Week 13 Sunday
Week 13 Sunday
Fashioned for Faith and Not for Fear
Matthew 9:29; 17:20; Mark 11:22; Acts 3:16
It had been my original intention to close the meditations on the conquest of fear last week, but the more we have faced this matter the more fundamental has it become. As I wrote the above, a letter came from a highly gifted woman with this sentence in it: “Oh, Dr. Jones, everything is wrong, and I am so afraid I am going to crack up completely.” She says that “everything is wrong.” She blames her circumstances; but there is nothing wrong whatever except her fear, which in turn is rooted in her self-centered attitudes. Her universe continually falls to pieces because of her self-centered attitudes giving birth to fears. If she would change the center of her life, all her sums would come out right; but with the center wrong, nothing comes out right.
This week, then, we shall gather up our inward resolves and register them. These will not be screwed-up, clenched-jaw resolves, but a calm, relaxed registration of life committed to certain attitudes.
(1) I see that I am inwardly fashioned for faith and not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear and doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry, my being is gasping for breath—these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence, I breathe freely—these are my native air. A Johns Hopkins doctor says that “we do not know why it is that the worriers die sooner than the nonworriers, but that is a fact.” But I, who am simple of mind, think I know; we are inwardly constructed, in nerve and tissue and brain cell and soul, for faith and not for fear. God made us that way. Therefore, the need of faith is not something imposed on us dogmatically but written in us intrinsically. We cannot live without it.
To live by worry is to live against Reality.
O God, since the need of confidence and faith is written in me, and they are therefore inescapable, I will not try to escape from them. I surrender myself to the healing and the renewing of faith and confidence. Their healing goes now into every fiber of my being. I am grateful. Amen.
Week 13 Monday
Without Faith You Cannot Meet Life’s Emergencies
Matthew 6:30; 9:2; Romans 14:23; Galatians 2:21
To gather up the meditation of yesterday: We are inwardly fashioned for faith—faith is healing; doubt and fear are destroying. Insurance statistics say that people who have annuities live on an average five or six years longer than those who do not have any. The annuity relieves them from anxiety regarding security in old age, and the very fact of having that relief prolongs life.
(2) I see that I cannot meet life’s emergencies unless I have confidence and faith. A doctor told me of this procedure in the Mayo Clinic: “A patient who was being prepared for one of the wonderful new operations for reducing high blood pressure had passed every preliminary examination successfully and thought no more were to follow. She was mistaken. Before the surgeon would operate, the patient had to pass the test that would make sure that no spiritual or mental trouble was bringing on the chronic headaches and hypertension. The doctor, who was firm and would not be sidetracked, questioned the patient closely as to her home life, her married happiness, her religious state. Was she happy? Worried over money? Was she satisfied with her home conditions? Her religion? Until she could pass that test, she was not ready to stand the operation, for the doctors knew she could collapse from within in spite of all scientific efforts, if there were conflict and worry at the citadel of her life.”
A schoolteacher was suffering from heart trouble, her heart beating so loud and rapidly that at the least effort it “seemed to jump out of her body.” The doctors could find no physical reason for her heart condition, but they discovered that she was worried over a lump in her breast; she was sure cancer was developing there. When she was assured that there was no lump and no cancer, she went home happy and relieved. The heart became normal, and she is happy and efficient in her work. The fear and worry had caused functional disturbance. The disturbance was real, but it had been caused by an unreal fear.
O God, I see that I am the enemy of my possibilities if I admit inward fear and anxiety. I throw disturbance into my organs, upset my brain cells, tire out my faithful heart, and paralyze my constructive energies. I am the enemy of myself. Forgive me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 13 Tuesday
Fear and Anxieties Keep Us from Being at Our Best
1 Timothy 6:11-12; Hebrews 4:2; 10:22; 13:6
We saw yesterday that fear and anxiety keep us from being at our best. They paralyze the center of life. A man in Mexico saw a snake and was nipped by a barbed wire at the same moment. He thought he was bitten, foamed at the mouth, and was about to die. The doctor arrived, saw that there was no swelling at the abrasion, assured him that he had not been bitten, and the man got well almost immediately. The fear produced the symptoms. So fear will often produce the very symptoms you fear. Why is it that people with “poker faces” play better game of tennis than those who go up and down emotionally according to the score? The simple reason is that the “poker face” is in outer expression of unperturbed confidence. Victory flows from that.
