Week 27 Sunday
Week 27 Sunday
In Which We Share Needs
John 21:15-20; 1 John 1:7, 9
After asking ourselves searching questions, this week we are taking the next step, sharing the open frankness of those who have “exteriorated their decays.”
Each summer groups come together, not merely to find the answer but to be the answer. They try to become the kind of society they would like to see universalized—the kingdom of God in miniature. It is imperfect, of course, because made up of imperfect people, but it is in some real way being the new order. They begin by letting down barriers between classes in society, between races, between those who work with their hands and those who do not, between the titled and the titleless, between the leaders and the led; and, most of all, they let down the personal barriers within one—barriers of fears, inhibitions, inferiorities, superiorities, moral conflicts, and guilts.
We ask: Why have you come? What do you want? What is your deepest need? And we spend hours simply talking about our needs. This doesn’t become morbid introspection, for we pass straight on from seeing the need to seeking the solution. Within the group, we do not have an inner group who have attained, working on those who have not. We are all in a fellowship of need, and God works on us all. This saves us from spiritual Pharisaism.
These are some of the things men and women, lay and clerical, young and old, said were their needs: (1) “I have come here to get back on a right footing with God.” (2) “I want to know how to live the abundant Christian life.” (3) “I am a victim of my own ego.” (4) “As a human race, we have flopped. I’d like to get a wallop out of life as Francis of Assisi did.” (5) “I am just stale.” (6) “I am a church member without power.” (7) “I want to get rid of myself.” (8) “I am the pastor of a great church. There is the temptation to pride. My official board has given me full rein. But there is no spiritual power. The altar is no longer filled with penitence. I’m barren.” (9) “I am a native African. I came to America to get spiritual power. But I have a bitterness. I have been losing since I came.” (10) “I am a waiting skeleton spiritually.”
O God, you see our needs, and seeing them, you do not despise us; you love us still. Love me still. Love me out of my barrenness into your fullness, out of myself into yourself. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: God is not baring my needs to shame me, but to save me.
Week 27 Monday
“To Get Rid of the Sense of Futility”
Job 23:3; Proverbs 28:13; Isaiah 1:18-20
We continue the statements of needs as told to us in our group:
(11) “I am an African American and have come to live with a group that it is so easy to hate if you live where I live.” (12) “I have had to pump my own spiritual well so hard in preaching. I want to preach from the overflow. I wonder how people can come to hear me week after week.” (13) “I want to have the stops taken out.” (14) “Four fifths of my life, the subconscious is not surrendered, hence I have no power.” (15) “You would think that in one as old I am, the self would sit down discouraged in being beaten down, but I don’t find it so.” (16) “I have come here to hang myself.” (17) “To get rid of physical, moral, and mental tensions. I want to get rid of fear.” (18) “The shrine is gone, and I want it back.” (19) “I am a pastor, and my job has me licked.” (20) “I belong to the Order of the Quaking Knees.” (21) “I come from the people who are always telling what’s wrong with their husbands.” (22) “I have a large ego that needs to be pulverized.” (23) “I am shallow, and I need to be deepened.” (24) “I have the same conflicts in me that I find in the world situation.” (25) “I have been pushed around all my life.” (26) “To get rid of a sense of futility.” (27) “I want God to save me from talkativeness. This is the first time I’ve ever confessed it.” (28) “I’ve been like a jellyfish, just floating around with no direction.” (29) “I’ve been selfish in my unselfishness.” (30) “I want to make my ideas walk.” (31) “My faith in a new world is tottering.” (32) “My Christian foundations have been rocking.” (33) “I want freedom from inner conflicts, tensions. I stumble over myself.” (34) “I want the dimness of my soul taken away.” (35) “I would like to lose the negative charge of self for the positive charge of Christ.” (36) “I am the head of a New Thought movement, but I’ve been on the basis of myself. I’ve told people what to do, but from the basis of myself.” (37) “I’m in hell, my wife is in hell, our home is hell, and it looks as though we are going to stay there.” (38) “As a pastor, I thought my trouble was in the church, and I see it is in me.”
O God, we thank you for this basic honesty. We know that when we get a good look at ourselves, we may then get a good look at you. For as we see you, really see you, our chains fall off and we are free. Make me free, wholly free. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall be free from all subterfuge, all trimming, all falsity—that I may be free indeed.
Week 27 Tuesday
In Which We Share Our Victory
Psalm 66:16-20
When people expressed these needs, did anything happen? Did release come? To some, no. They couldn’t get beyond themselves. But they were very few. For the most part, those who honestly faced their needs and turned them over to God found release and power and were transformed.
