Week 15 Sunday
Week 15 Sunday
Where Christ Is, Fear Is Not
Isaiah 41:10; 54:17
Howard Thurman says, “The religion of Jesus saves us from fear, hate, and deception—all strongholds of the weak.”*
A simple faith in Christ does deliver from fear. A young minister writes, “After I had written the last letter, I decided to make one more effort to combat my fears. My nervousness was almost unbearable. There have been times in my life when I have suffered bodily pain, but I never knew that one could feel so sick without pain in the body. I overcame it somewhat by struggling against it. But on New Year’s Eve, after a terrible night of suffering, I realized the futility of it all. Toward morning I prayed: ‘Here I am before you, Lord; take me from this earth or heal me, for I can’t go on this way any longer. Do with me as you like.’ As soon as I finished, a Voice seemed to say, ‘Perfect submission.’ It went through my whole being. As soon as I realized its meaning, my entire body and soul relaxed completely, and I lay there as one coming out of a terrible dream. It seemed as if heaven itself when I realized that I didn’t have to struggle with myself any longer. God can’t fail; therefore I can’t fail. My health is returning rapidly. There is very little nervousness, and my appetite is almost normal. Now I feel like ‘a new man in Christ Jesus.’ I have tried to discipline myself without surrender. This way is much easier: surrender first, then discipline.”
Surrender identified this minister with Christ, and where Christ is, fear is not. One of the saintliest persons I have ever known was a woman in Kentucky who, when I went to India, made a compact with me. She would pray, and I would work, and in the end we would divide the results! When she died, her husband said, “All my life I’ve been afraid of death, but seeing her going through death so triumphantly has cleansed away all fear of death from me.” Jesus has done just that. As you go into the future, remember:
The light of God surrounds us,
The love of God enfolds us,
The power of God protects us,
The presence of God watches over us,
Wherever we are, God is!**
O God, as long as I am in you, I am immune to all fear and anxiety. I am able to throw off fears as a healthy body throws off disease germs. In you I am alive and life-giving. In you I am on the offensive. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All my fears are dissolved in the great Quiet of God.
*Published source not located.
**James Dillet Freeman, “Prayer for Protection.” http://www.unity.org/tags/light-god-surrounds-me.
Week 15 Monday
From the Cellar to the Sky Parlor
Proverbs 29:25; Isaiah 51:12
We can be released from fear and anxiety. “Anxiety,” as someone has said, “is the measure of the distance between man and God.” When God comes, anxiety goes; when anxiety comes, God goes. A minister surrendered his anxieties and fears to God and then said, “I came back to my work, not with tight lips and clenched fists in determination to do better, but with the feeling of renewed strength.” He had settled down in God.
The following extracts of a letter from a PhD, a dean of girls, show a real victory over a lifelong, deep-rooted fear, “I built up a wall between me and the outside world. This attitude was resented by others and created a dislike in them. Added to this, I had an undue sense of duty or justice and demanded too much of myself and others. There was nothing lovable in my whole makeup. . . . I became ill from it all. . . . I began to read Abundant Living, and for the first time I glimpsed a life of freedom: I no longer needed to control fear, I could dispense with it. So I moved out of the dark, dank basement of my life, where rats of fear and nervous tension made life unbearable, and moved up into the sky parlor, where I threw open the windows of my soul and let God’s sunshine penetrate every recess of my being. . . . I could elaborate at length on the evident results: a joyous happiness I had never known, a loving, not critical, attitude toward others, loss of abnormal appetite, no further need of sleeping pills. Many people remark that I am like a different person. Causes of irritation have disappeared. The walls between me and the world have melted away. Restraint and diffidence are gone. I have lost undesirable inhibitions. I am walking in the Light!”
What God has done for this brilliant woman, God can do for you. Surrender your fears and trust God.
A nurse had a lifelong fear of dropping a teacup at a tea party. The more she fought it, the worse it became. She surrendered it to God and was released.
O Christ, so beset by tragedy and everything that produces fear, and yet so completely free from fear, come into my life and release every tension, every anxiety, and make me unafraid. I cooperate to the full—together we can meet anything, everything. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “So let each loyal heart in trouble pray to you: the floods may roar, but they will never reach him” (Ps. 32:6 Moffatt).
Week 15 Tuesday
Another Road with a Dead End—Resentments
1 John 2:9-11
Another way with a dead end—the way of resentments and hate.
On a large scale, we are taught to hate. A U.S. general speaking before an audience said, “At the close of this war we must hate, hate, hate.” And vigorous applause greeted the statement. Suppose we do just that, what will happen? We will go to pieces, for life is not made for hate. Here is an example of what happens when you live by hate: A U.S. correspondent was told by an assistant to Goebbels, “My work is very bad for me. The copy we send out is so depressing that the bureau personnel is always on edge; nervous breakdowns are common, and there have been cases of insanity. Hideous creatures gnaw at our souls continuously, and these, I am sure, are our own fantastic creations.” The mind, not made for hate, broke under it. Hate is not-the-way.
