Week 31—Monday 2 Timothy 4:1-5
2 Timothy 4:1-5
“I AM NEVER TIRED IN MY WORK”
We saw yesterday that Paul had a built-in reactivator. But Wesley had it too. At eighty-two he declared: “Mr. Henry said ‘I bless God that I am never tired of my work, yet I am often tired in my work.’ By the blessing of God, I can say more: I am never tired in my work. From the beginning of the day or the week or the year to the end I do not know what weariness means. I am never weary of writing or preaching, or traveling; but am just as fresh at the end as at the beginning. Thus it is with me today, and I take no thought of to-morrow.”
That passage was open for me on my desk, opened by my son-in-law, Bishop J. K. Mathews, when I returned from a six-month evangelistic tour abroad. He said he opened it for me, for it reminded him of me, that I could say that too. I could, humbly and gratefully. I have been speaking from two to five times a day, sometimes more, for half a century, and taking no vacations except to write on a book, and yet, at seventy-eight I find no sense of tiredness at all. At this writing I am in Cochin, India, having just come out of the Mar Thoma Convention, where for a week the crowds would go up to fifty thousand, and beyond; and yet, speaking to them up to four times a day, I find no sense of weariness at the close at all. After speaking to the crowds, you do not walk away from them—they crowd your veranda, peep through the curtains, and throng around you everywhere. But no strain, no drain! There is the built-in reactivator, the Holy Spirit, source of life and strength and renewal.
The Holy Spirit within makes actual what Jesus made possible. The Spirit is the applied edge of redemption—redemption to body, mind, and spirit, to the total person. Without the Holy Spirit you are the victim of your circumstances; with the Holy Spirit within you are on top of your circumstances. The principle and power of renewal is working within you every moment.
O Blessed Holy Spirit, you have made what is implicit in Jesus, explicit in us. you not only take the things of Christ and show them unto us, you make them available for us. Make his Everything available to me today! Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I will live today in Regeneration, Recuperation, Renewal, Revival.