Week 13 Sunday
Week 13 Sunday
Stunted Lives
Hebrews 5:11-14; 6:1-3
Spiritual freedom is not a characteristic of present-day Christianity. We are stiff, stilted, inwardly tied-up Christians. Unified spontaneity is not the thing we think about when we think of ourselves. “People in this place will insist on talking about God outside of church,” said a horrified English lady. God should be spoken about in churches, but the door should be closed in on God when we leave. God as the thought of our thought, the joy of our joy, the will of our will, and the life of our life—well, that isn’t our experience. Yes, but that is normal Christianity.
“I came to India as a medical missionary, so I would not have to speak about God,” said a lady describing her inwardly tied-up condition. She was free in her hands, but not in her heart. She could minister to the body, but deeper than that she was out of her depth. Later, when she was inwardly released, she joyously said, “I do believe I am getting vocal about God.”
The Japanese have a way of stunting forest trees so that they never grow higher than a couple of feet. They become potted plants, instead of forest giants. This is done by tying up the taproot, so that the tree lives off the surface roots. It remains a stunted thing.
Many of our lives are like that. We live off the surface roots, not from the depths. The surface roots go out into the cultural, educational, economic, social, political, and perhaps also the religious life of our churches. The roots draw sustenance from these, but our lives are stunted, for the taproot has not gone deep into God. Only as the taproot goes into the depths of the Divine and draws, every moment, its sustenance from those depths do we fully and truly live.
Are you a stunted spiritual being?
O Christ, who came to give us life and to give it abundantly, we pray you to help us to put our taproot into your resources and draw power and life and victory from you. Amen.
Week 13 Monday
Arrested Growth
Luke 12:16-21; 1 Corinthians 6:7-11; Ephesians 5:3, 5
Is there anything more pitiful than a child who never grows up? The body is that of a man or a woman, the mind that of a child. We are deeply touched by that tragedy. But are we as deeply moved by the sight of people who grow up in mind and body and remain absolutely undeveloped in soul, morally and spiritually undersized?
What are some of the things that inwardly tie up the taproot and arrest our growth as spiritual beings? I should name, first of all, possessiveness. In a competitive order, the mark of success is the amount of possessions we can accumulate around us. The Hindu who said the order of life is this, “Get on, get honor, get honest,” was speaking from the outlook of many.
The first thing is to “get on,” and that means get possessions. In an acquisitive society “honor” comes as a result of this getting on. To “get honest” is often an afterthought when we are compelled to make peace with God and our souls—souls now so stunted that we can hardly find them amid the accumulation of things.
We have become so intent on putting our surface roots into the economic life around us that we forget that they are only surface roots. True, they are necessary roots and are correct in place if the taproot goes deeper. But life fed upon them alone becomes a very shallow thing. When Jesus said, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15), he was not moralizing, but announcing simple fact.
We speak of “frozen assets.” Our truly “frozen assets” are the neglected spiritual resources, the real sources of power in our lives.
Many a person finds that in gaining the outer world the inner world is tied up. In gaining all, a greater all has been lost. Often possessiveness turns into inner powerlessness. The taproot is tied up.
O God our Lord, you know we have need of these things, and yet we allow these things to be first things. Save us from the secondary. Unloose our spiritual lives. Amen.
Week 13 Tuesday
Tied Up through Fear
Jeremiah 30:5; Matthew 25:25; Luke 21:6; Hebrews 2:15
Is anything quite as paralyzing as fear in human life? Of course there is biological fear that aids our efficiency. The other night, in traveling the Himalayan jungles, I surprised a deer feeding behind a great rock. Up across the mountain it bounded in great leaps—the Great Fear was upon it. This is the fear that tends to efficiency and fleetness.
As I walked up the steps to an operating room, the famous surgeon asked, “Are you afraid?” The question might have been turned toward him; for if he was not healthily afraid, I should hardly let him operate on me. The fear of cutting into wrong places would make him surgically efficient.
