Part 1

Part 1

Discipleship

J. Heinrich Arnold

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Discipleship is not a question of our own doing; it is a matter of making room for God so that he can live in us.

J.H. Arnold

Contents

Foreword ............................................................vii Introduction........................................................x

The Disciple

The Inner Life ...................................................1 Repentance ........................................................11 Conversion ........................................................17 Faith ..................................................................21 Dogmatism........................................................29 Commitment.....................................................34 The Lower Nature .............................................38 Purity ................................................................64 Trust..................................................................68 Reverence...........................................................73 Surrender...........................................................75 Sincerity ............................................................82

The Church

The Church.......................................................89 Community.......................................................96 Leadership .........................................................106 Gifts ..................................................................114 Forgiveness ........................................................121 Unity .................................................................128 Church Discipline..............................................134 Baptism..............................................................141 The Lord's Supper..............................................147 Love and Marriage.............................................151 Family Life.........................................................169

Illness and Death ...............................................188 Evil and Darkness..............................................197 The Fight...........................................................205 World Suffering.................................................217 Mission..............................................................226

The Kingdom of God

Jesus...................................................................237 The Cross ..........................................................254 Salvation ............................................................261 The Kingdom of God........................................269

More Free e-books................................................280

Foreword

Discipleship is a tough book. As I began reading it, Heinrich Arnold's words touched me as a doubleedged sword, calling me to choose between truth and lies, salvation and sin, selflessness and selfishness, light and darkness, God and demon. At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to be confronted in such a direct way, and I discovered some resistance in myself. I want the good news of the Gospel to be gentle, consoling, comfort­ ing, and to offer inner peace and harmony.

But Arnold reminds me that the peace of the Gospel is not the same as the peace of the world, that the con­ solation of the Gospel is not the same as the consola­ tion of the world, and that the gentleness of the Gospel has little to do with the "free for all" attitude of the world. The Gospel asks for a choice, a radical choice, a choice that is not always praised, supported, and cel­ ebrated.

Still, Arnold's writing is not harsh, unbending, fa­ natical, or self-righteous. To the contrary, it is full of love. Tough love, but real love. It is this love that flows from the broken heart of Jesus. What makes Arnold's words so healing is that they are not based on an idea, an ideology, or a theory, but on an intimate knowledge

of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Christ, is in the center of all the suggestions, advice, and care expressed in these reflections. This is truly a Christ-centered book.

Heinrich Arnold does not speak in his own name. He speaks in the name of Jesus. He has heard clearly the words of Paul to Timothy: "Before God, and be­ fore Christ Jesus, who is to be the judge of the living and the dead, I charge you, in the name of his ap­ pearing and his kingdom: proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it. Refute falsehood, correct error, give encouragement –but do all with patience and with care to instruct" (2 Tim. 4:1–2).

It is Arnold's deep rootedness in Jesus Christ that makes him a very wise, a very safe, and a very challeng­ ing guide in our spiritual journey. But there is more: his rootedness is not simply a rootedness in the Christ who lived long ago; it is a rootedness in the Christ who is present today in the life of the community of faith.

Arnold is not a pious, sentimental guide. Every word he speaks comes from his experience in com­ munity, where discipleship is lived. It is in community that we are tested and purified. It is in community that we learn what forgiveness and healing are all about. It is in community that we learn who our neighbor is. Community is the true school of love. Arnold lived community all of his life. He knew its demands and its rewards. Most of all, he knew that it is in community that we encounter the Christ of the Gospel.

I am very grateful for this book. It is a prophetic book in a time in which few people dare to speak un­ popular but truly healing words.

I pray that those who read this book won't be afraid to be confronted, and I trust that the word of God that comes to them through it will bring true comfort, true consolation, true hope, and true courage.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

Introduction

Some books are easiest to describe by saying what they are not. This is not a collection of devotions or medi­ tations, not a "feel-good" journal about walking with God, and not a guide for self-improvement or personal spiritual growth. It is, very simply, a book about disci­ pleship–about following Christ humbly, obediently, and with an open heart. And it is written by a man whose message cannot be understood in any other way.

Johann Heinrich Arnold (1913–1982) grew up surrounded by people for whom such discipleship took shape in a dramatic way. When he was six, his parents, Eberhard and Emmy, left their upper-class home in Berlin and moved to Sannerz, a village in central Ger­ many. There, with a small circle of friends, they set out to live in full community of goods on the basis of Acts 2 and 4 and the Sermon on the Mount. It was a time of tremendous upheaval. The same post-war restlessness that drove his father, a well-known editor, theologian, and public speaker, to this leap of faith drove thousands of others to rise up against the rigid social and religious conventions of the period and seek new ways of life. These were Heinrich's formative years, and the steady stream of young anarchists and

tramps, teachers, artisans, and free-thinkers who came through the little community influenced him pro­ foundly. All of them had abandoned the hypocrisy of a Christendom that had grown meaningless, and many felt drawn to the life of dedication and joy they found at Sannerz.

Heinrich himself felt the call to follow Christ at the age of eleven. Later, as a young man, he committed himself to life-long membership in the church com­ munity, known by then as the Bruderhof, or "place of brothers." In 1938 he was chosen as a servant of the Word, or pastor, and from 1962 until his death he served as elder for the growing Bruderhof movement.

The flock in Arnold's care was not what one could call a typical church, and he was anything but a pastor in the conventional sense of the word. He was not a charismatic personality, and he had no formal theo­ logical training. He was a true Seelsorger or "spiritual guide" who cared deeply for the inner and outer well­ being of the communities entrusted to him. And he served his brothers and sisters in the first place as an equal who shared their daily lives in work and leisure, at communal meals, business meetings, and worship services.

The excerpts in this book were compiled and edited over several years by members of the Bruderhof who knew Arnold personally. It was no easy task to sift through the material, for there was so much to choose from, and it ranged from published articles to personal correspondence, from transcripts of worship meetings

to circulars written on behalf of the entire Bruderhof movement. The purpose of this selection is simply to bring to the reader the full impact of his witness.

Arnold's style is straightforward and spontaneous. He rarely spoke with notes, and when he wrote, he quickly and sometimes almost aggressively met the heart of the issue. There were those who felt he was too blunt. Yet it was precisely his simplicity that made his witness accessible to so many. His faith was not a mat­ ter of reasoned, theological terms, but something that had to be expressed in deeds: "We are tired of words; they are cheap and can be heard almost anywhere, for who will say that he is against brotherhood and love?"

