Week 13 Sunday
Week 13 Sunday
Roads with Dead Ends
Matthew 14:29-31; 1 John 4:18
We have seen in our quest that there is the Way and not-the-way, and we have marked out the steps in finding the Way. Having our feet upon the Way—firmly, I trust—we may now look at some roads with dead ends. For many people starting upon the Way get sidetracked into roads that lead nowhere. We shall look at sixteen roads that lead to the Never-Never Land. The signs that we shall put up over these roads that lead to dead ends are commandments, “Thou shalt not enter.” That sounds dogmatic and authoritarian, but in reality these commandments are simply the distilled experience of the race. We shall look at some ways humanity, by the method of trial and error, is finding out how not to live.
The first road with a dead end is Fear. When fear is spelled with a small f it may be contributive. For fear may have useful biological ends. Fear makes the frightened deer alert and fleet; it makes the surgeon skillful, seeing the dangers from doing the wrong thing; it makes the soul alert lest it hurt itself through wrong choices. Fear harnessed to constructive ends may be constructive. When we use fear and control it, then it is good. When fear uses us and controls us, then it is bad. When fear becomes Fear, then it becomes master and runs us into roads with dead ends. Then Fear becomes fearsome.
Fear has three things against it: (1) It is disease producing. (2) It is paralyzing to effort. (3) It is useless when it controls us.
If these three things are true, then to conquer fear is one of the first conquests of life. Without that conquest, we limp through life. I asked a doctor, “Is fear Enemy No. 1?” “No, it’s Enemy No. 1.5,” he replied. If it is Enemy No. 1, then we must face it first of all and get it out of the way before we can walk upon the Way with heads up and our hearts released and unafraid. The first word of the gospel was the voice of the angel, “Fear not.” The first words of Jesus after his resurrection were, “Have no fear!” (Matt. 28:10 Moffatt). Between that first word and the last word the constant endeavor of Jesus was to get people released from fear. We must learn his secret.
O Christ, how fearlessly you moved down through life, and yet your courage was not a screwed-up courage; it was calm and assured and unstrained. Give me that courage. I too would face life calm and assured. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Be strong, take heart, and do it; . . . the Eternal your God . . . is with you” (1 Chron. 28:20 Moffatt).
Week 13 Monday
Many Diseases Rooted in Fears
Psalm 55:4-6; Luke 12:32
We said yesterday that fear first of all is disease producing. Apparently we are made in our physical and mental makeup for faith and confidence and calm. Faith builds us up; fear tears us down. When Jesus said to people, “Fear not,” he was not imposing an exhortation upon life; he was exposing a necessity inherent in life. A teacher of psychology said to me, “I know that I wouldn’t have an ache or a pain in my body if I didn’t worry about my son. But I do worry about my son, so I am filled with aches and pains.” As a psychologist, she knew that worry and aches and pains are bound up together. She worried and wearied and knew the cause.
But sometimes the cause is not known. A college girl went to the doctor to find out the cause of her vomiting every morning. Bound by physica1 traditions, he could suggest nothing but the possibility of pregnancy. The real cause was a certain teacher who seemed to take a delight in humiliating students. The fear of that humiliation made her lose her breakfast every morning before that class. The doctor, belonging to the era when everything was rooted in the physical, did not inquire into the mental and spiritual upset at the base of the trouble.
A doctor, after an operation, couldn’t get well. He was about to become chronic. A pastor said to him, “Doctor, you’re worrying. You are afraid to die. You haven’t done anything with your life, so you’re afraid to face the future.” The doctor said, “Perhaps you are right. Pray for me.” The pastor did, and then and there the doctor surrendered his life to God. The next day the pastor, visiting him, saw the change. “You’re trying it, aren’t you?” The man got well and joined the church. Later be said, “If that man had not talked to me to get me to surrender to God, I would never have become well.” We know how fear and worry cause disease and how they hinder convalescence. Wounds do not heal, or heal slowly, if fear is at the center of life. Faith is healing and fear is hindering.
Release from fear is a physical necessity as well as a moral and spiritual necessity. It is a life necessity.
O Christ, I see that you have fashioned me for faith and confidence. Forgive me that I have allowed fear to invade me. For I know that faith is of you and fear is not of you. I therefore lay my fears at your feet. I surrender them. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Fear ties me up. Faith releases me. Therefore I choose faith.
Week 13 Tuesday
Many Diseases Are Functional
Proverbs 12:25; 17:22
We must pursue our consideration of the effects of fear upon the body. A woman was the chair of one of my meetings, but failed to appear. It turned out that the fear of presiding had made her physically ill. She went to bed instead of to the platform.
A letter in this morning’s mail begins this way: “ ‘For some years I have had trouble with fear. It began when I was in company of some of my friends and they began to speak of heart disease. As I tried to imagine what it would be like, my own heart began to beat very rapidly, and of course I thought there was something wrong. . . . I have heart skip, which is due to nervousness, but the doctor tells me that many people have it, that it is merely functional and not organic. Nevertheless, since then I have been ‘heart conscious.’ . . . I have had nervous sick spells, and my stomach seems to be tied up in a knot.”