I have a fear of hurting my inner spiritual life; without this fear I would be careless. One must also have a fear of letting other people down spiritually. So when a temptation is presented, it is right to say: “I am afraid to do that; I would let other people down. Moreover, what would happen to my work?” This fear tends to spiritual survival and fitness.
But there are fears that paralyze. The wild chickens of the Himalayas are the progenitors of all the chickens of the world, so the scientists tell us. One of these was seen crouching in fear before a cobra’s overarching hood. Fear had paralyzed it. Some of our fears may be outer things that seem to stand over us like a cobra’s hood and make us afraid. They might be vague inward fears—poverty, sickness, death, failure, of what people will say, of attempting anything new, of certain people, of being laughed at—all these, and many more, tie up the inner Life.
How to deal with these fears must come later, but now we simply note that unless we can unbind the cords of fear from the taproot of our lives, we shall remain stunted beings.
O God, our Lord, these fears infest the inner life and keep us little. Release us from them. And help us to stand up unafraid because your hand is upon the center of our lives. Amen.
Week 13 Wednesday
Tied Up through Mental Pride
Psalm 44:15; Proverbs 16:18; Isaiah 24:10; John 8:32
The outer movements of life leave their influence upon our inner lives. The scientific movement has captured the minds of many and has left the inner life tied up. We have accepted the natural world and natural law to such an extent that we have become naturalized in nature. We are afraid that there are no other roots of life except these surface roots that go into the natural order. Is there a taproot and a Deeper Soil?
We are afraid to unbind the taproot completely and let it go into God, lest we seem to be unscientific. We fear being mentally out of fashion.
But surely it is scientific to live and to live abundantly. When Charles Steinmetz, the wizard of electricity, was asked what he thought would be the greatest discovery of the future, he unhesitatingly replied, “In the realm of the moral and social and spiritual.” He was right, for having turned to the outer laws, we must now turn to the inner.
Modern religious liberal thought has gained its altitudes; it must now find its depths. Much of it is shallow, feeding on the surface roots of modern culture. It cannot go further until it goes deeper.
It will mean a wrench for some of us to lay down our mental pride and confess to needs deeper than the mind, but we must do it if the inner life is to be freed. Laying down the pride of the mind will be the symbol of laying down the self. There must be a crucifixion of mental pride in order to attain to a resurrection of the spiritual life. You must become a little child, and that is scientific as well as Christian. In doing so you will find an inner release that will astonish you. You will then know you are truly alive—alive at the center.
O Christ, you have said that we should know the truth, and the truth should make us free. Help us to lay down our mental pride, that we may gain life. Amen.
Week 13 Thursday
Tied Up through Moral Defeat
Psalm 19:12; Galatians 5:13, 19-21, 24; 1 Timothy 1:19
It would be nice, more respectable, to say that we are inwardly tied up through mental difficulties, rather than through moral defeats. But respectable or not, this is where many of us will have to hold our attention if we are to get release. For many the problem is just plain sin.
It is not easy to confess that to ourselves, especially if we are religious persons. It is easier to keep up pretenses, easier and more deadly. Suppose we gossip about others, tear their reputations to pieces (doing it, of course, in the interests of the kingdom); suppose we are jealous and make light of the ability and work of a rival; suppose we hold resentments in the heart; suppose impure thoughts are allowed to gather in the mind; suppose we are dishonest in our dealings with others and ourselves; and suppose we exaggerate until it means lying and twisting things until it is untruth—will it be of any use to pretend that we are inwardly free?
We know that we are not free, and others know it. An evangelist puts his Bible on top of things in his trunk so that the customs inspector might see that he is religious and not search for undeclared articles on which duty is owed. Thereafter, when he speaks, his audience knows that he is inwardly bound, no matter how free he might try to be.
The first thing to do is to acknowledge to ourselves just what we are. If we have been a “Bible-plus-hidden-dutiable-articles” type of Christian, we must say so to ourselves. We must “exteriorate our rottenness,” first to ourselves, and then, if necessary, to others.