Arnold was called on to address every aspect of spiri­ tual life, personal and communal. But there is a visible thread that runs through all he wrote: Christ and his cross as the center of the universe. Again and again, Arnold insists that without meeting Christ personal­ ly–without being confronted by His message of repentance and love –there is no possibility of a living Christian faith. It mattered little, for instance, whether a problem he had to face was of a practical or an inner nature, or whether the demands of the day arose inconveniently or unannounced. Every issue was faced on the solid ground of Christ's commands. This was true not only for the internal questions of com­ munal life but also for all matters that needed attention beyond it, such as current political events or social issues and trends.

Arnold's Christ-centeredness gave him an unusual courage to confront sin. He could not tolerate indif­ ference to the demands of the Gospel. But just as he fought evil in others, he fought it in himself, and the fight was never against a person, but against sin. At times, this earned him the criticism of being too "emo­ tional," but how can one who loves Christ be coolly detached when the honor of the church is at stake? "I protest against the idea that it is wrong to react with strong emotion or excitement when God is attacked, when brothers and sisters are mistreated, or when the church is harmed. I will protest my whole life long against cool soberness in the face of cruelty or anything else that destroys God's work."

It was this, too, that enabled him to call for repen­ tance so sharply at times: "Are we ready to let Christ's Word cut deeply into us, or will we repeatedly protect and harden ourselves against it? We do not realize how often we stand in God's way. But we can ask him to cut us with his Word, even if it hurts."

With the same vigor and insistence that Arnold called for repentance, he strove for compassion and forgiveness. If anyone took seriously Jesus' injunction to forgive so that we may be forgiven, and to forgive seventy times seven, it was Arnold. People who had hurt him or broken his trust were given his undimin­ ished trust again and again. Why? Because he believed deeply in the power of full forgiveness; because he trusted God to the depths of his being, and because this trust enabled him to overcome all fear of man.

Ironically, just as he experienced mockery and rejec­ tion because he insisted on the need for deep repen­ tance, he was also despised because of his humility. For even though he refused to shut an eye to all sin in the church, he refused to set himself above a person who had sinned or to condone any harshness and legalism toward that person. Having suffered in his own life, he identified readily with the suffering of others.

As elder of the Bruderhof communities, Arnold spent many hours reading, re-reading, and prayerfully considering the contents of a daily flood of letters, and his answers illustrate the humility with which he responded. When he was asked a question, he coun­ selled, comforted, admonished, and even sharply censured, but he never criticized or belittled anyone who turned to him in trust. And though hundreds of people turned to him year after year, he always turned them onward –beyond their preoccupation with their sins or their personal holiness–to Christ.

Arnold knew well that he did not have all the an­ swers. Often he said that he needed to think about a matter in question or wished to consider it in prayer, or simply felt he did not know what to do about it. Asked to explain a difficult verse, an apparent contra­ diction, or the meaning of a mysterious passage in the Bible, he might say, "I have thought about these words a great deal, but I do not fully understand them my­ self. Let us leave it in trust to God. Some day it will be revealed to us" –and he would not attempt an interpre­ tation. Though widely-read and entirely at home

in the Old and New Testament, he was a man whose education was the education of the heart, whose knowledge was the knowledge of the human soul, and whose understanding of God's ways was born of his love for God, for Jesus, and for the church.

Most important, Arnold was able to listen: he lis­ tened to his brothers and sisters, he listened to friends, strangers, to critics, and most of all he listened to God: "I want to listen with my inner heart to the voice of God speaking through the brotherhood. I want to confess Jesus in our time. I want to be poor with you, spiritually poor. I want to be obedient and go where the church sends me, and to do God's will. I long for a united brotherhood, a brotherhood that gathers the scattered."

There are many aspects of Arnold's writings that one might consider at greater length –the overrid­ ing influence of his own father, Eberhard Arnold; of the German pastors Johann Christoph and Chris­ toph Friedrich Blumhardt and their vision of the kingdom as a present reality; or of Meister Eckhart, whose mysticism is reflected in Arnold's own inclina­ tion toward the mystical. There are also Dietrich von Hildebrand and Friedrich von Gagern, whose books Arnold read and referred to often. But none of these are important in themselves. Rather, they give his mes­ sage as a whole a depth and a breadth of vision that cannot be ignored. This, perhaps, is the most compel­ ling part of Arnold's witness, for it lifts us up again and again from the pettiness of daily life and opens our

eyes to perceive the greater realities we so often ignore. To use his own words:

What a great gift it would be if we could see a little of the great vision of Jesus – if we could see beyond our small lives! Certainly our view is very limited. But we can at least ask him to call us out of our small worlds and our self-centeredness, and we can at least ask to feel the challenge of the great harvest that must be gathered –the harvest of all nations and all people, including the gen­ erations of the future.

Hela Ehrlich Christopher Zimmerman

July 1994

The Disciple

The Disciple

The Inner Life ...................................................1 Repentance ........................................................11 Conversion ........................................................17 Faith ..................................................................21 Dogmatism........................................................29 Commitment.....................................................34 Temptation........................................................38 The Lower Nature .............................................38 Purity ................................................................64 Trust..................................................................68 Reverence...........................................................73 Surrender...........................................................75 Sincerity ............................................................82

The Inner Life

When one considers the millions who call themselves Christians, the main impression one gets is that in our time the Christian religion consists almost exclusively in going to church on Sunday mornings. I know there are exceptions, but we have to be realistic: the church has very little to say to young people –they are bored by church services and preaching, and so they turn to other things. Yet people are vaguely aware that there is something wrong with their inner life. And even if they don't go to their pastor or priest about it, they do seek help, often by going to a psychiatrist. It is true that once the inner person really changes, everything else will change. But that will come about through God, not through people.

Christ taught that there should be a complete change in every person, and that this change should begin in our inner being. Peter and the apostles taught the same at Pentecost. When the people asked Peter, "What should we do?" he said, "Believe, repent, and be bap­ tized in the name of Jesus." And when they responded, the inner change that took place carried over into the

Acts 2:37-38

practical and economic areas of their lives. They laid everything at the feet of the apostles and no longer owned anything. Everyone gave up his property vol­ untarily, yet since each one shared everything with the others, no one suffered need.

For our time, too, we believe in a new society like this, brought about by a change that starts in our inner being. When God enters our inner life, the change he brings will also affect our outer life. If our Christianity is a religion for Sunday morning only, it will remain shallow and empty.