Listen to some of them: (1) “I came here with a chip on my shoulder, cynical, an exhibitionist, but I’ve found Christ and I’m released and happy.” (2) “I have been anti-; I have been against things, fighting all the time. Now I see I can’t live that way. I’ve learned how to be positive and constructive.” (3) “I haven’t preached on being sweet-tempered, for my wife was always present. But now I’ve buried my temper in the lake.” (4) “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one. I’ve seen a sermon here and now I’m going to be one.” (5) “I feel very young again and I’m ready to go.” (6) “I was about to give up, everything was so dark, but I surrendered it all to God, and I am free from this inner discouragement.” (7) “My husband is so good. I have lived with him for twenty-three years and can tell you that his every instinct is Christian—courteous, kind, self-forgetting, noble. He is a lawyer, and he carries the Sermon on the Mount into his profession. He could not do an unchristian act if he tried.” (8) “People said I shouldn’t come here. I should go to a museum! I’ve been a fossilized soul. But now my eye is single, and my whole body is full of light.” (9) “I have learned here not only the peace that passeth understanding but misunderstanding.” (10) “I left my fears, my worries, and my self-consciousness down at the lake.” (11) “I’ve missed ecclesiastical phrases. There has been no sense of race, of class, no pious phrases. It’s all been so natural. I’ve discovered the naturalness of the Christian way.” (12) “My problem has not been solved; in this atmosphere it has been dissolved.” (13) “If this spirit we have here were universalized, we would have the kingdom of God on earth.” (14) “I thought I had lost the new life, and I had only mislaid it.”
O Christ, we thank you that you are the answer. For when we touch you, then the answer comes. We thank you that you are open to the approach of need. No one need turn away empty. I thank you, thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Freely have I received, freely now must I give—to everybody, everywhere.
Week 27 Wednesday
“I Woke Up Grinning”
Acts 22:6-16
We continue these glorious statements from glad and released hearts:
(15) “I came up here with a jumping heart. I surrendered it to God, and I’m going back well.” (16) “I have been attending conferences all my life. They fall down. This one doesn’t, for it is a colony of heaven.” (17) “I’ve lived on the doorstep of Abundant Living, not in the living room. Now I’ve moved in.” (18) “I’ve been a lover of causes instead of a lover of people. I’ve learned now to love people as well as causes.” (19) “I never knew what prayer was. It is a great thing to talk with God instead of praying to him.” (20) “I came here for repose and found something better—security.” (21) “I’m leaving my cigarettes behind me.” (22) “I’ve been serving my people a diet of thin soup. I’ve been serving myself to them, throwing myself at them. Hence their vitality got very low. I’m taking something more than myself back to them—I’m taking God.” (23) “I never thought I would see the gospel lived out in society, but I have—here.” (24) “God and I can now go through anything.” (25) “My resentments have all been dissolved into thin air, they’re gone.” (26) “I’ve been a watch with a broken mainspring. It’s mended and I’m going again.” (27) “Here is the least strain of any group I’ve ever been in. Even the cat moves around so relaxed. The children do too.” (28) “I’ve been directing God, and now God has begun directing me.” (29) “I wanted to do something for God, now I want God to do something for me and through me.” (30) “I was at war—with myself. I surrendered to God and the war was over.” (31) “I lost all my property, but now I feel it’s all right. I won’t have to pay any taxes on it.” (32) “The most important thing to me has been this: Don’t seek a solution, be a solution. I’m going back to be a solution.” (33) “A great tension has been let down. All my life I’ve thought I had to succeed. I’ve been in bondage to success. Now I see that my one business is to be true to the highest I know—success and failure are in the hands of God.” (34) “This morning for the first time I woke up grinning.”
O Christ, you put laughter in our hearts. For you free us from inhibiting fear and self-preoccupation. You make us free from everything, so we are afraid of nothing. Help me to share the good news of freedom, of freedom. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “If the Son sets you free, you will be really free” (John 8:36 Moffatt).
Week 27 Thursday
“My Children Will Have a New Mother”
Romans 8:1-2, 14-17
We continue the glowing words from glad hearts: (35) “My children will have a new mother. I talk too much. Here I’ve learned how to be silent.” (36) “This is a pattern that fits everybody. I know that the one who will get the most out of this will be my mother, for she has to live with me.” (37) “I’ve come here to get in touch with convincing Christians. I’ve had a bigger dose than I dreamed of. Laughing is so easy here.”
(38) “I have had phlebitis, but I’ve found myself going up the steps two at a time.” (39) “This has been an eye-opener, mind-opener, soul-opener. Everything has been so natural that it has been inevitable.” (40) “This is the place where we played like we were in heaven—and were!” (41) “I was pleasure bent, but didn’t expect to have a good time. The good time found me.” (42) “You certainly are kind, being white folks.” (43) “I’ve received here my greatest spiritual renewal.” (44) “Here I’ve undergone a spiritual face lifting.” (45) “I felt my business in life was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I was not only under the juniper tree, I brought the juniper tree with me. Now I’m through with the religion of a juniper tree.” (46) “This experience has put an exclamation point behind every Christian duty. It’s been a week of spiritual perception.”
