Week 19 Sunday
Week 19 Sunday
Overcoming the World of Resentment
Luke 23:34; Acts 7:59-60; Colossians 3:12-15
People of faith usually have sensitive, eager dispositions. They see beyond the status quo, want something different, and set about getting it. Almost immediately, they will run across oppositions, for people do not easily give up the “is” for the “ought-to-be.” They will be tempted to resent people who do not see what they see. People of faith must have victory over the world of resentment.
It is interesting that Jesus linked faith in God and forgiveness to others in Mark 11:22-25:
And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one.”
He put faith in God and forgiveness of people together, for they belong together. Faith without forgiveness makes religion hard and fanatical. Forgiveness without faith makes religion soft and nonprogressive. But faith and forgiveness make religion Christian. This forgiveness element puts love in faith, so that now “faith work[s] through love” (Gal. 5:6).
The person of faith forgives those who lash back because they do not see what faith sees. The person of faith follows a Man who saw his attempts at a new world end up in a cross, deserted by the multitudes whom he would save and by the disciples who professed allegiance to him and seemingly by the Lord who sent him. And yet, at the last, a prayer of forgiveness was on his lips. This was victory.
We too can enter into that victory and make it our very own, so that resentment has no place within us.
O Christ of the unresentful heart, make us like that. Make us full of faith toward God and full of tenderness toward others who do not agree with us. Amen.
Week 19 Monday
Overcoming the World of the Irrelevant
Matthew 15:15-20; 22:34-40; 23:23-24; Philippians 1:8-9
If we are to live a victorious life, we must live in the relevant. Many do not; they live in a lot of irrelevancies that occupy and absorb their time.
A friend of mine was in a terrible train wreck. Many were killed outright, and many wounded were groaning under the wreckage. The few unhurt were trying desperately to rescue the wounded and attend to them. In the midst of all this, a woman sat beside her suitcase, which had been torn open, and kept repeating, “Oh, my expensive pair of shoes!” This she repeated over and over again, and mingled it with the cries of the wounded. A pair of shoes was the center of her attention with a wreck around her!
This portrays vividly what we often do: we become absorbed with personal irrelevancies and miss the big issues of life. We should go over everything that has a place in our lives and ask, “Are you relevant to the really big issues? Do you keep me from the really worthwhile things? You may not be bad, but are you relevant?” If anything in our lives cannot answer that call for relevancy, then out it should go.
Someone asked, “What is the first necessity for a college president?” and received the reply, “A wastebasket.” The Christian must have a wastebasket, not only for the bad but also for the irrelevant.
Jesus has a sifted mind. He never once was led into a subordinate issue, never once missed the real point, never got into a bypath, was always on the relevant. He overcame sin and also the unimportant.
We must cut out not only what isn’t good but also what isn’t good enough. He did that, and we can share his overcoming and enter a world of relevancies.
O Christ, we thank you that you want to save us from both iniquity and irrelevancy. We expose our minds to the searching of your mind, and we consent to let go the trivial and irrelevant. Prune us. Amen.
Week 19 Tuesday
Overcoming the World of Anxieties
Matthew 6:25-34; Philippians 3:6-7
“Don’t be anxious about anything; rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions” (Phil. 4:6 CEB). Don’t be anxious about anything! Was there ever a message so deeply needed as now? Anxieties fill the air, and they fill us. Jesus conquered the world of anxieties.
There are three things that become the center of our anxieties: food, shelter, and future security. Then Jesus must have been the man most filled with anxiety, for not one of these was assured to him. He had no food except what was given to him day by day. He had no assured home. Often he slept under the open heavens, huddled beneath a tree. As for future security, he knew there was none, for his road would end in a cross. The three things we are most anxious about were utterly missing in his life. He shared our disabilities minus our anxieties. How did he do it?
His prescription was simple: Obey God, trust God. Those four words were the cornerstones of his life. And when the storm broke, the foundation stood. Note they are together. You cannot really trust God unless you obey God. For if you do not obey God at the place of your conduct, you cannot trust God at the place of your clothing.
A lady told me of the loss of her faith: “The Bible says, ‘ask whatever you will,’ and I prayed for my father’s recovery, but he died. So my faith is gone.” But she did not quote the whole: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7). Obey God, trust God!
Scottish author and minister George MacDonald is said to have written: “This is a sane, wholesome, practical, working faith: first, that it is a man’s business to do the will of God; second, that God takes on himself the special care of that man; and third, that therefore man ought never to be afraid of anything.”
O Christ, there was no corroding care in your heart. Give me a heart like that. I pay the price of freedom from anxiety, the price of obedience. Amen.
Week 19 Wednesday
Overcoming the Spirit of Withdrawal
Matthew 16:21-23; Luke 13:32; Acts 21:11-14
There is a real tendency in religion to try to win victory by withdrawal. We encase ourselves with the hard shell of refusal to face any issue, withdraw within ourselves, and thus hope for victory. We try to maintain peace by dodging the battle. A missionary tried to maintain a high spirituality by never coming to grips with any issue, never taking sides, never crossing anyone; he made for himself a desert and called it Victory.
Of another Westerner in India someone said, “His face is peaceful; he has gained unity.” I responded, “By withdrawal.” He had no cares, for he didn’t care. He had no burdens, for he took none. It seemed to me to be, not the unification, but the nullification of life.
Jesus overcame this tendency to try to find victory by withdrawal. He found his victory, not by getting out, but by getting in. One of the most important verses in the history of religion is this, “He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51 KJV). That meant that he would face issues, would precipitate crises, and see the whole thing through to the bitter and glorious end. But in setting his face in that direction, Jesus set the face of religion in that direction too. We can never be true to him now unless we are true to him at this point. All withdrawal from real issues is withdrawal from Jesus.
