be well had to be there. Dr. Everett C. Drash of the University of Virginia told me that he operated on a schoolteacher for tuberculosis, and she died. But there was no apparent reason for her death until her relatives found among her papers a statement to a friend that she was convinced she would die. Her lack of faith had killed in her the will to live.
That brings us to the third step on this ladder: (3) Will to be well. Throw your will on the side of deliverance. Just as there is a will to believe, so there is a will to be well. In contrast to the schoolteacher who died for lack of will to be well, there is the case of a mother who died of tuberculosis and left six small children. Her sister stepped in to take care of the children, and she, too, caught the infection. She, too, was slated to die, for this happened in the days before modern science had begun to cope successfully with this plague. Instead, she willed to live and raise that family. It was her life task, and she would perform it. She had one of the children stand in the corner of her room each day, so that she could see the child and say to herself, “I must live to raise this family.” She did live, and she raised the family, and today is one of the most radiant and useful persons I know. Whether you seek deliverance from illness or from fear, will to be well.
My Lord, I cannot will to be well unless I am reinforced at the center of my being. For I am inwardly flabby. Help me, then, to take the strength of your will into the weakness of my own. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 11 Tuesday
Every Foe You Face Is a Defeated Foe
Isaiah 41:10; 43:5; John 16:33; 1 John 5:4-5
When you will to be well, the whole of the universe of reality is behind your will. And the whole of the universe of reality wills your release and provides for that release. This fact is summed up in the words of Jesus: “In the world you have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Here is an open-eyed frankness that does not deny the fact of a world of tribulation in which we must live—this world of tribulation that lies around us and in us. And yet, after looking at it, with all its brutality and its power to hurt, Jesus says, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” In other words, every foe you face is a defeated foe.
That brings us to the fourth step: (4) Remember that every fear, every trouble, every sickness, every sin you may face has been and is defeated and overcome by the One you follow: Christ. When fears and sicknesses and sins come upon you to overwhelm you and to beat you into submission by their overbearing presence, just calmly look each one in the eye and say: “I am not afraid of you. You have been and are decisively beaten by my Lord. Will you bend your neck? There, I knew it! The footprint of the Son of God is upon your neck.”
This confidence is your starting point; nothing can touch you that hasn’t touched him and that hasn’t been defeated by him; and if you open your life to his power, every ill can be defeated again by you through his grace. You need not be defeated by anything unless you consent to be. If you throw your will on the side of victory, then the whole of the universe of reality throws itself behind your will, releases it, reinforces it, redeems it—and you! You are caught up in a tide of victory, and nothing can stop it except your refusal to cooperate. Paul could say, “I do not frustrate the grace of God” (Gal. 2:21 KJV). I do not block its redemption or frustrate its healing purposes. Therefore an Almighty Will worked within Paul’s will, and he arose a rhythmical, harmonious, adequate person. You can be the same.
O God, my Lord, I have closed my heart to your healing and to your deliverance. I have wrapped myself within myself—afraid of salvation! I have protected my lungs—from air! My heart—from love! My aesthetic nature—from beauty! Myself—from you! Forgive me. Amen.
Week 11 Wednesday
Worry Is Atheism
Matthew 10:28; Luke 9:34; 2 Timothy 1:7; Hebrews 13:6
When I say to you that you can live without fear and worry, I mean that. This is not an academic statement, but a fact. I think I shall pause in my theology and give a testimony.
By all outer signs, the week during which I was writing these pages should have been a week of worry and defeat, for everything had gone wrong! All my intensive efforts for months at Washington D.C. to find a basis for peace between Japan and America had come to naught. Agreement had seemed so near and so possible, and then the crash. A long war stared us in the face. I was cut off from my work in India. My wife and family were in India—cut off for the duration of the war—and worse, the war was slowly moving in upon them. By the time this is printed they may be in the conflict, or they may not. At any rate, that week should have brought me anxiety and fear. But it did not. There hadn’t been a moment’s worry. There had been peace. When a woman said to me one evening, “You have had a quiet day; you’ve had time to worry,” I felt inwardly startled. “Time to worry”—as if a Christian ever has “time to worry”! The Christian has expunged worry from the vocabulary.
That leads us to the fifth step: (5) Remember that worry or fear is a kind of atheism. A person who worries says, “I cannot trust God; I’ll take things in my own hands.” Result? Worry, frustration, incapacity to meet the dreaded thing when it does come. With God, you can meet it, overcome it, assimilate it into the purpose of your life. Alone, you fuss and fume and are frustrated.
Worry says, “God doesn’t care, and so God won’t do anything; I’ll have to worry it through.”
Faith says, “God does care, and God and I will work it out together. I’ll supply the willingness, and God will supply the power. With that combination we can do anything.”
Have you heard the story about Martin Luther? One morning, when he was blue and discouraged, his wife appeared in black. At Luther’s inquiry as to what the mourning meant, she replied, “Haven’t you heard? God is dead.” Luther saw the absurdity; and so should you. God lives; so will you!
O God, as long as you live, I too shall live. Nothing can shake the rock of your existence on which I stand; and as long as that fact continues, I shall not worry or be afraid. That means that forever and ever I need not worry or be afraid. I thank you. Amen.
