Week 47 Sunday
Week 47 Sunday
The Dying Kicks of Evil Habits
Romans 8:12-15; Philippians 3:12-14; Colossians 3:5-10
Perhaps you are questioning the absoluteness of the deliverance depicted in the study of last week. Branded is a decisive word. You will be tempted to doubt if the deliverance is decisive and all at once. Don’t be discouraged if the deliverance isn’t all at once. It usually is, but it is sometimes gradual.
After Pentecost, which had burned out of Peter many weaknesses, there still lingered race prejudice. A special aftertouch was needed to root that out. “The Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction” (Acts 11:12). There is a lot of mopping up to be done after the citadel has been taken by Christ—little pockets of recalcitrant, fighting rebels.
When I was in college I contracted poison ivy infection between my fingers and on my eyelids. It was so bad that even proud flesh formed between my fingers. And then I was healed. After I went to India, where there is no poison ivy, every spring at the time when I had contracted the infection, the infected places would begin to itch. The signs grew fainter and fainter each year and finally, after about twenty years, they faded out. Evil in your life will act in the same way. The roots are pulled out, and yet the dying kicks of dying habits will remind you that the evil was once there. Don’t be discouraged; the kicks are dying kicks.
A lady who has helped many thousands into mental and spiritual health tells people that gradual deliverance is something like guests who have departed; good-byes are said and parting is all over, but soon the guests, having circled around the block, come back again to wave a final good-bye. So it will be with evil habits; the last good-byes are said, and yet there is often a last waving of farewell. But this final one is a farewell.
The only worthwhile thing that I have ever seen in newspapers was this from Little Orphan Annie: “Annie out of danger at last . . . and somewhere along the dark road, in bringing Annie through, Katie shook off the clutching fear that had haunted her mind long.”*
O God, perhaps that is the secret. In serving others, in losing myself in the difficulties of others, I too shall find my fears dropping away along the road. Their specters may haunt me even after they are buried. But they are gone—gone forever. I belong to the victorious present and the future, not to a defeated yesterday. I thank you. I thank you. Amen.
* Published source unknown.
Week 47 Monday
A Ladder to a Contagious Life
Psalm 51:12-13; Daniel 12:3; John 15:5, 16; Acts 8:26-39
To have the qualities of Jesus branded into our beings will not be enough unless we have the quality of contagion. For contagion makes these qualities outgoing and places them at the disposal of others. “No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic.”* No life is Christian that is not Christianizing. If there is no outflow, the inflow automatically stops.
We must deliberately set ourselves to be spiritually creative. Perhaps these seven steps will help you toward a contagious life.
(1) I am made in the inner structure of my being to be creative. If I am not spiritually creative, I shall fail to fulfill the destiny of my being. I shall live against myself.
(2) To win others to a new life is the highest form of creative activity. I have a chance to be creative where it counts most. Physical creativity is denied many; spiritual creativity is denied none, except those who deny it to themselves.
(3) Nothing is really mine until I share it with others. All expression deepens impression. Again, it is a law of the mind that that which is not expressed dies. I want this life to be mine, for it is life’s dearest treasure.
(4) I shall have the will to evangelize. Hitherto the desire to evangelize has been in my mind and emotion; now it gets into my will. I have decided to share with others what has been shared with me.
(5) If I am qfraid of being snubbed, I shall remind myself that have a secret ally in every heart. There is something within the hearts of others that will take sides with me, for the heart is made for this.
(6) If I fail, I shall fail in doing what I should do. But perhaps the greatest failure is the failure to do anything.
(7) I may be unworthy, but God can use my very sins. It may be that my past sins, and my victory over them, will inspire others so they also can be victorious. Far from thinking of myself as being on a pedestal, I shall consider myself a humble pedestrian asking others to try the way I am trying.
O God, I bring to you this noncreative life of mine for you to touch into creative life. If my efforts falter, perhaps that will give you the greater chance to work; and when I speak haltingly, perhaps you can speak most clearly. But whatever happens I am committed—I am committed to getting others committed to you. Amen.
* Sir John Robert Seeley, Ecce Homo (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1868), 14.
Week 47 Tuesday
The Four Steps in Helping Others to Christ
Mark 13:11; John 1:43-49; 4:6-42
Perhaps you are hesitant in attempting to win others because you are not sure how to proceed. I dislike exceedingly the idea back of “selling religion”; it smacks of commercialism, and conceives of religion as a commodity. One might as well talk of “selling friendships,” or “selling art appreciations.” Nevertheless, there are some things we can learn from those who sell commodities. I have watched the vendors who go through the trains to sell various articles. Some get a lot of customers, and others get no response. Those who make a lot of sales usually do so because of two things: First, they act as though the merchandise they have is of real importance. But they must not overdo it, or there will be an unfavorable reaction. It must be restrained importance. Second, they don’t walk through the train with their heads in the air; they look at each passenger as if to give each one a personal invitation to buy. Important and personal—the two watchwords.