Another letter in the same mail from a woman who finds herself unable to walk and puts her finger on her trouble in these words, “The real cause was fear—fear of not walking again, fear of losing my husband’s love, as he says he dislikes such people. Fear, fear, fear!”
Another fine woman said to me, “I get arthritis and pains in my shoulder, and I know it comes when I begin to worry and am upset.” She saw clearly the connection.
We must make it clear that we do not believe that all arthritis is functional and a result of wrong attitudes. There are structural diseases, and they are real; and there are contagious diseases, and they too are real. But the consensus of medical opinion is that from 40 to 60 percent of diseases are rooted in wrong attitudes of mind and spirit. The American Medical Association puts it about half rooted in the physical and half in the mental and spiritual. Apparently the ratio is growing. One doctor said that 85 percent of the patients that come to him don’t need medicine; they need to change their mental and spiritual attitudes. These people are passing on the sicknesses of their minds and souls to their bodies. They will get well only if they change their attitudes. States of mind can determine states of body.
O Christ, I see that when you tell me not to fear, you are not imposing a precept; you are exposing my deepest need. I would be loosed from all my fears. Help me to lay them at your feet. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: God has no fear. I am in God. Therefore I have no fear.
Week 13 Wednesday
Worry Is Sand in the Machinery
Psalm 31:10; Proverbs 15:13
As we are conquering the physical side of disease, we are being more and more defeated on the mental and spiritual side of disease. We know about life, but we don’t know how to live it. One doctor said to another, “If I could find a purely physical case of disease, I would begin to think I’m a doctor again.”
A woman told me that her husband suffered from gastric ulcers. “Does he worry?” I asked. “Worry?” she replied. “He doesn’t do anything else but! And then I got to worrying over his ulcers, and I had a nervous breakdown. And then he worried over my nervous breakdown and got worse.” There is a vicious circle—very vicious. It cannot be broken except by getting rid of the fear. A woodsman, apparently strong, was suffering from a stomach ulcer. When I asked him if he worried, he replied, “I guess that’s my trouble.” The worry produced an over-acidity, which in turn produced the ulcer.
A woman writes, “Every time I get upset and start to worry, my stomach hurts and I cannot eat for three or four days.” Another said, “I was worried sick.” The wife of a pastor got high blood pressure because of a trouble that came to her husband. It made her tense and anxious and sent up her blood pressure.
Of a fellow prisoner of war, a commanding officer wrote, “He hasn’t eaten anything for the last four days, evidently from worry. His bowels have moved only twice in twenty-two days.” Worry and fear may produce a diarrhea or constipation. Fear and worry upset the natural functioning of the digestive tract—about the first place they strike. “The digestive tract mirrors with fidelity every emotional state,” says a doctor.
Fear also upsets the mental processes. Wrote a woman, “I am so filled with fear that I cannot think. I’m losing my power of mind, for I react only emotionally and not rationally.” This woman could not think straight, for fear distorted and twisted everything.
Someone sent my book Abundant Living to a woman bedridden with arthritis. She saw that her arthritis was rooted in a fear of death. She surrendered that fear of death, and her arthritis left her. Today she is doing her own housework.
O Christ, you have come to remove all fears; remove mine. For I know I cannot be at my best, your best, unless I am delivered, completely delivered, from fear. I would be whole. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “He has no fear of evil tidings; he trusts the Eternal with a steady heart” (Ps. 112:7 Moffatt).
Week 13 Thursday
No Organ Immune
Psalm 103:3; Isaiah 33:24
We continue our study of the effect of fear and worry on the body. A nurse gives this case: A girl, married to an older man, came to a hospital complaining of pain in both sides. She was unable to tolerate any food, and whenever she attempted to eat, she had severe attacks of vomiting. It was discovered that she was unhappy with her life at home and did not wish to return. Her physical condition was rooted in a fear of home conditions.
John Evans says in the Calvary Evangel, October 1943, “In peptic ulcers, so common among white men between twenty and fifty, which someone has called the ‘Wound Stripe of Civilization’ we know that worry plays an important role.” He further says, “Mucous colitis, simple colitis, is nearly always a nervous phenomenon. For many years the treatment has been that of simple, easily digested diet and nerve sedatives. A study of these patients in one of the large general hospitals showed that 92 percent of them were harrowed by worry and emotional strain.”*
A man became ill on his way to work every day for two months. When questioned, he explained that his easygoing boss had been replaced just two months before by an efficiency expert. A change in his job cured him.
John Evans gives the striking case of a radio executive who had distressing stomach and intestinal symptoms for about six months. It was rooted in this incident: While waiting for a verdict on his case, he copied out four long words from the doctor’s records while the doctor was out of the room. He failed to ask the meaning of the words, but felt they meant an incurable condition. He carried that crumpled paper around with him. He was sick and miserable. When another doctor examined him and explained the meaning of the words, he went away relieved and had no further symptoms.