What does it mean to be created in the image of God? When God breathed life into the first man, he gave every human being the possibility of experiencing the richness of heart that is in Him: love, joy, humor, wrath, suffering, purity, and unity. Because all these things are familiar to us, we can see that something of God is in us –though often in a very distorted way.

The image of God is preserved most purely in chil­ dren. As adults we often live very petty lives as very petty souls; our thinking centers around ourselves only and is unrelated to God. But we are created for more than this. I don't think any one of us has yet experi­ enced to the full the richness of spirit, soul, and heart created by God for us to enjoy. Yet as his children, we are able to experience these things as no other creatures can. And he loves us so much that he sent his only Son to save us. In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians

1 Cor 6:3 he says that the church "is to judge the angels." This should give us an inkling of the deep meaning of our calling and of what it means that we are made in the image of God.

God created heaven, earth, and all the constellations of the universe. He also created something else, some­ thing very mysterious: the human spirit. God created this spirit and placed it in us because he wants to live in us. The Bible says that he does not live in temples built with hands – we ourselves should be temples for him.

Acts 17:24

1 Cor 6:19

My father used to say to us that stupidity is the greatest sin. He did not mean simplicity of mind, but spiritual dullness: having a dead conscience and not listening in one's heart to God.

Very few people today have any idea of the riches of the human heart. Our hearts are created to experience great things; most of us have no idea of what could happen in our lives if we would overcome our stupid­ ity and dullness. Paul says:

Eph 3:16-19 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that be­ ing rooted and established in love you may have

power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge –that you may be filled to the mea­ sure of all the fullness of God.

If we were to grasp this one passage, we would un­ derstand the whole Gospel. We are not filled with the fullness of God and it would be arrogant to think we were. But Paul's prayer should awaken and inspire us!

Isa. 55:3 God said to Israel: "Pay heed to me and listen, and your souls will live!" It is tremendously important to be able to turn to God with one's whole being and to believe that he will speak. Everything depends on our asking him to speak to us. If we hear nothing from God for a long time, it may be because there is some­ thing between us and heaven –perhaps we lack love to our brother, or we are at odds with our spouse. If this is the case, our waiting is in vain.

Of course, we cannot expect answers from God af­ ter only five minutes of silence. Think how long Jesus himself sometimes had to wait! But the more our lives belong to Christ, and the deeper our relationship with him, the more quickly he will answer us, and the more quickly he can use us for his tasks, because he knows that here is someone who is completely ready for him.

From a letter: Meister Eckhardt* emphasized the im­ portance of the listening heart, by which he meant a heart that listens to God alone. He said that God desires nothing more than a heart that detaches itself in silence from everything and turns and listens to him. This means detachment from mammon, impu­ rity, and schadenfreude or malice; from lying, mistrust, and hatred; from worldly spirits and from all other spirits foreign to him.

When people are healthy and happy, or when their economic foundation is stable, they all too often be­ come lukewarm. They may give over to God the things they feel are not healthy in them –things that bring them distress or struggle. Yet even when these things drive them to prayer, they reserve their innermost person for themselves.

The fact that we seek God at all in times of misfor­ tune shows us that our deepest being actually hungers and thirsts for him. We should bring our fears to God; we should bring him our sickness and anguish. But this is not enough. We must give him our innermost being, our heart and soul. When we humble ourselves before him in this way and give ourselves completely over to him –when we no longer resist giving him our whole person and whole personality–then he can help

* German Mystic, 1260-1328.

us, first by bringing us to bankruptcy and then by fill­ ing us with true life.

From a letter: The main thing for you should be to recognize the greatness of God and to live for him. Try to read the Bible – at least two or three chapters every day. This will open your eyes to the greatness of Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts. Then you will see how very small the search for personal happiness is.

From a letter: When the devil incites you to hate oth­ ers, I advise you to find inner quiet. You know that in your deepest heart you do not want this hatred.

I can very well understand how unhappy you feel. Try, however, to become absolutely quiet inwardly, and believe that God loves you and wants to help you, even if this belief is attacked by doubts again and again. Then your fear will be slowly overcome.

If you try to fight your emotions with other emo­ tions, you will only become more confused. You can­ not straighten out your emotions, but you can trust in God: he knows your deepest heart, and he can straighten you out. Believe in him alone.

From a letter: You ask how to find inner quiet. Re­ member Jesus' words about prayer; they are very

Mt. 6:6 important: "Go into your room, lock the door, and

pray to your Father who is in secret, and he, who sees what is secret, will reward you." If you detach yourself from your feelings and from the excitements of your life and seek God in this detachment from self, you will find peace of heart.

From a letter: Long prayers are not always effective. Je­ sus even warns us against them. They are usually more pagan than Christian.

Let your prayer life be more alive! But do not force it–let it be quite free. When prayer becomes some­ thing living to you, the fire of the Spirit will flare up, and this will bring you life!

From a letter: We cannot live without a personal prayer life. We need prayer as much as we need water. All of us need times of quiet before God. Jesus clearly

Mt 6:1-6 says that we should not make a show of our prayers; we should close the door behind us and not speak about them. Yet hidden, personal prayer is absolutely necessary and just as important as the communal prayers of the whole church.

We tend to pray only for what we want and give little thought to what God wants of us at a particular

moment. I sometimes think God would answer our prayers sooner if they were directed more to doing his will, and if our hearts were moved by the good spirit to ask what God wanted. Let me say it like this: God needs us every day – he needs people to carry out his will–so we should not pray for what we would like, but rather ask for the strength to do what he would have us do.

God needs people who ask for his will to be done; if no one is interested in it, he must leave his work on earth undone. But if there are people who stretch out their hands to him in longing, asking and seeking for his will to be done, then he can do something in this world. It is wrong to think that everything comes by itself, that nothing is expected of us. Jesus taught us to

Mt. 6:10 pray for God's will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

We must also ask for God's will to be done in our personal lives. Because the Evil One tries again and again to lead us onto the wrong path, we must turn to God daily and ask him to renew our hearts. But we should pray not only for ourselves; we should pray for the whole world–for all humanity and all nations.

From a letter: There is wrong prayer –self-willed prayer. But if the object of our prayer is in accordance with the will of Jesus, then it is right. As long as there

is nothing of self-will or self-glory mixed into it, it is not wrong.

