WE ENDED YESTERDAY by insisting that this form of Christ mysticism is rooted in grace and not in strenuous striving. There is discipline in this way, but discipline is not first. If you put discipline first, you are disciplining yourself around an unsurrendered self. This discipline is sitting on a lid, keeping an unsurrendered self down. The way that we are advocating says, first self-surrender, not self-discipline. Then, having shifted the basis of life from yourself to Christ, you can discipline yourself around the new center. This discipline then is not imposed from without, but exposed from within, the result of chosen disciplines as the expression of our love to Him. We submit to disciplines because we have already submitted to Him. “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21)—we submit to others and to disciplines out of reverence for Christ. Having submitted to Him we can submit to others out of reverence for Him, and now we can do it without loss of self-respect.
This priority of self-surrender before discipline is seen in Jesus’ saying: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man; then indeed he may plunder his house” (Mark 3:27). You cannot plunder the strong man’s goods unless you first bind the strong man; you cannot overcome the deeds of the strong man—the unsurrendered self, deeds such as wrong reactions, resentments, fears, and so on—until you bind the unsurrendered self by surrender to Jesus. In that case we deal with the roots, not with the fruits; the disease, not the symptoms. After binding the strong man by surrender, then taking over his goods is easy.
O Jesus, my Lord, I let Thee bind the strong man within me—my very self. Having that Thou hast my all. Now with the center in Thy hands, we can together mop up the areas of continued resistance. The rest is a victory march. I thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Surrender, once and for all, and continuous, is my watchword and my attitude. What He has, He saves.