An optometrist says that fear can distort vision. “When one is frightened and there is a tension in the muscle of the eye, the fright will make it worse, and then the person is the more frightened.”
O God, my Lord, I see that to be well I must have confidence and faith. I would be well—every whit whole. Then help me to confidence and faith. I have little, but I offer what I have to you. Multiply it—beginning now. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Fear is paralysis. Faith is power. Therefore I let in faith.
*Published source unavailable.
Week 13 Friday
Fear Paralyzes
Deuteronomy 28:65-67; Matthew 25:25
We have seen first that fear is disease producing. It is also paralyzing to effort. No one can be at his or her best unless free from all fears. Jesus speaks of the seed that was “choked with worries”—and note that he puts the choking things in this order, “choked with worries, . . . money, . . . pleasures” (Luke 8:14 Moffatt). We would have reversed that order and would have said that the pleasures of sex and appetite—lust and drunkenness—and the love of money are the chief sources of arrested development. Jesus said worry is. And life bears him out. More people are mentally, spiritually, and physically arrested by fear and worry than by any other single thing. Of Peter it was said “He was afraid, and began to sink” (Matt. 14:30 Moffatt). Fear makes you sink.
When Jesus cured the paralytic, he saw that the paralysis was rooted in fear, which in turn was rooted in sin. So his first word was, “Courage, my son!” and his second was, “Your sins are forgiven” (Matt. 9:2 Moffatt). When he lifted the guilt, that lifted the fear, and that in turn lifted the paralysis.
Jesus said to his prostrate disciples, “Rise, have no fear” (Matt. 17:7 Moffatt). Fear always gets you down; faith always lifts you up.
The man who buried his talent brought back the unused talent and said, “I was afraid. And I hid my valuable coin in the ground. Here, you have what’s yours” (Matt. 25:25 CEB). His lifework was a hole in the ground! Fear did it.
Again, it was said of the disciples, “The disciples had gathered within closed doors for fear of the Jews” (John 20:19 Moffatt). Fear puts you behind closed doors—an ingrown person.
Joseph of Arimathaea was “a secret disciple—for fear of the Jews” (John 19:38 Moffatt). Fear always drives you underground. Fear brought to Joseph a dead Christ. It will do the same for us. If we live by fear, Christ will be dead within us.
Jesus said to the woman with the hemorrhage, “Courage, my daughter” (Matt. 9:22 Moffatt). Fear had made her tense, and that had made her bleed, and the more she bled the more she was afraid. Jesus turned her from fear to faith, and she was well.
O living Christ, our souls and minds and bodies have been bled empty with fear. Say the word of courage to me and help me to respond to your faith. I have little; give me yours. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Fear puts me behind closed doors. Faith throws open the doors and makes me free and unafraid.
Week 13 Saturday
Fear and Cold Feet
Psalm 62:1-2; Proverbs 3:23-24; 10:24
We saw yesterday that fear and worry cut down the personality and its effectiveness, sometimes as much as half. That leads us to the last observation: Fear is useless when it controls us. A woman who was a nervous wreck from fear and worry, when urged to surrender it all to God, replied, “Why, if I didn’t worry, things would go to pieces.” She actually felt that by her worrying, she was holding things together.
One pastor said, “I am a worry wart. I’ve worried myself sick about what might happen to my wife and daughter coming to this Ashram.” He saw the futility of worry and surrendered it to God; the lines of his face relaxed, and he was transformed—radiant.
A YMCA worker among boys said, “I was tense, holding up the world. Atlas and I together were holding it up. I was defending the Christian faith, arguing, struggling, trying to set everybody right. Every night I went to bed with my socks on, my circulation was so bad. Then I surrendered my whole tense self to God. I said I would follow truth wherever it led. Truth would have to defend itself; my business was to follow it. My tensions are all gone. My circulation is normal. I don’t wear socks at night. People say I’m not the same person. I’m not. Now God uses me.” God does, greatly. The man is no longer trying to do things for God; he is allowing God to do things in and through him. He used to be a tied-up bundle of nerves. Now he is a relaxed channel of God’s grace.
A woman came to our Ashram provided against every possible sickness. She had brought eight dollars’ worth* of medicines: sleeping powders, aspirin, a doctor’s prescription for asthma, and so on. She had stopped up every possible hole beforehand! Then she surrendered all this tense anxiety to God, and when she was about to leave, she said, “Now I’ll have to cart all this stuff back again. I haven’t needed a bit of it.” Had she not let go her tensions, turning them over to God, then she would have needed all these medicines. For if we will not take God’s way, we have to provide stopgaps. Worry and fear are useless, and worse.
O calm Christ, come into my heart and take out all useless fear and worry and let your calm and adequacy reign. For where you are, there is peace and power and poise. Where you are not, there is worry and disintegration. Come in, calm Christ; I consent. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Christ was always calm. I am in Christ. Therefore I am in the Eternal Calm.
*That would be roughly one hundred dollars in 2014.