Saturday: The Holy Spirit Puts Back My Shoulders
WEEK 46
SATURDAY
THE HOLY SPIRIT PUTS BACK MY SHOULDERS
1 John 3:1-3
We pause to look at another source of timidity and shyness—a bad heredity. Many people are shy and timid, with a feeling of inferiority because of what their ancestors were or their parents are. The past lays a crippling hand on the present.
But in this new movement, with redemption at its heart, the thing that mattered was not what you came from but where you were going.
The Christians were more interested in destination than in origins. They belonged to the future, not to the past. They were not interested in ancestors; they were ancestors, beginning a new race of the redeemed. The redeemed were redeemed from bad ancestry. Jesus was loving people back from the pit of nothingness. The nobodies were becoming the somebodies.
A new heredity had come into being. People traced the new heredity straight to God. They were children of God and were therefore the equal of anyone. A new blood had begun to flow within them, the blood of the Son of God. They partook of it in the Communion and felt its emancipating power. They could not look down on themselves, for God looked on them lovingly as his sons and daughters. And more, the Holy Spirit dwelt within them and emancipated them by doing so. They were host to the Highest; how could they belong anymore to the lowest? They didn’t. Rufus Mosely once said, “The Holy Spirit puts back my shoulders.”* He does. The Spirit strengthens the feeble knees and says to them of a fearful heart, “Be strong.”
In the genealogy of Jesus were characters none too reputable. But he began a new heredity so wonderful that we cannot think of what lay back of him, we think of him. He becomes so luminous we cannot think of the dark spots in his past. We don’t think of his blood—his heredity; we think of his blood—his redemption. He started a new heredity. So can you. If your fathers were questionable, your Lord is holy. If your brothers are tainted, your Elder Brother is “without sin.” You begin a new life from him, your immediate spiritual Ancestor. Then off with inhibitions, timidity, and shyness; you are a child of God!
O Jesus, you stiffen my backbone, give nerve to my every endeavor. In you I am able for anything. So in you I face life and face it unafraid. I am free to be in you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I trace my life not backward but upward. I am a child of God. What else?
* No published source was found for this quotation, but see J. Rufus Moseley, Manifest Victory: A Quest and a Testimony (New York: Harper & Bros, 1947).