Week 38 Sunday
Week 38 Sunday
Inwardly Bound Up
John 8:36; Acts 6:8-10; Galatians 5:1; 2 Thessalonians 3:1
When we think about carrying out God’s guidance in our lives, we suffer from inhibitions. We are not free to express the will of God in our lives. We are inwardly bound up. We must get victory over that sense of inward self-consciousness and shyness, or we shall never be useful for the kingdom of God.
A group of mental hygienists were asked by questionnaire what, in their view, were the most serious items in a list of young children’s behavior. They included these: excessive modesty, suspiciousness, bashfulness, withdrawing, desire to play alone, constant whining, fears, depression, daydreaming, shyness, uninterestedness, overactivity, demands for attention, sensitiveness, sulkiness. These hinder the development of the child. Now note that out of the fifteen items probably ten or eleven of them refer to an inverted self, a tendency to close in and become wrapped up with oneself. Obviously, this inhibited self must be loosed and freed. It is unnatural and therefore unchristian. All crippling inhibitions should be taken out of our lives.
When Peter and John were before the Sanhedrin, it was said, “As they looked on Peter and John so fearlessly outspoken—and also discovered that they were illiterate persons, untrained in the schools—they were surprised; and now they recognized them as having been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13 Weymouth). Their outspoken fearlessness was a sign that they had been with Jesus. It was so then; it is so now. One in company with Jesus is freed from cramping inhibitions and self-consciousness. That person has power to impart. “I will give you a mouth and wisdom,” said Jesus (Luke 21:15). Some have a mouth and no wisdom, and some have wisdom and no mouth. Jesus said, “I will give you both; I will give you something to talk about, and I will help you to talk about it.”
Tied-up lives can be untied and loosed and made victorious.
O Christ, we thank you that no cramping fears and inhibitions crippled you. Freely you received and freely you gave. Help me to be like that. Amen.
Week 38 Monday
Throwing Off All Reserve
2 Corinthians 4:1-6; Ephesians 5:8
A crisis had come in early Christianity. The apostles had gone to the Jews alone and had acted as though this were a Jewish gospel, from Jews to Jews. But,
seeing the crowds, the Jews, filled with angry jealousy, opposed Paul’s statements and abused him. Then, throwing off all reserve, Paul and Barnabas said, “We were bound to proclaim God’s Message to you first. But since you spurn it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of the Life of the Ages—well, we turn to the Gentiles. For such is the Lord’s command to us.” (Acts 13:45-47 Weymouth)
They threw off all reserve and saved themselves and their gospel. They had a larger gospel in their hearts than they were actually proclaiming. They were proclaiming a gospel for Jews when it was a gospel for humanity. Today a similar crisis has arisen in Christianity. We have a larger gospel in our hearts than we are actually proclaiming. We have a gospel that will cure our individual sickness and our social sickness. We have had our reserves about one or the other. We have acted on less than the whole. Now, this world-shaking crisis is forcing us to throw off all reserve. We must act upon the larger implications of our gospel. It is always safe to do so. It is always dangerous to minimize Christ, for there we are always wrong. It is always safe to act upon the larger Christ, for there we are always right. The smaller view of Christ has always proven wrong, the larger always right.
Now, some of us have reserves about giving the gospel to the individual; we are tongue-tied. We cannot impart the vital spark. We are not spiritually contagious. We either haven’t anything to give, or we can’t give what we have. Others are tied up at the place of giving the gospel to the collective order. They either haven’t anything to give, or else they fear to give it.
O Christ, deliver us from both paralyses, and help us to throw off all our reserves and be out and out for you and your kingdom. Amen.
Week 38 Tuesday
Magnificent Obsession
Matthew 14:44-46; Acts 5:19-20; 1 Timothy 4:15
Yesterday we said that we must throw off all reserve in regard to proclaiming the gospel for the total order, for a world crisis is upon us. Life is running into new molds. Shall we allow greed to set those molds as it has done in the past, or shall we set the kingdom of God on earth as the mold for the future? I choose the kingdom.
