Saturday: I Am Able for Anything
WEEK 44
SATURDAY
I AM ABLE FOR ANYTHING
John 14:12-14
We are meditating on the mastery of complexity. We have seen that Paul had found the secret. The secret was in Christ, “in him who strengthens me I am able for anything” (Phil 4:13 MNT). In things, in attitudes of people, in property, in physical well-being, we are not able for anything. We are dependent, very. In him we are independent of whatever happens.
A college president told me of an interview he had with me twenty years before. He had at that time a deep sense of inferiority because of his father, who had brought disgrace upon the family. He said I told him that in the genealogy of Jesus there was this item: “David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife of Uriah” (Matt 1:6). Your Jesus had that background in his family history; he became the Savior of the world. I reminded him that, not where we came from, but where we were going was the important thing, that we could have a new heredity from God; therefore we were no longer inferior. He said when he took that thought, his inferiorities dropped away. He became the president of a college, able and transforming others. He was emancipated from the inferiorities of being in a family tradition, for he was “in him.” That made the difference.
In the Epistle to the Ephesians the phrase “in him” or its equivalent is found thirty-one times. Being in him brought security and significance and independence of things and happenings. So Paul belonged to a secret society, and the password was “anything”— “able for anything.” When you can say that password, you pass on into being in Christ. There is absolute security. For you are “able for anything.” You can take prosperity, or you can take adversity; you can take anything and make it into something higher. Then you can realize the meaning of the motto “Not somehow but triumphantly.”
You don’t muddle through this business of living; you go through it triumphantly. Everything is grist for your mill, for you can take whatever happens and make it serve.
O Lord, I thank you that I have found the secret of living not somehow but triumphantly. In you I am able for anything. I really know how to live. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Not what happens to me but what I do with it after it does happen is the important thing.