It is completely foreign to the way of Jesus to make selfish requests in his name, for instance to wish for a successful career or for a thousand dollars. When Jesus says, "Whatever you ask in my name, I will do," he means whatever glorifies the Father and the Son.

Jn. 14:13

In our prayer life we need to listen to the spirit of God. What God wants to tell us is of greater impor­ tance than what we want to tell him. Therefore com­ mon silence shared in the faith that he wants to speak to each heart will always be meaningful for us.

We should always believe that our prayers will be answered, even if they are not answered straight away. Daniel prayed earnestly to God for days for the for­ giveness of his sins and for the forgiveness of Israel's sins. Yet he received no answer for three weeks. Then an angel appeared to him in a vision and said:

Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the very first day that you applied your mind to understand and mortify yourself before your God, your prayers have been heard, and I have come in answer to them. But the evil angel prince of the

Dan. 10:12-13

kingdom of Persia resisted me for twenty-one days, until Michael, one of the chief princes of heaven, came to help me.

So Daniel's prayers were heard from the beginning, but dark powers made it difficult for the angel who an­ swered him to break through.

Today, despite the victory of the cross, there are still dark powers at work. Our prayers, like Daniel's, may often not be answered straightaway. Yet God hears them. We should firmly believe this.

From a letter: Give everything over to Jesus. The more you give everything over to him, the more his spirit will fill you. Even the most sincere Christians go through times of inner dryness in which God wants to test them. But then he floods them with his great love. So do not despair if you feel inner dryness.

Repentance

The Gospel begins with a call to repentance. Repen­ tance means that everything must be changed. What was up must go down, and what was down must come up. Everything must be seen as God sees it. Our whole being has to be renewed; all thinking of our own has to cease. God must become the center of our thinking and feeling.

Jesus Christ came to save people, but he first called them to repent and follow him. Many Christians are attracted by his promise of salvation, but they do not want to repent fully. It is tragic that the worst enemies of Jesus are often religious people, not unbelievers. Even in Jesus' own lifetime, those who hated him most were not the soldiers who crucified him, but the very religious Pharisees and scribes, who hated his message of repentance.

When John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, he called people to repent –to change their hearts and minds. He certainly did not flatter those

Mt. 3:7-8 who came to him. He plainly told them how far they were from God. It was not only John the Baptist who spoke of repentance. Jesus himself did, from his first teachings in the Bible to his last.

People dislike John the Baptist's call, "Repent, for the

Mt. 3:2 kingdom of heaven is at hand," because they do not understand what repentance means. Repentance does not mean self-torment; nor does it mean being judged by others. It means turning away from the corruption and mammonism of fallen humankind and letting our hearts be moved by the atmosphere of the kingdom of God. Anyone who has gone through true repen­ tance knows that it makes the heart melt like wax, that it shocks us by showing us our sinfulness. But that should not be the central experience. God must be the center of a repentant heart –God, who was revealed at the cross as love, and who alone brings reconciliation.

From a letter: All of us must undergo difficult and painful times of repentance. I plead with you to ac­ cept it, not as punishment but as grace, and I beg you not to torment yourself but to understand that Christ wants to make you free.

From a letter: Do you really know what repentance means? When a person repents he will change in such

a way that everyone who meets him will feel his change of heart. In Dickens' A Christmas Carol it was obvious to everyone who met old Scrooge on Christmas Day that he was a different man from the evening before. I wish you such repentance.

If we trust in Jesus and the power of his death, we will find forgiveness for our sins, however evil we are or were. But we must not play with his goodness. He will judge every sin, every compromise we make with the devil. For instance, he warns us so strongly against im­ morality that he says we should not even glance lust­ fully at a woman. Let us accept his sharpness.

There are times in every person's life when God comes close. There are also such times or hours of God for each church. According to the Book of Revelation,

Rev. 2-3 Jesus spoke from heaven through John to the seven churches, telling each what it had to recognize and why it had to repent, though also encouraging it. That was surely an important hour of God for these churches.

God is infinitely good. Once he has come to a per­ son, he may come a second, third, fourth, or even a fifth time, but he also may not. It is up to us whether we listen to him.

However strong our will to control ourselves, and however deceptive we are, God sees through everything into the depth of our hearts. Only the act of putting ourselves under his light gives us a chance for renewal. Everything is possible if we put ourselves willingly under the light of God. But if we refuse to do this, everything in our life is in danger.

It is one of the most wonderful things when a person truly repents. God comes so close to a repentant soul! A heart of stone becomes a heart of flesh, and every emotion, thought, and feeling changes. A person's entire outlook changes when the gift of repentance is given to him.

We must receive a new life; we must be changed. But it is God who must change us. And he may change us in a different way from what we had wanted or imag­ ined. Our own ideals –our own plans for inner growth or personal change – must come to an end. Every lofty position must be given up; every high human striving sacrificed. To be fit for God's new future we must be changed by him.

From a letter: I am sure that Jesus can give you a com­ pletely pure heart and perfect peace. At first, the closer you come to him the more you will feel judged by your

sin, but in the end you will find deep joy and peace. Your seeking for God should not make life a torment. He sees that you seek him with a sincere heart. I wish you hope and courage.

From a letter: Remorse opens the heart to God. The experience itself is very painful, but later you will look back on it with gratefulness as a light in your past. Repentance does not mean that you should grovel in your sin but that your heart should be softened toward God and those around you.

From a letter: I long for you to find true repentance, because it is the only hope for you in your struggle against bitterness. There is no heart so hard that God cannot touch it and melt it. I know this because there is not one of us who has not once hardened his heart against God. If only you could experience his great longing and burning love for you and for each one of us! Then you would let everything that separates you from this great love be torn away from you, however painful it might be.

God's love is like water: it seeks the lowest place. Yet we cannot make ourselves humble and lowly in our own strength. We can see ourselves for what we

1 Cor. 4:13 are – "filth and off-scourings" – only in the light of God's omnipotence, love, purity, and truth.

Once we see the darkness of sin and the horror of separation from God, we can feel something of what Jesus means by repentance. Yet repentance means more than recognizing our sin; it means turning toward the kingdom of God. It also means being ready to run around the world in order to undo all the wrong we have done – even though we know we cannot undo anything. Finally, it means giving ourselves to Him who gives forgiveness and freedom from sin.