An editor of a respectable paper published in his paper that they had published false circulation figures. It was not easy, but it unbound the cords about his inner life. Now he is a free man. His taproot is in God!
O God, help us not wriggle or excuse, but in your sight confess our need and have these cords of defeat cut from our inner lives. For we would be free. Amen.
Week 13 Friday
Tied Up through Shyness and Self-consciousness
Jeremiah 1:6; Luke 1:74; 2 Timothy 1:3, 7-8
The spiritual life should be contagious. It should be winsome and winning. But many find it impossible to share their inner lives with others because they are shy and self-conscious. I put these two things together, for shyness is a species of self-consciousness. When it ties up the inner life and inhibits us from being natural as Christians, it must be looked on as bondage, as sin.
The claim of shyness and self-consciousness means that when an issue is raised, we refer it to ourselves in the constant state of self-reference, in other words, of self-centeredness. This is a hard saying, but it must be said. We must look on shyness and self-consciousness as bondage from which we are to find deliverance.
This is bondage. The speaker who becomes conscious of self and of what he or she is saying will probably stumble and not grip audiences. Only as we forget ourselves and become lost in the message will our words come with power and effect. I have often said to an interpreter: “Lose yourself in the message—don’t become word-conscious, or self-conscious, and the words will flow.” Self-consciousness ties up the flow of thoughts and words.
It is profoundly true in speaking that one who saves his or her life by thinking about it shall lose it, and one who loses it shall find it. I was once introduced by the principal of a Hindu college thus: “Now, students pay close attention to his gestures.” I could have thrown a book at him! It was a full five minutes before I could forget that introduction and get lost in my message.
When the center of life is shifted from oneself to Christ, this bondage of shyness drops away. Instead of constant self-reference there is constant Christ-reference. Instead of asking, “How will this affect me?” the question will be, “How will this affect Christ and his kingdom?” We are then delivered from these inner cords. The taproot goes into God.
O Christ, we thank you that we can be delivered from shyness and self-consciousness; this is a deliverance we need. Amen.
Week 13 Saturday
Tied Up by Sheer Emptiness
Psalm 102:4; Matthew 13:6; Luke 11:6; 13:6
Many of us are tied up, not so much by positive sins, but by the lack of anything spiritual to give. The cords that bind the inner life are a consciousness that we have nothing to contribute at that level.
The innate politeness of the Indian people makes them begin each letter with the assurance that everything is all right and going on beautifully. After that comes the recital of what sometimes are amazing troubles, accidents, quarrels, deaths, and what not. So I seldom read carefully the first paragraph of a letter, but look for the words, “Digar hal yih hai” (“The other condition is this”). In the same way, I am now spiritually habituated to say to myself and others, “After the preliminary word is over, what are the real facts? What is at the center? Stripped of all words and habitual phrases, what do we find?” Often we find a central emptiness.
Around this emptiness we build up vast activities to atone for that central lack. As one writer put it, “A dizzy whirl around a central emptiness.” Life cannot long resolve around emptiness. I once saw a sign on a railway engine: “Boiler Empty.” The engine was at a railway station and could go no farther until the boiler was filled. So we.
No amount of mere stirring of our emotions by sermons will do. To stir emptiness is futile. A little lass, having received her tea from her mother, began to stir it. She alternately stirred and sipped her tea. Presently, with tears of disappointment in her eyes, she said, “Mother, it won’t come sweet.” Her mother smilingly said, “I’m sorry, I must have forgotten the sugar.” No amount of stirring will ever make it sweet until the sugar is in it!
Our lives do not need stirring; they need filling. If Christ is not in the depths of our being, no amount of stirring will make life come sweet and victorious. With Christ there it is so, naturally and inevitably.
O Christ, you have come to give us not merely life, but to give it abundantly. We need that abundance. For life is not enough; we want full Life. Amen.