One of the saddest verses in literature is this, “And so Pilate, willing to content the multitude, . . . delivered Jesus” (Mark 15:15 KJV). And for us one of the saddest days in life is the day we allow the herd fear to conquer the highest judgments and instincts of the soul. Sometimes we content the multitude, when we should contend with the multitude. “Pilate took water” (Matt. 27:24)—a baptism into irresponsibility. Pilate took water to get out from the responsibility of Jesus’ death; Jesus was taking a baptism of responsibility for every man. One was crawling out, the Other was marching in!
O Christ, I too need this power to come to grips with issues as they arise. Give me your decisiveness. Amen.
Week 19 Thursday
Overcoming the Unwillingness to Be in a Minority
Matthew 7:14; Luke 13:32; John 16:32; 2 Timothy 4:16-18
It is a truism to say that truth, in the beginning, is usually found in a minority. A stricken lad in a faint lay on the ground before Jesus. The account says, “Most of them said, ‘He is dead.’ ” Had a majority vote been taken there, they would have decided that the boy was dead and should be buried. But the truth was in the minority of One. Jesus called the boy back from collapse to restored health.
“Most of them” often decide that a cause is dead. Twenty years ago, in a conference in India, a proposal for reconstruction was presented that would give India local self-government in church matters. It went “on the table” with a bang. “Most of them” decided it was dead. Twenty years later, I saw that idea taken from “the table” and adopted by the church, not only in India, but throughout the world. “Most of them” were wrong.
“Most of them” decide again and again in elections that any new order, which will replace the present world order with its injustices and wrongs, is dead. But again “most of them” are wrong. For the idea of a just social order, in which every person shall have an equal opportunity, is God’s idea, and will not stay down.
We cannot get spiritual victory unless we are willing to be in “the least of them,” if necessary. If you look at the Gethsemane scene, you will see the relative size of the crowds: Jesus alone, then the three, then the eight, and then the Jerusalem multitude. If you desire the multitude, you will probably find yourself in a crowd furthest from Jesus.
The victorious life means that you are released from an itching to be on the popular side—you become willing to stand alone if necessary. But alone—you may be with him!
O Christ, I would rather be alone with you than be in a multitude without you. I want to be with you, wherever you are, with many or with few. Amen.
Week 19 Friday
Overcoming the World of Sin
Romans 6:2-7, 18-22
One of the things most necessary in living victoriously is to realize that when we are fighting evil we are fighting a conquered foe. Jesus met every sin and conquered it. Many do not realize this, and so develop an inferiority complex before evil. They allow evil to bully them, to make them feel that it is a permanent part of things and cannot be eradicated. Hence they are defeated in mind even before the battle begins.
We must get hold of the idea that sin has been conquered; every sin has been conquered, within the individual and the social order. We have now to accept the gift of complete victory and then proceed to make it actual in us and in the order around us.
So when sin begins to bully me, I quietly ask it to bend its neck and let me see. When it does, I quietly but joyfully point to the footprints of the Son of God on the neck of sin. My inferiority complex is gone. I am on the winning side. I shall meet not one single sin today that has not been defeated. I walk the earth amid conquered foes.
A story runs that in the ancient days in Central India a leading warrior during a battle had his head cut off, but so bent was he upon fighting that he fought on even with his head gone. This headless warrior killed many. But he collapsed when a woman saw him and cried out, “But your head is off; you’re dead!” So he fell down and died!
When evil seems strong and invincible and about to overcome, I point and say, “But look, your head is gone! Did not my Master conquer you by meeting you in life? And did he not sever the head of evil by the sword of the cross? Begone! You’re headless!”
Evil fights on. But it is brainless. It depends on prejudices, old habits, and unreasoning emotions. Reason is on the side of good. We fight a fierce but brainless foe.
O Christ, I thank you that you did not succumb to a single temptation. Show me how to accept and enter into this completed victory. Amen.
Week 19 Saturday
The Secret of the Overcoming
John 15:1-11; 2 Corinthians 2:14; Galatians 3:27
In these last few days we have been thinking together on the amazing statement, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). You say, “Well and good, wonderful, but how do I get hold of his victory and make it mine?”
The whole verse reads this way, “I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” “In the world”—tribulation. “In me”—peace. What does this “in me” mean?
It surely means being identified with him, merged into him, so at one with him that his victories become ours and hence his peace becomes ours. Surrender of yourself means identification with his self. Life flows into life, Mind into mind, and we share a common life.
Isaiah 63:12 says, “Who caused his glorious arm/to go at the right hand of Moses?” God’s power and Moses’ efforts coincided. When Moses raised his right hand, God’s right hand was going alongside of it. God’s arm didn’t do everything, for that would have kept Moses from developing. Moses’ arm had to go too, but when he tried, God triumphed.
Say this to yourself today: “Why, I am in Christ, and so his power is identified with every single thing in my life. Today his glorious arm will go at my right hand. As I take hold of my tasks, there will be an unwonted strength within me. As I face perplexities, there will be unexpected solutions. As I face relationships with others, there will be a love beyond my own, making those relations sweet and beautiful. Nothing will meet me today that Jesus will not be in, and together we will go through with it. He will cause his glorious arm to go at my right hand. That is enough.”
Round my incompleteness flows his completeness,
Round my restlessness, his rest.
O Christ, I thank you that I am “in” you. Help me to accept the full meaning of that “in-ness” and live by it today and forever. Amen.