Week 11 Sunday
Week 11 Sunday
The Ten Steps to Victory
Isaiah 1:18-20
We come now to the steps we must take to put our feet upon the Way, the cultivation stage. Perhaps you have been impatiently asking, How? We could not answer the How until we had looked at the What and the Why.
But let me remind you that you have come to a crisis. You are going to be called on to choose. You will have to say yes or no. And heaven or hell—here and now—will be in that yes or no. Hitherto we have been seeking information. Now we are seeking transformation. That involves throwing the will on the side of transformation. That can be done only in an atmosphere of inner prayer. Inwardly commit yourself to follow simply and humbly the steps to the Way.
Just now a man left my room, and one of the things he said about his tied-up spiritual life was, “No use to try to kid yourself about this matter of surrender. You do or you don’t. I haven’t been willing, so I’m tied up.” Your question marks will never be straightened out into exclamation points of certainty and realization unless you pass from the question to the quest. For there comes a moment in life when to get further light you must decide something; the light you have will turn to darkness unless it ends in decision. Light turns to Life through decision. In a moral universe the only way to get more light is to act on what you have.
We will call the ladder “The Ten C’s” (1) Consider your ways. See if they correspond with the Way. Take an honest, straightforward look at your life. (2) Change your directions. Where you are wrong, decide to change. (3) Connect with Christ. You will need his grace and power. (4) Consent to surrender. Christ is Lord, not you. (5) Cease from struggling. Don’t try to do this yourself; let God do it. (6) Concentrate on acceptance. Christ is making an offer to you; accept it. (7) Cleanse your past. Make restitution where it is necessary and possible. (8) Christianize your relationships. Take the spirit of the Way into your total life. (9) Cultivate the Quiet Time—preferably in the morning. (10) Create outlets and activities. The Way is outgoing.
These are the ten steps to release and victory. As you look at them, are you ready to begin?
O Christ, I am ready to begin. I’m eager to begin—anything that will get my feet upon the Way. So I begin, all eager and atingle within to start the adventure. Take my hand as I do. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Teach me what is thy way, thou Eternal, how to live loyal to you” (Ps. 86:11 Moffatt).
Week 11 Monday
Consider Your Ways
Isaiah 1:2-6
We come now to the steps that are going to lead you from the complicated entanglements of not-the-way to the simplicities of the Way.
(1) Consider your ways. See if they correspond with the Way. You will probably find, with the rest of us as we considered our ways, that they do not. But it will not be easy to take a straight look at yourself. Three possible attitudes may keep you from it:
a) You will be tempted to defend yourself. Emotional attachments gather around the old ways. Had they not done so, you would not have been able to have remained in them so long. These emotional attachments gather reasons to justify themselves, as a magnet gathers iron filings. We think with our emotions in very large measure. We rationalize our wrongs, give excuses for the inexcusable, try to bolster up impossible positions by propping them up with props gathered from anywhere. A minister living in secret sexual sin said, “But I preach better than ever.” He probably did—worked harder on his sermons to justify himself in the unjustifiable. In the end his defenses crashed, as they must, either by consent or by their breaking down of their own accord because they are not backed by reality. A couple living in sex sin had a fixed hour, a quiet time each day in which they lived in communion with each other and supposedly with God. The quiet time was used to hallow the unhallowed. They broke from this. Freed from this impossible position, the woman said, “I’m free—and happy.” Only the truth can make you free.
b) You will be tempted to justify yourself by the actions of others. “Everybody does it.” You are not going to dodge into that road with a dead end; you are out for reality. The conduct of others cannot be your criterion. Christ is. You are going to be a person and not a thing.
c) You will be tempted to fasten upon marginal sins, confess them, but leave the central ones alone. You will probably try to keep the self intact, central, and controlling, while you confess to sins of anger and impatience. You may be selfish in your business relationships and confess personal sins.
These three attitudes may keep you from a frank, honest-to-goodness appraisal. The first step to release is complete honesty.
O Christ, you of the honest eyes and the honest attitude, help me to have honest eyes and honest attitudes, for I would be free. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “I will obey thee eagerly as thou dost open up my life” (Ps. 119:32 Moffatt).
Week 11 Tuesday
Change Your Directions
Psalm 51:6-13
I trust we have taken that first step to freedom—“Consider your ways”—honestly. We come now to the next step:
(2) Change your directions. There is no use going on in a wrong attitude, for going farther in a wrong direction simply means that you have farther to come back to get to reality. Every step you take away from the Way wastes three steps: the one in going away, the one in coming back, and the one you might have been taking on the Way. The Christian mystic Rufus Moseley is reported to have said, “What’s the use in doing evil, for you have to eat humble pie every time in order to get straightened out.” What’s the use of justifying yourself when you have to humble yourself to get away from the justification?
