Week 15 Sunday
Week 15 Sunday
How Shall I Enter?
Acts 2:37-39; Romans 7:18-20; 8:13
The most delicate moment for many of us now comes as we approach the question of how we may enter the victorious life. We must approach it with a prayer upon our lips and in our hearts.
First of all, there is a difference now in your coming. At first, you came as a stranger and a penitent rebel, knocking at the door for admission. Now you are a child within that home, seeking a deeper and fuller correspondence to the Spirit of the home. You are not asking for admission, but for adjustment. You are asking that everything may be taken out of you that clashes with the Spirit of the home. You can now come with a sense of confidence and assurance, born out of contact with the Lord, that if you meet the conditions, God will meet you more than halfway. The barriers are all within us, not in God.
First, we must look at what we are not to do. Don’t undertake to gain the victorious life by fighting your individual sins. The way into victory is not in that direction. And yet that is the first thing many people think about: “I’ll put up a stiff fight against my sins.” Don’t; you’ll lose. For when you fight your individual sins, you are compelled to center your attention on those sins. Now, it is a law of the mind that whatever gets your attention gets you. If, therefore, your sins get your attention, even though it may be a fighting attention you give, then your sins will get you. We fall into the very sins we are fighting.
Many a person is astonished to find that while praying against sins and earnestly fighting them, the person succumbs to them. “Why did God let me down when I was fighting so hard against my sins?” asked a perplexed soul. Later she found the way and her perplexity vanished. She had been on the wrong track.
O Christ, take us by the hand and lead us at this hour, for without your guidance we stumble and lose the way. For we must find the way, we simply must. For we can live no longer without perfect adjustment to you. Amen.
Week 15 Monday
Things to Avoid in Seeking
Romans 8:5-10; 2 Corinthians 10:5
Yesterday we said that the first mistake we must avoid in seeking to enter the victorious life is not to try to enter by fighting our individual sins. We must pursue this a little further. Suppose you are fighting sin at the place of sex. In fighting that sin you have to concentrate your attention upon it. The result is the imagination is aroused. A battle then ensues between the imagination and the will. Now, modern psychologists tell us that in any battle between the imagination and the will, the imagination always wins. So we go where imagination goes. We fall into sex sin.
The imagination must be called away from our sins and centered elsewhere. In other words, the imagination must be centered on Christ. But the imagination cannot and will not be centered there unless we make a complete surrender to Christ. For the imagination goes where its supreme treasure is. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21). Your treasure must be in Christ—wholly and supremely there. If so, your imagination will be there also. So the problem is not merely the shifting of the imagination; it is shifting the place of your supreme treasure, shifting your very life. You must surrender.
There can be no love between persons unless there is natural inward surrender. When one withholds the inmost being from the other, there is no love. So there can be no complete love between you and Christ until there is a complete surrender to him. When the complete surrender takes place, then love springs up. It begins to burn. The imagination follows. Since love is centered here, the imagination is also centered here. It now fights with the will and not against it. There is victory.
The problem, then, is to shift that imagination. That can be done only by shifting the center of life itself from self to Christ.
O Christ, I would have you as the home of my imagination. I would always be centered on you. In order to do so I will surrender to you. Amen.
Week 15 Tuesday
Further Things to Avoid
Isaiah 44:18-21; Jeremiah 14:10; 23:17; Hebrews 12:1-2
As we have seen the futility in trying to fight with our individual sins, we must now look at another mistake. Don’t try to forget your sins. This is to invite defeat again. For the very effort made in trying to forget will call the matter back into mind. To try to forget is to remember.
A fakir (religious ascetic) came to an Indian village, declaring he could make gold. The villagers gathered around him as he poured water in a tub, and then putting some coloring matter into it, began to stir it with a stick and to repeat mantras. When their attention was diverted, he let some gold nuggets slip down the stick. He poured off the water and there was the gold at the bottom! The villagers’ eyes bulged. The money-lender offered five hundred rupees for the formula. The fakir explained minutely how to make it, and then added, “But you must not think of a red-faced monkey as you stir, or the gold won’t come.” The money-lender promised to remember what he was to forget. But, try as hard as he would, the red-faced monkey was there before him, spoiling everything. The gold would not come!
As you try to forget your sins, they will be before you all the more. The only way to forget your sins is to have your attention centered elsewhere. But again, your attention cannot go unless you go. This again points to self-surrender. This will produce what Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers termed “the expulsive power of a new affection.” Your sins will be fully forgotten, because Christ is fully remembered.
Perhaps one word of possible correction is necessary. Sometimes we do succeed by effort to get sins out of the mind, but this means that they have gone into the subconscious mind, where they work havoc in the life. Whether we succeed in forgetting or call the sin more vividly back into the mind, in either case there is defeat and disaster.
O Christ, as we clear these things from the pathway that leads to you, our hearts become the more eager to arrive at perfect victory. Lead us, we follow. Amen.
Week 15 Wednesday
Whipping Up the Will
Matthew 7:17; Romans 3:21-22, 27-28
There is one more thing we must look at before we get to grips with the center of our problem. There are many who feel that the problem will be solved, and they will go into victorious living, if they only try a little harder. So they proceed to whip up the will.
Much of our present-day Christianity is founded on this idea. So our preaching partakes of that note. We lay a demand on the souls of our people; our gospel is a demand. But somehow, after a few days, the will relaxes and we are where we were. It doesn’t work. Why? The reason is that when we say, “I’ll try,” we are still on the basis of self. It is self-effort. Before the self can put forth any real effort it must be released from its inner conflicting desires. When we say, “I’ll trust,” we shift the basis from self to Christ. Our attitude is no longer self-centered, but Christ-centered. Reinhold Niebuhr rightly says, “The moral fruits of religion are not the result of conscious effort to achieve them. Merely taking thought cannot strengthen their will. . . . What men are able to will depends not upon the strength of their willing but upon the strength which enters their will. . . . Deeds of love are not the specific acts of the will.”* Since the will is the self as it is organized at that particular moment acting against recalcitrant impulses, the strength of the will is in direct proportion to the strength of the self. This strength depends upon the unity of the self.