Ty Cobb, of Detroit, and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson were running neck and neck in baseball batting averages; each wanted the championship. When the two teams met in an important series, Cobb refused to speak to Jackson. As they had been good friends, Jackson was worried, afraid that he had offended Cobb. He worried so much that he went into a batting slump; worry and fear took away his “batting eye.” Cobb won—his morally doubtful strategy had succeeded.
It is a fact that the worrier has a small lung capacity, made that way by the fact of worry. The person of faith takes in deep breaths of God’s air, God’s power, God’s hope. The worrier is afraid to breathe deeply, afraid of the healing of fresh air, of the healing of God’s hope, of God’s power. The worrier therefore smothers the self—sometimes to death. “I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent,” said the man in Matthew 25:25. And that happens everywhere—those who fear bury their talents, and often bury themselves prematurely. Worry makes an eight-cylinder person into a four-cylinder person.
Worry is a species of myopia—nearsightedness.
My God and Lord, I would be at my best—at your best. But your best cannot get across to me if I am fearful, for I block your redemptive power. I now resolve to be a person without blocks anywhere in my life. For how dare I block you?—my Lord and my God. Amen.
Week 13 Wednesday
Resolve to Act on No Fear
John 14:27; 16:22-24
(3) So I resolve not to act on any fear, but to wait till I can act on faith. Never act on a fear, for fears are usually false. “See that you make everything according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain” (Heb. 8:5; Exod. 25:40). Note that the pattern was seen “on the mountain.” Don’t build your life according to any pattern shown to you in the valley of fear. Wait till you get to the mountain of faith and then build your life plans.
A strong healthy wife was afraid to have a baby, and so allowed an abortion. There was no physical reason she shouldn’t have had the baby, but fear paralyzed her creative instinct. And now her arms are forever childless. Fear left that emptiness. Nothing that could have happened in childbirth would have been as hard as the lifelong pain of empty arms, the mother instinct frustrated. She loved herself, and hence had nothing to love except herself. And the self she had to love was a bitter self.
One of the greatest souls of this age says, “Whenever I get down, I shut off my mind from decisions; no decisions until I am on top of things.”
All my decision moments, then, will be faith moments, not fear moments. I will instruct my mind that no decisions are to be made except in faith. And there are to be no exceptions. I therefore use a mind purged of all acting on fear. It is marvelous what the mind will do when it is single-pointed and decisive.
In college, I decided I would act on no fear. It happened one night that I was in a shower of hailstones, raining all around me in the the dark. My first impulse was to get behind a tree; but I remembered my resolve and stood there in the open, letting them fall all around me, with my face turned toward the falling stones. I was surprised at my own boldness, for I’m not naturally courageous. My resolve, made beforehand, never to act on fear had held me in that crisis. Make a life choice of faith as a permanent life attitude.
O you living Christ, you never acted on any fear, so your course was always forward. I, too, would do the same, for with you, life has no retreats and no regrets. Give me the simple impulse of faith in every circumstance and help me act on nothing else. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 13 Thursday
Creating Faith in Other People
Hebrews 6:12; 12:2; 13:7; Jude 20
(4) I resolve to create faith in other people. I shall think faith, talk faith, live faith, impart faith. That means that I will turn over all my nonfaith attitudes to God and help others to do the same. A pastor told me he was unable to eat, was getting thinner every day, had pains in his stomach. He went on his knees and said, “O God. You delivered one man, Stanley Jones, from physical and nervous exhaustion; you can deliver another; you can deliver me.” He turned the whole thing over to God, went to bed, relaxed, and received—just received—breathed in the healing of God as the lungs breathe in the purifying air. Today he is the picture of health and is contagious; he radiates health.
A father was about to be operated on, and the mother and son could not sleep due to worry and anxiety. They sent word to a Christian layman: “Please come down and stay with us at night; we are afraid. Can’t you come and talk to us? We have nothing to hold on to in the dark.” The layman came, and mother and son both surrendered themselves to God and were changed. The son spoke to the father, who for a long time lay there uncomprehending; but he finally recognized the son’s voice, responded to his testimony, opened his heart to the love of God and was himself converted and died happy. The spark of faith in that son, a convert of two days, kindled something in the father’s heart and changed him.
You, too, belong to the great contagion, the contagion of faith. A friend working in a college had a period of worry that brought on high blood pressure. She dropped a letter in the box, telling me she had turned the whole problem over to God. That was an act of faith. But the moment her letter dropped, so did her blood pressure! She is now poised and calm and effective. Up to the dropping of that letter in the box, she had been an introvert; she is now an extrovert, turning out upon others in contagious faith.