Week 11 Thursday
Fear Is the Fifth Columnist
1 John 3:20-22; 4:18; 1 Peter 3:12-14
Now we come to the sixth step: (6) Hold in mind that nothing that you fear is as bad as the fear itself. I mean that seriously: Nothing that can happen to you is, or can be, as disastrous and disruptive as the entrance of fear and worry into your life. If you keep the center of life intact, then you can come back from anything. Healed at the heart, you can say, “Let the world come on”; but hurt at the heart by fear and worry, you are knocked down by happenings—real and imaginary. The person who fights life’s battles without fear fights one enemy: the real thing confronting him or her. But the person who fights with fears within fights three enemies: the real thing to fight, the imaginary things built up by fear, plus the fear itself. And the greatest of these is fear. Fear is the fifth columnist within the soul, the Trojan horse that looses from within itself the enemies that capture us before the real fight with the outward enemy begins.
Then take your fear
By the ear,
And say, “See here,
If the thing I fear
Were already here,
It could not cause a tear
So scalding, nor could it sear
My soul as much as you, the fear,
So, now and forever, out of here!*
So, boiled down to its essence, the conclusion is that there is nothing to fear save fear, nothing to worry about except worry.
But to leave the matter there, with that trite saying, is to leave us with fear feeding on fear and worry feeding on worry. That would be just as bad as fearing and worrying about something objective. Even the fear of the fear must go. How? By fastening our attention, not on the thing to be feared or on the fear of this fear, but on Christ, the Savior from fear.
O Christ, my Savior, you know everything that causes me fear. You have gone through it all. And yet no fears or worries rooted themselves in you. I would know your secret; unfold it to me. I obey completely and fully. Amen.
* Source unknown.
Week 11 Friday
Relax in God’s Presence
Psalms 16:9; 55:6; Isaiah 11:10; Ephesians 3:17
We ended yesterday by saying that the attention must be fastened on Christ, the man who met everything we meet and more, and didn’t worry. Fasten your attention on him; for it is a law of the mind that whatever gets your attention gets you. If your worries get your attention, they will get you. If Christ gets your attention, Christ will get you. But how can you fasten your attention on him? You’re pulled off from him to worries. Then take the next step: (7) Relax in his presence. His power cannot get across to you unless you learn to relax. Fear and worry tighten you up. Faith relaxes you. Often fear and worry keep the motor running even after you are parked. You are worn out even when sitting still.
In one of my meetings recently, it was announced that someone had left the motor running in a parked car. A lot of people there in front of me still had their motors running, using up energy and power. They were tense with anxieties and fears. In that condition, nothing can get across; for it is a fact that you cannot engrave anything on a tense, conscious mind. Therefore a tense mind cannot take in energy; it can only expend it. The end of tension is bankruptcy. In quietness and confidence you absorb; you are in a state of receptivity, and hence life energies are taken in and stored up.
A maid said to her mistress: “I notice that when you sit, you sit tight. You are all screwed up and tight on the inside. Now look at me. When I work, I work hard; but when I sit, I sit loose.” There was a real philosophy of life in that statement. When you work, work hard; but when you stop working, then stop working—relax. You cannot repeat to yourself too frequently the always healing statement: “Let go; let God.” Let go your inward fears and worries, and let God absorb them in grace and love. Let God replace the false energy of fear and worry with the true energy of faith working through love.
My Lord God, I’ve burned up my soul and body and mind in the false energy of fear and worry. Such tension has taken me nowhere, except deeper into the mire. Help me this day to link all my energies to the calm of your purposes and to the peace of your power. Then I shall know harmony and accomplishment. Amen.
Week 11 Saturday
One Day at a Time
Matthew 6:25-34
In our meditation yesterday we saw that worry is a useless expenditure of energy. In India, we have a bird called “Pity-to-do-it.” It goes around all day saying, “Pity-to-do-it.” And they say that at night it sleeps with its feet in the air to keep the sky from falling! It is a champion pessimist and worrier. It doesn’t relax night or day, according to the story; hence it is thin and scrawny and fussy. Some of us are like that bird. But we do not have to be. We may contemplate instead the artist’s picture of rest, depicting a bird on a nest overhanging a mighty waterfall. Amid the roar and confusion, that bird is the symbol of quiet, rest, and calm. We must learn that. How?
(8) Meet today, today. Jesus showed penetrating insight when he said: “So never be troubled about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. The day’s own trouble is enough for the day” (Matt. 6:34 Moffatt). He was not saying there were no troubles to be met. There are. Life is bound to bring trouble. It is made that way. But don’t telescope the troubles of tomorrow and of the next day into today. Meet today, today; for if you put the troubles of next week into today by anticipation through worry, then you spoil today. You are meeting two sets of troubles at once: one set that is actually here, and the set that you bring in by worrying about tomorrow’s troubles. You are therefore meeting your troubles twice: once before they come, and once when they are actually here. Such telescoping of trouble is a double expenditure of energy and it is needless. Worry is the advance interest you pay on troubles that never come. Some of them do come, and you can meet and conquer them separately. But tomorrow’s troubles plus today’s break you.
The theory of “divide and conquer” is applicable here. Divide your worries, and meet one day’s worries at a time, and conquer them. But don’t let worries gang up on you and come piling all at once into one day. Divide and conquer. Meet today, today.
O God, I see that I have been needlessly burdening myself. You give me a sufficient load for today, and you help me bear it; but I add to my burden, and thus diminish my strength for legitimate tasks. Forgive me, for I see that this is sin—sin against myself and you. Amen.