From a letter: I am grateful that you recognize your sin, but I plead with you to stop thinking about your­ self, your past, and your depression. You will only become more depressed. That is not repentance. Think of your inner being as a clear pond that mirrors the sun, the stars, and the moon. If you stir up the mud at the bottom, everything will become unclear and cloudy, and the more you stir it, the cloudier it will get. Become quiet and stand firm against the devil. Then the water will clear again, and you will see in its mirror Christ's love to you and to the whole world.

Conversion

Jn. 3 In John 3 we read that we must be reborn of water and the Spirit. This cannot be understood humanly, as Nicodemus tried to understand it. Rebirth is a secret, a mystery, a miracle. But if we believe that Jesus was sent by God the Father, and if we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, he can give us rebirth. It all depends on belief.

A decision to follow Jesus cannot be a decision to follow him for one or two years; it must be for always. Jesus said, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and

Lk. 9:62 looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." But if we remain faithful to him, he will wash us clean and give us unity with God and with one another, and he will grant us eternal life.

Those who want to follow Jesus must not only open their hearts to him and say, "Come into my heart and purify me"; they must also be ready to say, "I am will­ ing to do anything you ask of me." Jesus says, "Come,

Mt. 11:28 all who are heavy-burdened." If you are willing to

come to him–to let him into your heart –then you must also be willing to let him rule you and to give up your own will.

Discipleship demands that we drop everything, in­ cluding everything we count as positive in ourselves. Paul was willing to lay aside the Jewish law, and we must likewise give up our good self-image, our righ­ teousness, and our kindness, and count it all as noth­ ing for the sake of Jesus Christ.

The radicalism of Christ's way must challenge us. He does not want to win numbers but dedicated hearts. And he does not promise security, either economic or otherwise. He seeks those who want to give themselves unreservedly to God and to their brothers, without seeking anything for themselves.

The decision to follow Christ must be a deeply per­ sonal one. But it can never mean – as someone once said to me, "Only Jesus and I remain." Discipleship must always be related to one's brothers and sisters. Therefore Jesus brings together the two command­ ments "Love God with all your heart, soul, and be­ ing," and "Love your neighbor as yourself." These two commandments cannot be separated. It is true that a personal religious experience must take place in one's

Mt. 22:37-39

innermost being, but it cannot be a lonely or selfish experience.

The essence of faith must become clearer to us. One may accept the teachings of the whole Bible, but with­ out meeting Jesus himself, it will be of no value. Nor does it help to have a conviction if one has not deeply felt and experienced Jesus' character, his being, and his nature. Each man must be personally confronted by Jesus himself.

If we grasp in our hearts the fact that Jesus died for us, it will change us completely: it will mean revolution; it will make something new out of us to the destruc­ tion of our sinful self so that we will no longer be slaves to it.

Part of the experience of true conversion is the willing­ ness to suffer with Christ, the suffering One. I do not believe that true conversion is possible without this.

Discipleship means complete dedication. It demands everything –the whole heart, the whole mind, and the whole of life, including one's time, energy, and prop­ erty –for the cause of love. Half-hearted Christianity is worse than no Christianity.

Mt. 12:33 Jesus says, "By the fruits you will recognize the tree"; that is, by the fruits of a person's life we will recognize whether or not he is a hypocrite. "For not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord' will come into the kingdom of Mt. 7:21

God, but only those who do the will of the Father." Doing the will of God means showing the fruits of repentance. Jesus also says, "I am the vine, and my

Jn. 15:1-2 Father is the vinedresser, and every branch that does not bear fruit, he cuts away. But those who bear fruit he purifies so that they may bear more fruit." Here we see that we cannot simply be converted, baptized, and "saved," and live from then on without temptation. If we are to bear good fruit, we must repent and be puri­ fied again and again.

Jn. 15:4 A branch cannot bear fruit of itself –it must be connected to the vine. In the same way, none of us can bear fruit without a personal relationship to Jesus. Without such a relationship we will die inwardly and

Jn. 15:6 bear no fruit. And if we do not bear fruit, we will be cut off the vine, thrown into the fire, and burned. That is the great challenge: to remain on the vine –to remain in Jesus.

Faith

Who is God, and how can we find him? One answer to this question is that something of the light of God already lies deep in each of our hearts. At times this is to be felt only in a deep longing for goodness, justice, purity, or faithfulness. But if such a longing turns to faith, we will find God.

The early Christians said that if men seek God they will find him, because he is everywhere. There is no boundary that cannot be crossed, no hindrance that cannot be overcome to find him. Think of Nicodemus, who at first would not believe that he could change in his old age. Even he found faith. We cannot excuse ourselves for not finding faith. If we knock at the door, it will open.

God comes to the heart of every person who has faith that he will come, to everyone who seeks him. But we must look for him and wait for him to come to us. If we live our lives in dullness it will not happen. We must first seek; only then will we find.

It is a miracle of faith when people find Jesus and rec­ ognize him as the Christ. We see this happen in John

Jn. 4:42 4:42, when the Samaritans answer the woman who met Jesus at the well: "We have heard him ourselves and know that this is indeed Christ the Savior." If only this faith were alive here and now in our church and among the many who thirst for something new!

To the Samaritans, Jesus was just a man –hungry, tired, and thirsty. No ordinary person could have seen in him the slightest trace of his identity. Who could be blamed for failing to recognize him immediately? If we met a complete stranger, we would not straightaway take him to be the Savior of the world.

Jesus' appearance was anything but that of a savior: he was a humble man; he grew up in a small town, came into conflict with religious leaders, and suffered a shameful death. Therefore it is a miracle when a per­ son comes to believe in him. When we can say like the

Jn. 4:42 Samaritans, "This is Christ, the Savior of the world," our heart has been opened and filled with light.

From a letter: It seems that a new, green blade of living faith is beginning to grow in your heart. Guard it, and do not give in to the flesh, to self, or to any form of sin. Prove to yourself, to those around you, and to God that this is a new chapter of your life.

Faith and a good conscience are completely interoven with one another. If we do not listen to our con­

science, our faith will suffer shipwreck. And if we lose faith, we lose the possibility of having a pure and liv­ ing conscience. Therefore the Apostle says that the

Tit. 1:15 consciences of those who do not believe are not clean. It is bound to be like this, because without faith the conscience has nothing to hold on to.

I once met some people who were critical of our giv­ ing "too much" honor to Jesus. We were talking about a saying of Jesus, and one of them asked me, "Do you believe this because Jesus said it, or because it is true?" I said I believed it for both reasons: because Jesus said it and because it is true. I have always felt I should have said more; I should have been willing to be a fool and to say, "Even if I did not understand it, I would still believe it, because Jesus said it." These people were horrified that anyone could have a childlike faith in Jesus.