O God, break down within me the last barrier of fear that would check the flow of faith. I would have the doors of my spirit turn out and not in, for I am made for creative activity by you, the Creator. Help me create hope and faith in others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 13 Friday
Cultivating Faith
Ephesians 5:20; 1 Thessalonians 5:8; Hebrews 11:6; James 1:3
(5) In order to have that faith and confidence that I am to impart to others, I must deliberately cultivate faith. But this does not mean that I will try to cultivate it. I will let go, relax, become a channel of a power not my own, and then God will do the rest. Is this the pious statement of a minister? Then listen to Dr. Fritz Kunkel, an outstanding psychiatrist:
As long as I am confident, have faith, good humor, as long as I allow my body—my organs, my brain—to function as they want to function, I trust my nature, and all goes well. But when I distrust, become afraid, begin to control my nature, don’t trust my nature, try to replace the unconscious function of my organs by will power, then I find that will power is powerless. I try to replace my natural functions by conscious controls. That is, I try to replace God by myself. I cannot replace nature. I cannot make my muscles, nerves, knees function. When I try this replacement I find the new government is worse than the previous one. Therefore my fear increases; therefore conscious strain increases; therefore the danger increases; therefore I strain the harder. The way out would be trust, faith, calmness, relaxation.*
A businessman said to me: “I am physically and mentally well, but emotionally I am sick. I have hold of a 110-volt wire, and cannot let go.” He had begun by trying to add a cubit to his stature by being anxious, and having taken hold, he did not know how to let go. To let go means that you have more faith in God and God’s processes than you have in yourself and your processes. The essence of cultivation is relaxation. You will never be a good musician if you try too hard; you must let go and let the music get into your fingertips so that you do not play the music, the music plays you.
So with God—don’t use God; let God use you. Then you will be able to say with Walter Rauschenbusch: “My fever is gone. In the great quiet of God/My troubles are but pebbles on the road.”**
O God, I have not been fighting the good fight of faith; I have been fighting the fight of fear. I have been strained. Now help me to go limp in your presence, that you may impress on me your ways, your poise, your power. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* Notes from a lecture.
** “The Little Gate to God,” 1918. http://www.rauschenbusch.org/documents/littlegate.html, accessed May 6, 2014.
Week 13 Saturday
Facing Life Cheerfully and with Anticipation
Proverbs 15:13-15; 17:22; Romans 12:8
(6) I shall face life cheerfully and with anticipation. I shall learn to laugh, even at myself. The Scripture says, “A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones” (Prov. 17:22). It also says, “Your strength is quiet faith” (Isa. 30:15 Moffatt). And again, “Let all your anxieties fall upon him, for his great interest is in you” (1 Peter 5:7 Moffatt).
I know that columnist Elsie Robinson is right when she says: “Unpleasantness can be a disease. It provides an escape for our cowardice, an excuse for our laziness, an alibi for cussedness, and a spotlight for our conceit.”* I shall therefore do as social reformer Muriel Lester suggests: “Hunt for self-pity as you would hunt for lice”**—and loathe it with the same loathing. I shall keep my capacity to laugh, even at myself. When I get tense and take myself too seriously, I shall deliberately walk to the looking-glass and burst out laughing. Even if I do not feel like laughing when I go, I feel more like it when I see the man in the glass laughing. “You will never break down,” said a doctor to a friend of mine, “for you have a hair-trigger laugh.”
Dr. Emily T. Wilson describes the recuperative power of laughter and cheer:
Those who are cheerful and confident, who are free from anxieties and fear, make far more satisfactory progress than those who keep themselves in a turmoil of distress and worry. . . . Once we remove the conflicting emotions and maintain our patients in a peaceful, hopeful, fearless attitude we have won more than half the battle. . . . We do not know why worry causes an increase of pain in angina, a recurrence of ulcers in a harassed businessman, an elevation of blood pressure in a diabetic. . . . A sincere Christian has no time for “nerves.”***
The religious person faces life confident and unafraid, and is saved from countless ills and from the creation of a purposeless and disintegrating personality. “No time for nerves”—just too busy with faith and confidence to let them get a toehold, let alone a foothold.
You, confident God, going steadily on amid the deflections and betrayals of people, help me to have your patience and your confidence. For from now on I’m eternally linked with you. When you fall, I shall fall—until then, I stand. Glory be! Amen.
*Elsie Robinson wrote a syndicated column, “Listen World,” which ran in newspapers across the U.S. for decades. Language similar to this quotation can be found in some of her columns.
** Published source unknown.
*** Wilson, “The Healing Value of Religion,” Ministry: International Journal for Pastors (March 1940). https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1940/03/the-healing-value-of-religion, accessed May 5. 2014.