The sales manager of the National Cash Register Company gives four steps in presenting a commodity. (1) What is it? (2) What will it do (for you)? (3) Who says so? (4) How can you get it?
In presenting the Christian way to people, you will have to answer those four questions. First: What is it? Perhaps you will have to tell the person what it is not, in order to clear away misconceptions. It is not a mere set of beliefs to be believed, an organization to be joined, a rite or ceremony to be undergone. It may and does involve these, but it is much more than these. It is a personal relationship with God, which involves a change, gradual or sudden, from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God through the grace and power of Christ. The basis of life is shifted from self to God; you live in a state, not of self-reference, but of God-reference. God’s will becomes supreme in your life. That will is interpreted to us in Christ. To be a Christian is to be a Christ-ian—to be committed, with all you have, to Christ in surrender and obedience.
O Christ, help me to help others to see you. They see so many things built up around you that they do not see you. Help me to help someone to get into personal relationship with you—to bend the knee to you and to you alone. He or she will lose self and then find self in you. For you and you alone are our very life. Amen.
Week 47 Wednesday
The Universal Witness to This Way
Romans 8:14-16; 14:17; Galatians 5:22-23; Hebrews 12:1-2
We come to the second step in unfolding the Christian way to others.
Second: What will it do (for you)? Answer: It will give you personal relations with a person; you will no longer be orphaned, estranged, out of gear with reality. You will find forgiveness and cleansing from all fears, resentments, guilts, inhibitions, and complexes. You will have the sense of inner unity—no longer at war with yourself. You will find the tyranny of self-centeredness broken (you will begin to think of others); you will begin to be a person who cares. You will find yourself a part of a kingdom which is Reality itself; you will have a Cause (the kingdom), and that Cause will be embodied in a Person (Christ), the Order and the Person will coincide, and your religion will be at once personal and social. You will begin to say, “This is It!” Your life will be one long verification of your central hypothesis. It will be self-authenticating and self-verifying. Moreover, it will give you power, not merely to bear trouble, suffering, and frustration, but to use them—to take them all up into the purpose of your life and transmute them into character and usefulness.
Third: Who says so? If only a person here and there endorsed the Christian way, its worth would be doubted. But men, women, and children in all ages, in all climes, and in all circumstances rise up and say, “I have tested and tried it. Christ is a Savior, not merely because I hope he will save me from hell and to heaven, but because he saves me here and now from gloom, despair, meaninglessness, purposelessness, sin, the tyranny of myself and my passions and has made me free—free.” This universal witness to a universal fact is one of the most solemn and reassuring things in life. This Way is verified on a world scale; it works to the degree that people work it. On the contrary, life lived against this Way breaks down, becomes snarled up, is self-frustrated, won’t work. If all this be so, then you may add, very quietly, “I too find it works.”
O Christ, help me be your witness. I hear over the radio the voice of the evangelism of sensate things as it tremulously tells of what this, that, and the other gadget will do. I know this is a false emphasis on a false god. Help me then to witness all the more clearly for you, O Eternal Reality, and to do so with no stammering of the tongue. And help me witness with a quenchless joy. Amen.
Week 47 Thursday
The Five Steps in Following Christ
Joshua 24:15; Psalm 55:17; Matthew 6:22; John 6:67-69
We come now to the last step of the four steps in helping others to Christ. Fourth: How can you get it? Jesus gives the answer in this statement: “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23 CEB). Here there are five steps:
(1) Make up your mind: “All who want to come after me.” Here is the great decision that decides all decisions. It is what they call in psychology “a major choice”—a choice that you do not have to make over again each day; a choice into which the lesser choices of life fit, and not a choice that fits into them; it is the choice that organizes everything around itself.
(2) Give up yourself: “say no to themselves.” The word literally is “fling away,” or “utterly reject.” “Say no” (“deny” in the RSV) does not mean doing without things here and there; it means a denial of self as central, as a primary factor. Self is subordinate to and obedient to another Will—the Will of Christ. Self abdicates and Christ mounts the throne. You decide that he shall decide.
(3) Take up your cross: “Take up their cross!” This doesn’t mean merely to hear patiently the troubles that come upon you; it is deeper. It means that you will deliberately take on yourself trouble, pain, sorrow, sin and make them your own, in order to free others from them. You will offer yourself, as did one great soul, who walked the floor the night Vanzetti was executed, put his hands to his head, and said, “O God, if there is a poor devil who does not have a voice to speak in behalf of his rights, then you can have my voice; or if there is one who cannot write his petitions, then, O God, you can have my pen to write for him.”