Anyone who has not been troubled by the scandal of Christ's suffering and his complete humiliation is ignorant of the meaning of belief in him.

Jn. 3:16-17 The Bible says, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. He was not sent to condemn the world, but to save it." But it also says that the world will be judged because of its unbelief. We must

be overwhelmed by what it means that God "so loved the world"; then we will see how terrible it is not to believe in him. We must ask God to be newly awak­ ened to a deeper faith and belief–to a faith that meets all personal problems, all problems of communal life, and ultimately the problems of the whole world.

Rom. 11:20

From a letter: Peter told Jesus that he was willing to die for him, but he still denied him three times. No one of us can say he will have the strength to endure. Such a thing is possible only in the power of God. He alone can give us strength.

When people feel lonely and unsure of themselves, it is often because they do not believe deeply enough that God fully understands them. Paul writes that if we love fully, we will understand as we are fully understood. John's words are very important, too: God loved us be­ fore we were ever able to love him. This is what must enter our small hearts, and what we must hold on to: the love of the great Heart which understands us fully.

1Cor. 13:12

1 Jn. 4:19

We live in a time when the whole world is in turmoil, and we can expect even more shaking events than we have already seen. There is only one hope, only one thing to hold on to in every situation: Jesus and his kingdom. In life and death, in joy and judgment, he remains our only Savior.

Col. 2:4-23 As Paul warns us, false and dangerous teachings are widespread, also among so-called Christians. Let us therefore remain simple and childlike in our faith in the Son of God and the Son of Man, and let us build our life of brotherly love on the rock of this faith.

Why are there so many people today who cannot find faith? I think there are several reasons. Some are satis­ fied with what is happening; they are proud to be liv­ ing in a time of great culture and civilization, and they are blind to the suffering of humankind and the whole of creation. They have lost sight of God.

Others despair. They recognize the injustice of mammon, and they suffer with those who are op­ pressed. But in their compassion they forget the guilt of men–the guilt we all must bear. And if they do see guilt, they see only the guilt of a certain class or na­ tion, not that of all men. They see the creation but not the Creator. They, too, have lost sight of God.

Still others see the sin, guilt, and weakness of men, but they have no heart, no patience with the op­ pressed, and they do not suffer with them. Because they have lost sight of God, they do not hear the cry of all creation. They have no real faith, or they have found faith only for their own souls and not for suffer­ ing humanity.

We can find faith only if we first find God. When we have found God, we will begin to see the need of man from His viewpoint, and we will believe that He

can overcome this need. Men must recognize that God loves the world even in our time. In the night of judg­ ment that is passing over our so-called civilization, men need to hear that God still loves them and loves his creation. The message of faith is a message of love.

From a letter: You will never be able to prove –even to yourself –that Jesus exists. Belief must be an inner experience. As long as you try to prove the object of your belief intellectually, your efforts will stand in the way of such an experience. I am not able to prove the existence of Jesus –I have nothing but my living faith. Thomas doubted that Jesus really rose from the dead; he said, "Unless I put my hand into his wounds, I will never believe." Then he saw Jesus and believed. But Jesus said, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."

Doubt

Jn. 20:25-29

To question God's love and his nearness leads to death for someone who has already given him his life. It is good to recognize evil in oneself. But we should never doubt God's great mercy, even in judgment. Doubt leads to torments that make a person feel he is living in hell. We must be led to an ever-renewed deepening of our faith.

Anyone who thinks he is too great a sinner –anyone who doubts that Jesus can help him –binds himself to

the devil. He doubts the victory of the cross, and he hinders the Holy Spirit from entering his heart. This doubt must be rejected. After all, the Gospel says that Jesus carries the sin of the whole world, and that "he who seeks will find; to him who knocks the door will be opened."

Mt. 7:7

Christ, the living One, died on the cross to recon­ cile all things to God. This reconciliation is beyond our human understanding. But we do know that it is possible for each of us, and that we are called to repent and to find it.

From a letter: The only answer to your inner torment is faith in God. This might sound theoretical, but faith is the only point where light can break into your life. Think of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus teaches his disciples to pray: he says that if you lock yourself in your room and pray in secret, God, who sees in secret, will reward you. Do this, and believe that God hears you. Then you can and will find God's grace. There is redemption from evil if you believe.

Mt. 6:6

From a letter: Jesus warns us against worry, which is ultimately a lack of trust in the Father. Become free from worry and care; set your heart at rest and simply trust in God and in Jesus.

Lk. 12:22-26

Jn. 14:1

You write that it is always the little things that make you doubt. Do not allow this to happen. God wants

to show us great things – he has been there from the beginning and with him the Word, Christ. Everything was created by him. Think in the great curves of God's creation and his eternity.

I want to encourage anyone who feels discouraged because of having made unsuccessful attempts to fol­ low Christ. In and of ourselves we cannot follow him; we are all equally unable. But that is because our dedi­ cation to him is not complete. Only when we empty ourselves completely, when we give everything over to God, can he work. As long as we work in our own vanity, we will fail. God shows us again and again how terribly we fail and stand in his way, as a church and as individuals. Discipleship is not a question of our own doing; it is a matter of making room for God so that he can live in us.

Dogmatism

From a letter: May God give us big hearts. May we have faith in his working in all men, though without any mixture of spirits. May he give us a crystal-clear faith that includes love for all people and yet mixes with no darkness, that forgives and understands all yet does not betray one iota of the truth.

We have to embrace the whole Christ –his sharp­ ness as well as his act of love on the cross. Christ's love for all men is the love of the Lamb who carries the sin of the world. Yet he proclaims eternal damnation

Jn. 5:29-30 as necessary for the future of God's rulership of love, unity, and justice. To change or weaken this would be to misrepresent his message.

From a letter: You state that to believe this or that is dogmatic. But such a conception is pure theology. It is the churches that are guilty –they have given mil­ lions of people the impression that certain beliefs are nothing but dogma, yet it is they who made them into dogma.

We are free of any doubt about the miracles of God. We feel completely free to believe in the miracle of

Jesus' birth and the coming of God in Jesus. On the other hand, we never want to lay this as a burden on the consciences of others, and we refuse all theologi­ cal fighting over the issue. We do not doubt that Jesus of Nazareth came directly from God and that he was and is one with God, but we do not want to dispute the issue on a dogmatic level. We reject all dogmatism because it kills. We hope for and believe in the Holy Spirit.