But if the self is divided? Then the will is weak. The problem, then, is not whipping up the will but unifying the self. But that self cannot be unified until it comes under the control—the complete control—of the power of Christ.
O Christ, we have tried to reach our goals by urging our wills forward, but our wills are weak because we are weak. Unite and strengthen us at the center of our being. Then we shall reach our goals. Amen.
* An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Seabury Press, 1935), 220.
Week 15 Thursday
The Crux of the Problem
Luke 9:23-24; Ephesians 4:22-24
We have seen that we cannot merely try to fight our sins, or forget our sins, or whip up our wills. We must go deeper, for our outer sins are rooted in something deeper. Just as my fingers are rooted in the palm of my hand, so my individual sins are rooted in the unsurrendered self. It is the thought of self-advantage in some form or other that lies at the root of our sins. Why do we lie and steal? We think the self will be protected or advantaged. Why do we quarrel with others? Because true self has been crossed. Why are we envious? Because we are afraid that someone will get ahead of the self. Why do we give way to sex passion? Because we think the self will thereby find pleasure. Alfred Adler is profoundly right when he says the ego-urge is our prime difficulty in life and is at the basis of most of our unhappiness. The problem of victorious living centers, then, in one thing chiefly: self-surrender.
But, you ask, didn’t I do that in conversion? Yes, you did in a measure. But not wholly. Now you see deeper depths that must be surrendered. The conscious mind was given to Christ in conversion, now the subconscious mind, the center of our divisions and inner clashes, must be laid at his feet as well. These basic instincts must come under his control, and they must be cleansed. The self we now give is a fuller self, both conscious and subconscious, for we want a fuller salvation—a complete salvation.
The difference between a quack and a real doctor is this: a quack doctor treats symptoms, a real doctor treats diseases. Christ now asks that we allow him not merely to treat the individual sins, the symptoms of a deeper malady, but the very root, the self.
That self must be crucified in order to rise again. His finger is on our problem.
O Christ, you have touched the seat of my disease. I know it. Help me not to wince or be afraid, or ask for halfway measures. Help me to surrender all. Amen.
Week 15 Friday
Letting That Last Thing Go
Matthew 10:37-39; Acts 5:1-2
The last thing we want to let go is just ourselves. It is the one and only thing we really own. And now Christ with imperious demand asks for that last one thing. It is at this place that the real battle is joined. All else have been skirmishes.
Jesus said with awful decisiveness, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters—yes, and one’s own life—cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26 CEB). Our families and ourselves must be placed on the altar. This does not mean that we should necessarily leave the family. Here, to “hate” means to “love less,” according to the parallel passage in Matthew 10:37.
A lighted candle casts a shadow when it is put before an electric light. Thus the lesser loves, while really light, cast a shadow when this all-consuming Love makes its demand upon the human spirit. These loves are not to be abandoned; they are to be surrendered. You still live with yourself even after you surrender yourself, so you may still live with your family after you surrender them.
Now, the interesting thing to note is that the “life,” or the self, was the last thing mentioned: “yes, and one’s own life.” Why is that last? Because it is the last thing we ever give up. The missionary gives up home and loved ones to go to another land—everything except self. The missionary finds the inner self touchy over position, place, and power. The minister sacrifices a great deal to go into the ministry—everything except the minister. A minister preaches the gospel with a great deal of vanity and personal ambition mixed up in it. Laypeople give up much to follow Christ, but find themselves easily offended in the very following of Christ. In each case the self is still there. It must be surrendered.
O Christ, I come to you to help me in this central thing. I am hardly willing to let go that last thing, but I am willing to be made willing. Amen.
Week 15 Saturday
Compromises
Matthew 19:22; James 3:11-12
We saw yesterday that we were up against the demand for self-surrender. This is the first step, and it must be taken. But we do not let go without a struggle. The whole of the biological urge is against this. For this demand reverses the process of nature. It is an invasion of the rights of self-assertion. It is true that this demand means the possibility of self-assertion on a higher level, but the lower urges do not understand this and will resist it. The urges of the ages will fight this hour. They will rise up like the elemental Peter and say to Jesus: “God forbid, Lord! This won’t happen to you” (Matt. 16:22 CEB). This is to think as “humans” think, said Jesus. When you are about to take the step that will make you a human “plus,’’ then the old, elemental human of the ages will rise up within you and try to pull you back into elemental desires and urges and will plead for the status quo, or suggest compromises. If the elemental human cannot conquer by denial, it will try to conquer by dividing. Compromises ensue.
A patriot, making a speech and glowing with patriotic feeling, said, “For the sake of my country I am willing to sacrifice my old mother—yes, I am willing to sacrifice my children, and, if necessary, I am willing to sacrifice my own self.” He was last! He was willing to let the old mother and the children go first! We smile at the “patriot,’’ but in him we see ourselves. The self presents compromises, not quite so baldly, but it does so to save itself. When Jacob was about to meet the angered Esau, he sent presents before him, hoping thereby to save himself (see Gen. 32). There is much of Jacob in us!
That recalcitrant Jacob within us must be subdued and changed into Israel, even if it means wrestling until the break of day.
O Christ, I come to you. Help me not to blur this hour by compromises and by a patched-up truce between the old and the new. I would be new, entirely new. Amen.