Tuesday: Their Problems Turned to Possibilities
WEEK 52
TUESDAY
THEIR PROBLEMS TURNED TO POSSIBILITIES
John 16:7-11
We have been summing up the masteries that came with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Mastery began with the Christians themselves; they were mastered by the Master. And that was the right place; it all began within them and then moved out in concentric circles to the total life.
Had they tried to bypass the upper room and go straight to their tasks, their movement would have petered out. It would have exhausted itself upon the hard outer circumstances. But changed within, they began to change the without. The very first mastery was Jerusalem.
Jesus had told them not to leave Jerusalem, for in that city they had all caved in; Jerusalem had mastered them. So they walked out of the upper room straight into the heart of their problems. And all their problems turned to possibilities. Jerusalem was no longer something to run away from but something to run into and seize for Christ. Everything was that way. They had Life for the mastery of life.
They mastered all human relationships. They were related to God in a firsthand, saving contact. Secondhandedness was gone; it was all firsthand and face-to-face with nothing between. There were no outstanding issues between them and God; they were one in purpose and spirit. And when they came to right relations with themselves, they began “to express themselves” (Acts 2:4 MNT). They were at home with themselves— all self-hate and self-loathing were gone—they loved themselves because they loved something more than themselves.
Then being rightly related to God and themselves, they naturally fell into right relationships with the other immediate disciples; Peter stood with the other eleven (2:14), not against them as before. And further they were related to all believers; “all who believed were together” (2:44 RSV). All believers who belonged to Christ automatically belonged to one another. Further they righted their relations with their enemies—they overcame evil with good and hate with love—they called them brothers and sisters and, treating them like family, turned them into family. All barriers went down before people who had no barriers within themselves.
O Christ, all this seems so effortless and easy and natural. Help me to live in you with effortless victory, victory not of my trying but of your enabling. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am not a reservoir; I am a channel, a channel attached to Infinite Resources.