The birth of Christ happens again and again. Where two or three are together in his name, where he is ac­ cepted with the same faith as Mary's, there the living Christ will come into being. If we believe in the Holy Spirit, then the Word will become flesh in our hearts and prove itself to us as the Son of God.

This becoming flesh is a reality, but the fact that you cannot believe it makes it possible for you to par­ ticipate in a church where unjust conditions remain unchanged. You attack social injustice, but you still participate in a church where the love of God does not come into the flesh and where the material world is independent of the spiritual experience. Here lies a deep separation between faith and experience. You call our beliefs dogma: in actual fact, it is any religious life that does not change life in the flesh and the economic sphere that is dogmatic and dangerous for the inner man.

We must become "narrow" in the right way–"narrow" in the sense that we live only for Christ.

I do not mean at all that our lives should show more religiosity. There is no one as broadhearted as the cru­ cified Christ, whose outstretched arms seek all men. It is a matter of decisiveness in one's heart, of living only for Christ. If we have this decisiveness, we will have broad hearts, though not, of course, in the worldly sense of tolerance for anything and everything.

From a letter: The main thing is that we are united in the things we find precious –love, openness, and sharing–in our struggle against coercion, in our fight against selfishness, in understanding our children, in seeking freedom from private property, and so on. It is for these things that we live together. We want to follow Jesus and none other; we want to go in his foot­ steps. We want God's kingdom to come to this earth.

You want a life free from the sins of society. Yet not

Mt. 17:27 even Jesus was free from the "guilt" of using unjust mammon. There is a difference between direct per­ sonal guilt and the collective guilt of fallen creation. We cannot separate ourselves from collective guilt; we would have to live alone on our own piece of land, and we would lose all contact with our fellow men. It is better to have a business relationship with a person than no relationship at all.

In what sense do you mean: "Why can't we work to reclaim the earth and help bring it back under God's power, instead of joining in the world's ways of destruc­ tion?" How shall we do what you suggest except by

isolating ourselves completely from the world? Try it. Do what you want to do. You will end up with a lot of principles, but in complete loneliness and lovelessness.

From a letter: Principles themselves do not lead to lovelessness, but in my experience they often lead to disaster. I knew a man who would not use any money or the post office or a passport, and he was jailed again and again for not paying taxes. He was very firm in his principles, but he ended up losing his faith in Jesus and then all his principles too.

From a letter: Where is God in your fear of using outward religious forms? In him all was created; noth­ ing was created without him. He gave form to every­ thing we see in the beauty of the earth. Your longing to dispense with all forms is anti-Christian. Didn't Jesus allow himself to be baptized, and didn't he establish the Lord's Supper or Meal of Remembrance?

Formal Christianity is horrifying. But you go too far with your fears. Marriage is a form; so is the com­ mon table and the common purse. You cannot simply fear all forms, otherwise you will not be able to live a Christian life at all.

From a letter: What does it help us to share our goods or to live in community and to be of one faith, if hu­

man souls are harmed because we have too little time to love our brothers and sisters and to express this love again and again? Let us watch that we never ever become obsessed by a principle, however right and true. By itself, the "right" principle is deadly. It kills the soul. "Right" principles resulted in Gethsemane. They too easily take the place that belongs only to God, his goodness, and his grace. Our principles must be over­ shadowed by our love to one another and by the com­ passion and grace of God.

Commitment

Many people become used to a dualism in which their lives are divided into parts, and this is a great strain. We find this also among so-called religious people–perhaps especially among them. But Jesus was absolutely single-minded. He demanded that we sell all other jewels in order to buy the one pearl of great price. We should not look at one thing with one eye and try to follow him with the other. If we ponder this deeply, each of us will realize he has to confront the division in his own heart. We must give up all dividedness. We want to be of one heart and one soul both in ourselves and with our neighbor. It is a question of life and death. Unless we find singleness of heart and mind, our dividedness will tear us to pieces.

Mt. 13:45-46

From a letter: We must be prepared to stand by our own convictions, even to suffer death for the sake of Jesus. In the Hutterite Chronicle * there is a story about a sixteen-year-old boy, the son of a miller, who

* The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, Vol. I (Vienna, 1923; English translation, Rifton, NY: 1987), a history of the Hutterites and other Ana­ baptists of 16th century Europe. (See pp. 64-65.)

converted to the Anabaptist way of life. When he was caught and sentenced to be beheaded, a wealthy nobleman offered to take him and raise him as his own son, if he would only recant. But the boy kept faith with God and was executed. If discipleship is really the way we want to go, we must be prepared for such sacrifice – however hard it is, and in spite of ourselves and our failures.

A promise made to God cannot be made on the strength of human faithfulness. We must depend on God's faithfulness. No one is strong enough in his own strength to endure, for instance, what the early Chris­ tian martyrs and others throughout history endured; but God is faithful. If we give ourselves to him, his angels will fight for us.

Do we still have our first love to Jesus, our readiness to give everything, even to face death for his sake? Today we have house and home, but we do not know what the future will bring. The times are very uncertain. In the course of our Bruderhof history we have had to go from one country to another. We can offer no human

Jn. 15:20 security. Jesus promises his disciples that they will be persecuted and that they will suffer. We can promise nothing better. Our only security is Jesus himself.

We must not forget that Jesus taught us a way of com­ plete love –a way that means loving even our enemies and praying for those who persecute us. As disciples of Jesus we are not promised good days only. We must be prepared for persecution. Throughout history people have been killed for their convictions. We should be thankful that we have been protected till now, but we should also be ready to suffer for our faith.

A Christian's commitment to Christ cannot be changed through circumstances. This must be quite clear. For us at the Bruderhof, the larger protection of the church community might be taken away at any time. But even if through persecution only one per­ son from our communities were left, he would still be bound to his commitments.

If we love God with all our heart, soul, and being –if we live our lives for the sake of his honor and for the kingdom of God – then we can speak of him with as-

Ps. 28.1 surance in our prayers as "My Lord, my Rock." It does not matter if we have enemies or what those enemies say about us. We will hear the voice of God in our hearts and be faithful.