You will probably be tempted to make the “change” indecisive by one of three things: (a) You may be prepared to change in some things but not in all things. Ananias and Sapphira gave up everything to be Christian except one thing: they “kept back part of the price” (Acts 5:2 KJV). That one part kept back was their undoing. It was said of Herod, “For Herod feared John, . . . and when he heard him, he did many things” (Mark 6:20 KJV). He did everything except one thing, give up the unlawful relationship with the woman. That one thing he held back was his undoing. You don’t have to have all the known diseases to die; one will kill you. (b) You may be prepared to change everything, but only partially. You may be prepared to turn around in everything but to turn around partially. You may cut down a habit instead of cutting it out. You may end up indecisively, leaving yourself neither here nor there. That will get you nowhere. All compromise will end in confusion. (c) You may be hindered from a clear-cut change by putting off the time of it. Augustine’s prayer, before he was converted, was, “O God, make me pure, but not yet.”* He wanted to be pure but wasn’t willing to bring it into the “now,” which meant that he really didn’t want it. For you do not want a thing unless you want it now.
We have now come to the second step, “Change your directions”—and change them, not in some things, and not in all things partially, and not at some future time; change everything fully, and do it now.
O Christ, I do not want to shirk, to dodge, to slur over, or to put things off. Help me, and help me now, to change completely my directions. For I cannot keep going—away from you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Give me a willing spirit as my strength” (Ps. 51:12 Moffatt).
*See The Confessions of St. Augustine, chapter 8.
Week 11 Wednesday
Connect with Christ
Acts 2:37-39
We come now to the third step:
(3) Connect with Christ. You need his grace and power, and you need to have life centered in him. You might give up sins and still fail to be a Christian. For the giving up of sins is not an end in itself; it is in order to get in saving touch with Christ. The Way is not negative. You are not a Christian because you don’t do this, that, and the other. You are a Christian when life is centered in Christ and not in yourself. You are emptying your hands to grasp a whole Christ.
Here you may miss your step by one of these things:
a) You may change but toward the wrong ones. Judas changed; he “repented himself,” went to the high priests, threw down the money, and said, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” They sneeringly answered, “What is that to us?” (Matthew 27:4). Sin doesn’t care. Judas repented toward the wrong direction. Had he gone to Jesus, thrown down the money, and said, “I have sinned,” we would have seen the most remarkable reconciliation and restoration in history. Some turn toward their sins and mourn in useless regret. No release comes from that. “Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.”*
b) You may connect with an institution and fail to get through to Christ. The church is wonderful as a place of worship and spiritual cultivation, provided you go beyond it to Christ. If your relationship to it makes you stop in self-satisfaction this side of a personal, saving relationship with him, it is a stumbling block. It leaves you at a halfway house this side of the Way.
c) You may stop at principles and miss the Person. You may say, “I’ll live by Christian principles,” and yet not get into a warm, living fellowship with Christ. Your spiritual life will be a tense striving to live principles instead of a trustful fellowship with a Person, issuing in relaxed spontaneity. Mahatma Gandhi took the principles of Christianity, but missed the person—Christ. Hence he sees “through a glass, darkly.”
Go beyond your sins, beyond the institution, beyond the principles, to the Person. Then religion will be to you a long falling in love.
O Christ, I see that I must not stop this side of you, for if I do, I stop this side of Life. Help me, then, to take the steps that lead to you. I come; with all my being I come. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Make me alive to follow thee, and turn mine eyes from cravings vain” (Ps. 119:37 Moffatt).
*From Omar Kayyam, The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam, Edward FitzGerald, trans.
Week 11 Thursday
Consent to Surrender
1 Thessalonians 5:19-24
We come now to the next step in our quest:
(4) Consent to surrender. Christ is Lord, not you. This is the crucial step. If you slur over this, then nothing will come out right. And the step is simple. Everyone goes into the shrine of the heart and bends the knee to something; something has the place of supreme allegiance. Some bow the knee to what others will say. They look around before they act. They don’t act; they only react. Their god is public opinion. “Everybody does it,” decides it for them. Others bend the knee to themselves. Self-interest is supreme. Their first reaction is, “How will that affect me?” Their god is self. We could name others: money, sex, ambition, fear—any one of these may be the center of allegiance. Everybody bends the knee to something. If so, I choose—I choose Christ. I am not God; he is! I whisper the inner consent, the consent of abdication. He commands; I obey. From this moment I do not belong to myself. I let go the one thing I own—myself. I am free from self-domination; I choose Christ-domination. I let go at the center.