(4) Keep up your cultivation: “daily.” There is a once-for-allness in this, and yet there is daily, disciplined cultivation.
(5) Gather up your loyalties, gather them up into a single-minded devotion: “follow me.” You are not following this, that, or the other person—you are following Christ. People may let you down; Christ won’t. Your faith is Christ-centric.
O Christ, I know when I follow you I am following an unfolding Mind and an expanding Will. You are not static. The more I see in you, the more I see there is to be seen. I am on the great adventure of eternal discovery and eternal growth. My code is now a Character, my law a Life. I thank you. Amen.
* Bartolomeo Vanzetti, excecuted in 1927, along with Nicola Sacco, after being convicted in a highly contested murder trial.
Week 47 Friday
Steps in Reading the Word
1 Samuel 3:9; Lamentations 3:25-28; Psalm 119:105; 2 Timothy 2:15; 3:16
One of the steps we mentioned yesterday is connected with daily cultivation. When helping another, get that person to enroll in the School of the Word. On board ship, I saw two men begin the day in different ways: One, a businessman, came down early, eagerly picked up the newssheet, and turned at once to the stock market report. His face lighted up or fell with the market. His happiness was dependent on happenings, so it went up and down. Another man leaned over the rail each morning reading the Word, and then he looked out over the open sea in meditation. His face wore calm and poise and strength. His happiness was dependent on eternal relationships, not subject to temporal happenings.
In reading the Word each morning, take these steps:
(1) Relax. You are receptive only when you are relaxed. Nothing can be inscribed on a tense conscious mind. Let every muscle, every brain cell go limp. This attitude says, “Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening” (1 Sam. 3:9 CEB). If you go stamping through a woods in a hurry, you will see little. But sit still and the squirrels will come down the trees, and the birds will draw near, and nature will be alive in every twig and tree and flower. You are relaxed and receptive, and nature becomes vocal. The same with the Word.
(2) Recall. Ask these questions as you read: (a) Who is writing? (b) To whom? (c) For what purpose? (d) What is the person saying? (e) How does it apply to me? (f) How shall I put it into practice? (g) When do I begin?
(3) Rehearse. If you find something that speaks to your condition, that becomes authoritative, then roll it over and over in the mind. Rolling it over in the mind, it will become an atmosphere, then an attitude, then an act. When Jesus was pressed by temptation in the wilderness, he answered in the words of Scripture. These words had become a part of him, and in the crisis they naturally passed from the stage of assimilation and atmosphere to that of attitude and act.
O Christ, let me have the Word hidden in my heart so deeply that it becomes the hidden springs of action, determining my conduct and character. The Eternal Word spoke through your words—let It speak through mine. Then I shall live and move and have my being in the Eternal. Amen.
Week 47 Saturday
Steps in Reading the Word (continued)
Psalms 1:2; 119:9, 11, 162; Malachi 3:16
We continue our steps in reading the Word:
(4) Retain. Do not merely rehearse a passage that gets you; deliberately plan to retain it. Commit it to memory. A high-school boy, in reading the Scripture before an assembly, read Mark 13:13 this way: “Ye shall hate all men for my name’s sake.” Those who heard him did not seem surprised and shocked, for they didn’t know the correct reading. That generation had not been trained in memorizing Scripture and was mentally and morally the poorer as a result.
(5) Rejoice. We must rejoice, for reading the Word is a tryst with God. As I sat reading the Word in a Pullman, a bright-faced oldish lady said as she passed by: “You must love the Author, for you are reading his Word. I too love the Author.” At once we were friends around the Friend. In reading the Word, remember that what you have read is all leading to his feet. The Bible is not flat from Genesis to Revelation. It is not a line like this: ——, but like this: /, leading to Christ as the final goal and the final authority. These words lead you to him who is the Word, the Word made flesh. He made his own word final, even in Scripture: “You have heard that it was said . . . of old. . . . But I say unto you” (see Matt. 5:21-27). Revelation is progressive, culminating in Christ. He is the test and touchstone of all. He is the Word. Rejoice in him. Our law is a Life, our code a Character.
(6) Realign. As you read this Word keep realigning your life with this Life. In Korea, a girl did not come back for more instruction in Scripture. When asked why, her reply was: “I haven’t learned yet to practice fully what I’ve been taught.” She felt she had to keep practice abreast of teaching. Quite right. A country preacher prayed: “Prop us up, Lord, on our leaning side.” Realign your life every day with the Word.
(7) Release. If you find something that gets hold of you in the Word, pass it on to somebody that very day. The repetition will help the retention, and it will help to lighten the path of the other.
You Eternal Word, may my words be but echoes of you. For my words are dead unless there is a soul in them, and you are the Soul. Help me to be steeped in your Mind, fired by your Passion, and decisive with your Purposes. Help me be alive, atingle with you. Amen.