(47) “I have been learning how to spell J-o-y, Jesus first, others next, yourself last.” (48) “All my life I’ve had a sore spot, and God has healed it.” (49) “I’m being unpaganized.” (50) “I have had such fellowship here that I’ll be liable to say to the people in the subway, ‘Hello, brother,’ ‘Hello, sister.’ ” (51) “I have hold of a growing answer.” (52) “I’ll have to change the tone of my voice, for it hasn’t had much love in it.” (53) “I have had fears, and I got rid of them, and then I felt afraid that I wasn’t afraid!” (54) “I thought I was a sponge being filled up, but I saw I was filled with myself.” (55) “I’ve been a crank among many wheels. But now I am different.” (56) “I’ve come from a church trying to be God, doing everything for itself. Now I have surrendered and am released and happy.”
O God, we thank you that those who knock at the gates of life find that it opens to them. For they would not have sought you unless in a measure they had found you. We thank you that the lesser finding is to get us to seek the larger finding. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Everyone who asks, receives. Whoever seeks, find. To everyone who knocks, the door is opened” (Luke 11:10 CEB).
Week 27 Friday
“In Someone Else”
Romans 15:13, 18, 30
This week has been a week of testimonies—people telling out of glad hearts what it meant to them when they tried the Way. So far the responses have all been out of our Ashram groups. Now we must go farther afield and gather up statements from here and there.
A father was gruff and apparently unsympathetic. When his two girls talked of becoming Christians and joining the church, and they came to him to talk it over, he gruffly said, “Well, if you do get converted, be sure you’re converted like your mother.” Hers was real.
A girl who had gone through a very tragic experience—nothing worse could have happened to her—surrendered herself and her tragedy to God, and with a radiant face said, “I really found God last night, and it’s all different now. My tragedy is dissolved.”
A teacher said this, “I wanted to test your statement, that when one is awakened spiritually he is awakened mentally, becomes more mentally alert. My class was dull, retarded a year or more, ‘strange-looking,’ said other teachers. I got my pupils to listen to God ten minutes each day. They began to be changed morally and spiritually, and their faces changed. ‘Never saw such a change in faces,’ said the same teachers.” The Way is the way of the shining face.
A college professor writes, “As you closed your address, God’s voice spoke clearly to me: ‘Gertrude, I’m going to touch your back at this time and you will never have any more trouble with it.’ Something so wonderful was experienced at that moment that I was afraid to move. Asking God for healing had never occurred to me. . . . My healing led to an intimacy with God’s unlimited interest in all phases of living. I have tried to pass this on to others. One young minister was healed of stuttering in one of my speech classes.”
A brilliant young woman was persuaded to take a class of boys, though she herself was not a professing Christian. She worried about it, was persuaded to give herself to Christ, and did. She won all nine boys to Christ. On the Sunday they made their profession, a friend said to her, “Bess, I’d give my life to do what you’ve done.” Bess replied, “That’s what it takes, but it’s worth it.”
O Christ, I thank you that you have touched others into wholeness. Now touch me. For I am in the same need. I bring to you nothing less than myself. I withhold nothing. Take me, make me what I ought to be. You have my full consent. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Now in the Lord you are light; lead the life of those who are children of the light” (Eph. 5:8 Moffatt).
Week 27 Saturday
“He’s Got the World by the Tail”
1 John 5:1-5
A great many people think that the Way is hard. The fact is, the way of transgression is hard.
A young man prayed, “O God, here I am. You know all about me. You know my good points and my bad points. I know what you did for Dad, and I know what you did for Quinten Warner. If you can do anything for me, it’s about time.” The time was then—he found.
You don’t have to fight yourself and your sins. Change the inner climate by surrender to love, and these things will drop away. I was on board an ice- and snow-covered ship about to leave New York. Why didn’t they clean it off? They didn’t. Two days later, the Gulf Stream melted it all away. The changed climate did what fighting the ice and snow would not do. Change your inner climate.
The vice president of a company was irritable, sick, and hadn’t a real friend in the world. “I have no philosophy of life,” he said sadly. He began reading Is the Kingdom of God Realism? and got a philosophy of life, in fact, got life itself. A friend described him thus, “He’s got the world by the tail.”
A young man said in a meeting for witnessing, “God said to me, ‘My child, you need a good going-over; and, boy, I’ve got it.” But God only cleansed away the rubbish to give him the real. “There is much rubbish; we are not able to work on the wall” (Neh. 4:10). When the rubbish was taken away, walls began to rise.
Starr Daily is probably the outstanding remade criminal in the United States. He spent twenty years in the underworld, a hardened criminal. In prison he lived on hate in solitary confinement. In response to his rebellion, he was strung up twelve hours a day for fifteen days, his feet and hands in rings. He was only skin and bones. In that condition, Christ met him, and the glory poured over him and through him. His whole being was awakened and changed. He was afraid they would let him out of the cell, afraid this would fade. His keepers were awed, slipped things to him from the officers’ table. He said he couldn’t take them, it would be dishonest. They had to let a man like that out. His brain was awakened, and he has written a number of books. He is now a glowing, contributing, useful Christian citizen.*
O Christ, I know that the Way works and that nothing else will work. I know that life approves of this Way. I too approve and give my life entirely and wholly to it. For what can I withhold? Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Anything that is illuminated turns into light” (Eph. 5:13 Moffatt).
*See Starr Daily, Love Can Open Prison Doors (Los Angeles: DeVorss & Co., 1934).