Perhaps you are afraid to surrender to God. A young woman, very much a woman of this world, wanted to find God; and when I suggested surrender as the first step, she replied, “Why, if I did that, I would be at God’s mercy.” She thought God was looking for a chance to make her miserable. She did not understand that God’s will and her highest interest were one. God’s will is love in action—perfect love in action. As Rufus Moseley, a modern saint, puts it, “Jesus said to me, ‘I am perfect everything, and I give you perfect everything.’ ”* But we don’t believe that. We are afraid that the will of God lies along the line of the disagreeable.
A rich woman said, “I was afraid to surrender to God, for I was afraid he would drive my last cow out of the pasture.” But when she surrendered, she found God’s will was not only perfect love but perfect reasonableness. The cows were all there, only she and God were partners in raising them, and partners in their disposal. Life was a partnership, with God as Senior Partner. She was released and free and effective. She was relieved that she was no longer God.
O God, I lay down the burden of trying to be God. For I am not God. You are. So I yield to you the throne. I abdicate, now and forever. And am I relieved and released? I am. I’m grateful that I am now no longer centered in myself; I’m centered in you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I surrender nothing, except what was a trouble to me—unsurrendered.
*See J. Rufus Moseley, Perfect Everything (Evesham: Arthur James, 1949).
Week 11 Friday
Cease from Struggling
Philippians 4:6-7
We now come to the next step:
(5) Cease from struggling. Don’t try to do this yourself: let God do it. After having consented to surrender, you will be tempted to struggle and try instead of relax and trust and receive. “When I gave all trying over, simply trusting, I was blessed.” There is a profound truth in that simple statement. For as long as you are trying, you are on the basis of yourself: but the moment you begin to trust, you are on the basis of Christ; he becomes the center, not you.
“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood [you do not receive this new life through being born of Christian parents], nor of the will of the flesh [you do not receive it by whipping up your will, by trying], nor of the will of man [no person can bestow it on you through rite or ceremony or institution], but of God” (John l:12-13). It is quite clear. This new birth, which leads to a new life, is a gift accepted by faith, by those who “believed in his name.” But that belief is not mere intellectual assent; it is believing with your life, self-committal to Another. It means letting down the barriers of your inmost being and letting him come in and take over, take over as Sole Owner.
The two laws of life are receptivity and response. But first receptivity. Many reverse this and try to respond, to try, to do. No, first receive, receive by a quiet appropriating faith. Then you will respond naturally and out of the resources that receptivity brings. But if you try to respond before you receive, you will be responding out of emptiness. Your religious life will be strain, hence drain.
A theological student was tense and trying, striving hard to be good. His jaw was set, his nerves tense; he would be good at any cost. When I showed him the possibility of accepting the Gift, he seemed incredulous. But he relaxed and received, and rejoiced! He kept saying over and over, “Why it’s too good to be true! All my life I’ve been fighting; now I’m receiving!” He was free, leased, and happy, overflowingly so. Faith is pure receptivity.
O Christ, I come. In my hands no price I bring. I come claiming no worthiness. I have no right to anything, except grace. I have no right to that, except that you offer it to me. I take—humbly, joyously take. Now. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I accept what is my own—in you.
Week 11 Saturday
Concentrate on Acceptance
Romans 5:1-2, 17
We come to the next step:
(6) Concentrate on acceptance. God is making the offer to you; accept it. These last two steps are parts of one step—negative, cease from struggling; positive, concentrate on acceptance.
A woman who became an author of several remarkable books, but who up to the age of sixty had produced nothing, walked out of her spiritual emptiness into spiritual fullness through the story of the man with the withered hand. Jesus asked the man to do the impossible; he asked him to lift an arm that he couldn’t lift, a withered arm. But the man threw his wavering faith on the side of receptivity; he connected with the power of Christ by offering his willingness. He offered willingness; Christ supplied power. This woman did the same. By accepting faith, she raised her withered life to Christ.
A remarkable Indian woman, head of a prominent school, passed from emptiness and defeat to fullness and victory by taking simply and gladly a book that a friend offered. She then saw that, just as she had taken the proffered book, she could and would take the proffered gift of God. That moment she was released.
A man who has become a world leader was defeated and discouraged and about to give up his work in India. He was sick in soul and in body. Then the verse spoke to him, “Every one who drinks of this water shall thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water I that shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to everlasting life” (John 4:13-14). The man saw that this spring of water within was a gift, began to drink by faith, and from that moment was completely changed. “I haven’t had a discouraged or blue hour for thirty years,” he humbly and joyously testifies.
A dean of girls, inwardly tied up with fears and inhibitions and frustrations, sat reading these words, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). She quietly let their significance sink in; freedom was a gift which she could take. She did! “I felt like shouting it to the world,” she triumphantly said.
Faith is pure receptivity, alert receptivity, aggressive receptivity.
O Christ, I come to you believing that you are completely trustworthy. I cannot trust myself. I am not trusting my faith, but my faith is trusting you. I rest my case, and myself, with you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The Son makes free; he makes me free; he makes me free now.