A bishop, criticizing my last book, said that I seemed to be “obsessed with the idea of the kingdom of God on earth.” I do confess to that magnificent obsession (I only wish it more ablaze) with the idea of a new order on earth, the kingdom of God.
I am obsessed with the idea that poverty could end for all, for we have both the knowledge and the instruments of science to do it. We have everything to do it, everything except the collective will. The kingdom of God would mean that that collective will would be turned toward abolishing that poverty. I am therefore obsessed with that kingdom.
I am obsessed with the idea that race hatred and social clashes could cease and that humanity could be formed into a community. The kingdom of God would mean just that. So I am obsessed with that kingdom.
I am obsessed with the thought that these preparations for war are so stupid, so thoroughly devilish, so unnecessary, and so futile. The kingdom of God would mean an end of war. Therefore I am obsessed with that kingdom.
I am obsessed with the idea that the kingdom of God is the only workable order, and that this kingdom is at our doors.
I shall therefore throw off all reserve and say so. Someone reported that certain Christians “fairly shouted their answer to the world.” I wish we could do that! Magnificent obsession!
O Christ, we pray you to help us fairly shout our answer to the world’s need. For we know it is the only answer. Amen.
Week 38 Wednesday
The Kingdom of Our Father David
Matthew 11:4; 1 Corinthians 3:16
Note two attempts to reduce the kingdom. The disciples said, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). After three years of teaching they saw in the kingdom of God only the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. They did not reject the kingdom; they reduced it. They made it into something less than it really was.
Again, when he came into Jerusalem in triumphal entry, the multitudes cried, “Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming” (Mark 11:10). The kingdom of God reduced to the kingdom of our father David. This has been the bane of the gospel of Christ: He inaugurates something big and challenging, and we interpret it in terms of “our father David.” Denominationalism is taking the kingdom of God—a worldwide, universal kingdom—and turning it into the kingdom of our father David: the Church of England, Wesleyans, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Pentecostalists. As if the kingdom of God weren’t larger than England, John Wesley, Martin Luther, a mode of baptism, an emphasis on Presbyters, on the Congregation, on Pentecost! All of these and others are a narrowing of a universal conception—the kingdom of God—into a local one—the kingdom of our father David. Luther announces the kingdom of God; his followers announce the kingdom of our father Luther! Reducing the kingdom!
When I make the kingdom of God, which is to take in the whole of life, into a means of my individual salvation alone, leaving untouched the social order, am I not making the kingdom of God into the kingdom of self?
I repeat, the crisis is on us. We Christians must throw off all reserve and give our answer to the world’s need—without hesitation, without compromise. For the world is sick nigh unto death for the lack of it. Our silence now becomes a guilty silence, and deadly.
O Christ, forgive us that we have made your kingdom into the small and irrelevant; help us now to make it into the big and adequate. Amen.
Week 38 Thursday
Personal Reserves in Personal Contacts
Jeremiah 20:9; Amos 4:8; 1 John 1:1-3
Many of us are free and frank until we come to the really important things, the inner things, and then we close up. At the close of a roundtable conference of college professors, one remarked, “I have learned more about my colleagues’ real inner life during these two hours than I have in years of living together.” They were finally imparting to one another at the deepest level. We need to be freed from binding reserves.
You say, “I am shy and self-conscious; I cannot do it.” True, but you can become strongest in that weakest place. Winner of the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize, John R. Mott, says that the phrase he has repeated most in his life is “You can become strongest in your weakest place.” Jeremiah pleaded, when the call of God came to him, “I don’t know how to speak because I’m only a child” (Jer. 1:6 CEB). But he offered that trembling hesitation to God, and when he did speak, how mightily he spoke! When the call of God came to Moses, he pleaded that he was unable, for he was “slow of speech” (Exod. 4:10). But God loosed him, and when he did get started, he made a speech that covered the whole book of Deuteronomy! He became strongest at his weakest place.
