Thursday: They Have an Enthusiasm among Themselves
WEEK 37
THURSDAY
THEY HAVE AN ENTHUSIASM AMONG THEMSELVES
Colossians 1:3-7
We are studying the fact that there was a simple and profound mastery of the ingrown in the Acts. The doors of life began immediately to swing out. They were releasing themselves and in the process were released from themselves.
I was talking to the head of a great university, a skeptic; in discussing the religious life of the university, he remarked about a certain religious group, “They have an enthusiasm among themselves.” That was revealing. They were ardent in their getting together, in their loyalty to their faith; but it was “an enthusiasm among themselves”; it didn’t get beyond the circle. It was all like a dog chasing its tail and getting nowhere.
One of the most influential Christians in this country was “Brother Bryan” of Birmingham, Alabama. The grateful citizens put up a monument to him in the center of the city.* The traffic flows around that monument, which shows Brother Bryan kneeling in prayer with his face lifted to the sky. That man prayed himself and his Lord into the life of a great industrial city; they voted him the most useful citizen of their city. The story goes that one time he sat listening to a speaker who was expounding how to do evangelism effectively. Brother Bryan grew restive under the flow of words and ideas; he went out of the meeting, across the street, sat down with a workman who was eating his noonday lunch, and led him to Christ on the spot. He felt that the way to do evangelism was to do it. The theory was the practice. The fact is that the thing we believe in is the thing we practice. If we don’t believe in a thing enough to practice it, then we just don’t believe in it. The only way to do evangelism is to do it. Francis, a simple villager of India, learned to read through adult literacy, and this led him to the Bible. In one year, one-hundred-one were baptized through him at Christmas, and fifty-three more were ready at Easter. He gave his witness, and the Holy Spirit did the rest, for the Spirit witnesses to our witness.
O Spirit Divine, open my lips and my heart to give my witness. For if I hold my peace, the stones will cry out, the hard, bare facts will speak. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I do not witness, I will soon have nothing to witness to.
* See the statue and learn more about the Rev. James Alexander Bryan, “Brother Bryan,” at http://bbmission.com/history/, accessed March 17, 2017.