It is true that there is a legitimate anger that can serve life’s purposes. Paul says, “Be angry without sinning” (Eph. 4:26 CEB). If so, then you must be angry only at sin. Mark 3:5 says that Jesus “looked round at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.” Here anger was grief, a sense of being hurt at the attitudes the religious leaders were taking toward an unfortunate man. If your anger is grief at what is happening to others, it is right and Christian. If it is personal pique at what is happening to you, it is wrong and unchristian.
Charles Baudelaire says, “Hatred is a precious liquor, a poison more costly than that of the Borgias—for it is made with our blood, our health, our sleep, and the best part of our love!”* Hatred consumes the consumer. Elsie Robinson puts it truly thus, “But even if our rage seems fully justified, and our plans succeed beyond our blackest hope, we will never get even. For life doesn’t work that way. Instead of finding peace, renewed self-respect, and healing for our hurt, each attempt at revenge leaves us frustrated, cheated. Instead of punishing our enemies, we’ve simply played our own debasing game and sold ourselves down the river.”** Hate is not-the-way.
O Christ, we see that your way of love is our own way, the way for which we are made in the very structure of our beings. For love builds us and hate blasts us. Help us, then, to love, even the unlovely, and in so doing we shall become lovely ourselves. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Let all you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:14 Moffatt).
*Rosemary Lloyd, Charles Baudelaire (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), ebook, no page number.
**Published source unknown, but may be from Elsie Robinson, I Wanted Out! (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1934).
Week 15 Wednesday
The Physical Effects of Resentments
1 John 3:14-16
We must see the effects of anger and resentments upon us, physically, mentally, spiritually, socially. Take the physical effects of anger and resentments. The body is made for good will, not for ill will. Experiments have shown that when anger sets in, the process of digestion stops. In a group of mucous colitis cases, 85 percent of the patients confessed they had resentments—against employers, parents, life in general.
A woman said to me, “You’re right. I lived with my son-in-law for five years under great tension. At the end of five years, he had a stomach ulcer and I had arthritis. We separated, and we both got well.” The resentments threw a functional disturbance into the system. If it had stayed there long enough, it would have passed into structural disease.
When the word mother-in-law was repeated to a hypnotized patient, his stomach would secrete acid. He was not getting along well at home. Said one who knew, “Anger will produce varicose veins straight off.” A leading optometrist, knowing that anger disturbs the vision, made it a habit whenever he became angry to drive to the side of the road and stop until his anger cooled down. He knew that there is truth in the saying, “I was so angry I couldn’t see.” A man said to me with a sigh, “My sister-in-law is upsetting the digestion of the whole family.” Wherever there is an atmosphere of ill will, there you will find upset digestions. A young man was so angry with a garage mechanic who took his tire, slashed it with a knife, and said, “This tire is no good,” that he could have killed him. He nourished this resentment until he went into schizophrenia, split personality. The anger disrupted and divided his whole person, left him a wreck.
The headlines of a newspaper read, “Chronic grouch shoots, kills two partners, two women, and self.” The sad narrative ends with the words, “He nursed a chronic grudge.” A grudge within the soul throws everything out of balance; every organ is affected, especially the brain.
A banker would get up and leave the denominational conference every time an African American spoke. Later this banker committed suicide. He wouldn’t live with others, so he couldn’t live with himself.
O Christ, I see that if I do not live in love, I do not live—my life forces break down and go to pieces. Take from my heart all resentments, all ill will against everybody and everything, and help me to love. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall hate hate, and I shall love love.
Week 15 Thursday
Sentenced by God
1 John 4:7-11
We must continue to look at the effects of hate and resentments. Jesus said, “Whoever is angry with his brother without cause will be sentenced by God” (Matt. 5:22 Moffatt). Note, not by the Sanhedrin or the Gehenna fire, as the contrast shows, but by God in the silent processes of judgment: inner decay, frustration, conflict, neurosis. These are the modern sentences by God. If you give out hate, you will become hateful. If you are resentful, you will be resented. If you do not like people, you will not be liked by people. That is the sentence of God. And it is going on silently around us.
Howard Thurman says, “If we nourish within our hearts hate and fear and self-centeredness, we shall spend our days stumbling in the dark.”* Why? Well, hate and fear and self-centeredness are not-the-way. Life won’t work that way. As someone has said, “Revengefulness is a powerful poison. It will destroy you if you try to repress it, and it will destroy you if you express it in action.” Either as repression or as expression, it is poison.
Said a friend, “Resentments have divided our family. I have two brothers and two sisters. I am the only one who is friendly with all the others. Some of these resentments are twenty-five years old. Their lives lack a theme song. Love is the only way to keep a family together.” Love not only holds a family together; it holds the person together, it holds everything together. It is the Way.