Some people look on religion as something so sacred that it becomes secret. Suppose a mother should say to her children, “Now, children, food is such a sacred thing, I cannot talk to you about it, nor can I invite you to partake of it.” Suppose the teacher should say, “Now, pupils, knowledge is such a sacred thing, I cannot talk to you about it. There will be no classes today.” Absurd! But not more absurd than the unnatural attitudes we assume about the deepest thing we have got, the good news about the power of Christ. There we should be natural and contagious.
Someone has defined a Christian as one who says by word and by life, “I commend my Savior to you.” No better definition. No greater need.
O Christ, I pray you to loose me from these inhibiting fetters, and help me to be free—free to impart. Amen.
Week 38 Friday
The Power That Gives Release
John 4:14; Acts 1:8; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18
The only way to get rid of self-consciousness is through God-consciousness. We become so conscious of another Self within us that we lose sight of our self. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17), freedom from cramping bandages and inhibitions and paralyzing sins.
But this age has lost grip upon the Holy Spirit. We have taught this age to follow Jesus as an example, and it has produced a pale, colorless Christianity. For the gospel does not ask you to follow Jesus as an example; it offers you the resources of the Holy Spirit in the inner life and then you follow Jesus because of an impulsion. This kind of Christianity becomes colorful and red-blooded. It has resources, therefore power.
A modern translation of the Gospels spells the “holy spirit” thus, without capitals. That is symbolic of what has happened to this age. It has turned the Holy Spirit into a “holy spirit,” a vague, impersonal influence, to our impoverishment. That is not the Holy Spirit of the Acts of the Apostles. There the Holy Spirit was no mere vague, impersonal influence. There the Holy Spirit was God meeting them inwardly, reinforcing, cleansing, fusing the soul forces into a loving unity, and setting them ablaze with God.
Weymouth was right when he translated the passage in reference to Stephen thus, “They were quite unable, however, to resist the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke” (Acts 6:10). Note the capital S. You couldn’t tell where Stephen’s spirit ended and the Holy Spirit began, for the Spirit lived in his spirit, was the Wisdom of his wisdom. When the disciples got hold of that secret at Pentecost, they were immediately and decisively freed from cramping inhibitions and spiritual bandages and became flaming evangels of the Good News. We need to rediscover the actual resources of the Holy Spirit; or else, bondage.
O Christ, we pray you to help us to rediscover your offer to us and to live by its resources, rejoice in its liberties, and become effective by its power. Amen.
Week 38 Saturday
Freedom for Dammed-up Souls
Luke 4:18-32; John 7:37-39
Jesus said these remarkable words, “He who believes in me . . . out of . . .[him] shall flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the Spirit” (John 7:38-39). The words out of him have sometimes been translated “out of his belly.” We have shied from the word and from the fact, to our loss. For the “belly” was considered the seat of life, the deepest portion of one’s nature. We would say today, “From the depths of the subconscious shall flow rivers of living water.” The Spirit in the depths of the subconscious, cleansing, controlling, empowering. This brings the whole of life into a living unity, and in the flood of this new Life all compartmentalizing, inhibiting dams are broken down. Rivers of living water flow! That is not mere doctrine, it is a fact. The disciples knew it, and it turned timid believers into irresistible apostles.
A highly cultured lady said with beaming joy, “I have just stumbled across the meaning of the Holy Ghost. All my life I have tried to find out its meaning. Now I know.” And the “rivers” attested the fact.
There are nine “rivers” that flow out of a life Spirit-controlled: “love, joy, peace; patience toward others, kindness, benevolence; good faith, meekness, self-restraint” (Gal. 5:22-23 Weymouth). It adds, “Against such things as these there is no law.” Have those things at the center of your life, and you can act as you please, for you are not constrained by law to do them, but impelled by an inner Life. You can act naturally because you act supernaturally. But note the first one is “love” and the last “self-restraint”—you begin with love, and you end with self-restraint. You restrain your lower self because you love the higher Self. Also note that each one of these fruits of the Spirit is a quality of moral character, not one of them an extraneous sign, and every one of them valid and vital today.
O Spirit of the Living God, break down the dams in our lives and make us free. Take over the depths, and we shall not worry about the surface. Amen.