We must be faithful to the end. For a Christian the most dangerous time is the middle of life. At the

beginning, when our faith is new, God may seem espe­ cially near to us. After a few years, however, lukewarm­ ness often sets in. If we are dedicated, God will carry us through our middle years, though we must still be watchful. But let us not have fear. If we are true to God, nothing can separate us from his peace.

The Lower Nature

I sometimes wonder whether we have not become too worldly in certain things. Do sports, business matters, and concern for money fill our hearts too much? These are obvious "worldly" distractions or temptations. But there is also a danger that even the gifts God gives us, such as the beauties of nature or the joys of human love, can become a substitute for the real experience of Christ.

Temptation *

The Letter to the Hebrews clearly states that Jesus was tempted just like any other human being. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, Satan came to him and used words from scripture to tempt him. Only after the third temptation did Jesus recognize him and say, "Begone, Satan."

Heb. 2:18

Heb. 4:15

Mt. 4:1-10

At one time the idea of Jesus being tempted seemed blasphemous to me. Yet now I see that there is no question: he was tempted like any other human being. That is what the Gospel says. In spite of this, it is clear that Jesus never sinned.

Heb. 4:15

Where does temptation end and sin begin? If we are

* For this section extensive use has been made of the author's book Freedom from Sinful Thoughts (Plough, 1973).

plagued or tempted by evil thoughts, that in itself is not sinning. For instance, if an impure thought comes to us and we reject it, that is not sin. But if we buy a dirty magazine in order to indulge in sexual fantasies, that is sin.

It is a question of what we do when temptation comes–what attitude we take. When Jesus was tempt­ ed by Satan, he had an answer for him each time. That is what we have to pray for: an answer to every tempta­ tion.

We will never be completely free of temptation – we should not even expect it; Jesus himself never reached this state. But we should ask God to protect us in temptation and to give us the right answer to the Tempter each time.

From a letter: I cannot say it sharply enough: if you flaunt your form or hair, or if you dress so as to tempt another person to an impure look, you commit a sin worthy of church discipline. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that anyone who casts an impure look at another is guilty. But if you willingly and intention­ ally bring another into that temptation, you are just as guilty.

2 Cor. 10:5 Paul describes the believer's fight against evil thoughts as a victorious one in which every thought is "taken captive to obey Christ." Paul takes for granted that

men have arguments and obstacles in their minds and that these must be taken captive to obey Christ. All of us must fight this battle. We should not be surprised if we are tempted; it is part of life.

The wonderful thing about Paul's words is his cer­ tainty that these thoughts can be taken captive to obey Christ. Of course, victory is not always easy. We must face the fact that a war between good and evil is being waged continually for all of humankind. It has been going on ever since man's fall, especially since Christ's death and the coming down of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. If someone is tormented by evil thoughts, he should remember that the spiritual battle is much greater than that in his own heart. It is greater even than that of the whole church.

The Enemy is very real, and if we recognize this, we will not be lukewarm. But Christ is also very real. To find true freedom of heart, we need to experience him.

Heb. 4:15 We know from the Letter to the Hebrews that Jesus was tempted as we are; he did not sin, but he under­ stands us in our temptation and need. Everyone – every brother and sister, and every young or old per­ son–should know that we have a High Priest, a King,

Heb. 5:7 a Master who understands. Hebrews 5:7 says, "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplica­ tions with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him." All of us are guilty of sins in the past, so we should all feel like coming before God in prayer "with

loud cries and tears" and turning to him in the faith that he can save us and all those for whom we pray.

If we think evil thoughts deliberately, be they thoughts of power over other people, of impurity, of hatred, or of any other such evil, we will act on them some day. But it is very different if we are tormented by ideas, images, or thoughts we really do not want and would give anything to have a pure heart instead. With our own will it is never possible to make ourselves pure. When we are cramped up inside against something evil, it can even lead to that evil having greater power over us. But we should never forget that God sees deeper than we do. Even if we sink further and further into evil thoughts that we do not actually want, God will see we do not want them, and he will help us.

Even Jesus was tempted by the devil. But he overcame all evil by fully trusting his Father. You will be tempted too, and when you are, all that matters will be whether or not you completely trust Jesus and the power of the cross. Unless you put your trust and belief in Jesus, you will be defeated.

The feeling of being forsaken by God brings the most dreadful suffering. And for the Son of God to feel this as he died must have been such a fearful experience

that we cannot grasp it. Yet in spite of it Jesus cried

Lk. 23:46 out, "Father, into thy hands I give my spirit."

Here we find the crowning of faith. Jesus' experi­ ence of godforsakenness did not take away the trust and faith he had in his and our Father; he gave his spirit into his hands.

If we want to be healed of the wounds made by Satan's tricks and arrows –by evil feelings, thoughts, or ideas–we must have the same absolute trust in Jesus as he had in God, so that even if we feel nothing yet, we give ourselves absolutely and without reserve to him with all we are and have. Ultimately, all we have is our sin. But we must lay our sin before him in trust. Then he will give us forgiveness, cleansing, and peace of heart; and these lead to a love that cannot be described.

When depression or anything other than Jesus threat­ ens to rule our hearts, we must go to Jesus. There we will find victory and peace. I am quite sure that at the cross we can be victorious over all things that come to us in life, whatever they may be.

Sin Many people no longer know what a good conscience is; they are burdened daily with the sins of our time. We must take care to keep our consciences pure, and we must do this from childhood on. Once we get used to living with a bad conscience, we will lose everything: our relationship with God and our love to others.

Heb. 5:7 Which of us takes our struggle with sin so seriously that we fight with loud cries and tears? Jesus did. No one has ever fought like Jesus –no one. The devil wanted no heart more than his. And because he fought much harder than any one of us will ever have to fight, he understands our struggles. Of that we can be sure. But we do have to fight. Jesus says that those who

Mt. 16:24 want to follow him must take up their cross as he took up his. I want to challenge everyone to fight as Jesus fought–to fight until death.

Paul the Apostle spoke of himself as the greatest sin­ ner. These were not just pious words; he really meant them. He had persecuted the early church and was responsible for many martyrs' deaths, and he knew he was an enemy of God.

At Pentecost the people in Jerusalem also saw them­ selves as sinners –they did not feel they were good.

Acts 2:37 They were "cut to the heart," and when the Holy Spirit came to them, they did not feel worthy of it. In fact, they saw themselves as the murderers of Christ. But because of this recognition, God could use them. If we want to be used by God, we must not talk and preach to one another about love without recognizing that each one of us, too, is actually a sinner.

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