A nurse wanted a night shift so she could attend the university in the day. The request was refused. The nurse entered the hospital a few days later as a patient, severe pain in her side, inability to eat, a temperature of 102 degrees. Nothing organically wrong could be found. After a few days’ rest, the night shift was granted her; she became well and did the night shift and the university work with no ill effects. The resentments had made her ill.
A man said to me, “Six men did me injuries. I refused to retaliate. And six men, I’m sorry to say, were buried in suicides’ graves.” But if it doesn’t eventuate in outer suicide, it certainly ends in suicide of the spirit. Everything good is slain by hate and revenge.
O Christ, I know that I cannot wrong another without wronging myself. I know that this fire of hate consumes me, consumes everything noble and fine within me. Quench it within me. Let no smoldering embers remain. I consent for the last spark within me to be put out. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I have a theme going, “I love everybody in God.”
*Published source not located.
Week 15 Friday
Living with a Stone in the Heart
Titus 3:2; I John 4:20-21
We must continue to see the effects of hate and revenge. A teacher said, “Whenever I went to see my sister, I was unwell. The reason was that I did not like my brother-in-law.” The dislike was dis-life. It threw disturbance into life.
A woman was resentful of the attitudes of her brother, who was a doctor. She asked him to take her blood pressure. It was much above normal. She went back home and surrendered her resentments to God, and her blood pressure returned to normal. Had she kept the resentments, her heart might have been affected permanently. A returned missionary said to me, “I was given up to die. The doctors said I could not live. I was holding resentments down in the depths of me. I surrendered them to God. I got well. Today the doctor says laughingly, ‘You are so healthy you are ready for hard labor.’”
Sometimes these resentments are buried deep in the subconscious and there work disruption. A banker wanted his wife never to have her name in the society column, for he wanted to be known as a conservative banker. She resented this role of being in the shadows. She became an invalid. Her husband spent a fortune on her. When the husband died, she left the invalid’s chair. She was no longer resentful at her role in life. Both had paid heavily for wrong attitudes—the one in money, the other in health, both in unhappiness.
A woman of seventy gave herself to Christ and was released from a lifelong inner burden. “I’ve lived with a stone in my heart all my life,” she said. “Ever since the day my mother said to me, ‘I hate you,’ because I stood in the way of her going to another man, I’ve had this stone of resentment within me. I’m grateful that at last it is gone.”
When I was in Mexico, I was told of a man who became so angry with his son that he turned green and died. The Mexicans believe that the bile had killed him. Whatever the scientific conclusions may be, we know that something within us dies when we allow hate and resentments to lodge within us. Good will is food; hate is poison. Good will is a forced option: if you take it you live; if you don’t you die.
O Christ, your ways are so inescapable. I cannot escape from them, for when I do, I escape from life, I am saved from salvation. Help me, then, to come to terms with you and to take your way—the way of love. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY:
How can hate have a part in me?
For I belong to a Man who died on a tree
For those who hated him.
Week 15 Saturday
The Dice Are Loaded against Enmities
John 15:11-14
Ensworth Reisner says, “The dice are loaded against enmities. The natural affinity of human nature is good will. Never bet on enmities, but always bet on love, for the dice are loaded against enmities in human relations.”* Anyone who is trying to play the game of life against love is a dead-sure loser.
Why is it that in human history, peace treaties have lasted only an average of two and one-half years? For one simple reason: they were founded on revenge. So the universe upset them. They broke down fighting against reality. You can have peace or revenge, but you cannot have both. They are incompatible. And all human history is a comment upon that.
A woman said to me, “I’ve found out the cause of my headaches: I get angry with my roommate. I confessed it to her, and my headaches left.” The world is a vast headache because it is a vast hate. We will never get rid of our world headache until we get rid of our hate.
A banker was chronically ill. He held resentments against the directors of the bank. He got out of the bank, gave up his resentments, and found to his amazement that he was walking along the street whistling. “Why, I’m well,” he said joyfully to himself. He was, for his resentments, with the consequent conflicts, were gone.
A pastor’s wife, whenever she became upset with people, would break out in a rash. We are now breaking out in a rash on a world scale—the rash of war and conflict. We break the law of love, and we break out into wars and outer conflicts. Our trouble is that we won’t live by love, so we live with sickness, individual and collective.
Some boys played a prank on a man with a long beard. While he was sleeping, they buried a piece of limburger cheese in his beard. When he awoke, he sniffed and said, “This room smells bad.” He went out into the open and said, “The whole world smells bad.” The source of the evil smell was in himself. The world smells bad to us because we have hatred within. Go out with love within and the world will be lovely. It will respond in love, for you are living with the grain of the universe; you are living by love.
O Christ, revelation of the heart of the universe, you have revea1ed love as the secret. We have lost that secret; hence we spend our days griping and groping. We will not see your way, and we cannot see ours. Help us to see your way that we may find ours. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Love shall be in my bosom, and then I shall find love everywhere.
*No published source was found for this quotation. This may be a quotation from Ensworth Reisner, a pastor at First Methodist Episcopal Church in Milwaukee 1943–73.