Week 41 Sunday
Week 41 Sunday
Victorious Living and Temptation
Psalm 74:17; Mark 9:43-47; 14:37-38; 1 Peter 1:6-7
We have just been studying the fact that victorious living means to say yes to something—the will of God; but that implies that we are to say no to something—temptation. Christianity is not a prohibition; it is a privilege, but it does have a prohibition in it.
Jesus said if your “hand” or your “foot” or your “eye” offends you and causes you to sin, “cut it off” or “pluck it out” (Mark 9:43-47). In other words, do not tolerate anything from head to foot that cuts across the central purposes of your life. From head to foot you are to belong to Christ.
Now, note the order of these three: hand, foot, eye. The hand, the doing of the evil; the foot, approaching evil, going up to evil but not actually doing it; the eye, seeing evil with desire from afar. Cut it out in any stage, cut out sin, whether it be hand-sin, foot-sin, or eye-sin. The place to cut it out most effectively is at the place of the eye, the thought. But some live a great deal in that intermediate stage between eye and hand; they dally with sin at the foot stage.
They go beyond thinking about it; they actually approach toward it, come to the brink of it and expect to pull back this side of the deed. In this way they get the semi-pleasure of getting up close to evil, feeling its burning warmth; but they also get the semi-pleasure of being good enough to restrain finally. It is an attempt to get the best of both worlds. A foolish attempt, for it leaves you homeless. You are not at home in Christ and not at home in evil. Dissatisfaction is the end of this attempt at double satisfaction.
Watch your feet. Don’t let them take you to any brink, for there is such a thing as “the appeal of the abyss.” You might go over.
O Christ, we thank you for your decisiveness. We pray you to save us from all double-mindedness. Help us to be decisive. Amen.
Week 41 Monday
Eye-Sin
Matthew 4:8-9; 5:28; 6:22; 1 John 2:16
The most effective place to kill sin is in the eye stage. That may mean the actual seeing of evil with the physical eye, or seeing it in imagination with the mental eye. The best place to kill a cobra is in its egg.
I pass on a little plan of my own: When an evil thought comes, I find that by batting my eyes very rapidly, the thought is broken up. It is a voluntary act, demanding voluntary attention, and thus draws the attention away from the thought. I thus catch my equilibrium, and in that moment I pray, “O Christ, save me.” It is the best working plan I know, for it is always available.
But we might offer other suggestions: (1) Change your occupation at once in order to get your attention elsewhere. I know of a man, that man myself, while going through a forest was troubled with an evil thought. He deliberately picked up a very heavy log and carried it back to the ashram. The attention necessary to carry such a load made him forget the thought. Take on yourself such a heavy task that it demands your whole attention. I find that the greatest battles take place, not when one is absorbed in a task, but when one is on a vacation, where you let down and have nothing particular to absorb you.
(2) If you are alone when an evil thought assails you, deliberately go, if possible, to a group of people. We sometimes talk of the temptation of crowds. On other occasions, we can thank God for crowds. They often save us from ourselves and our evil thoughts. We are ashamed to harbor them when we are in the company of some people. Moreover, they draw our minds to other interests.
(3) Change the mental picture to a religious one. Train your mind to run at once to the thought of the Crucified. It is hard to think of evil and of Christ at the same time. They are incompatible.
O Christ, give me purity in mind, for I want the kind of mind in which you can be at home. Amen.
Week 41 Tuesday
Overcoming Temptation
Psalms 19:14; 104:34; 119:54; 2 Corinthians 10:5; John 36:10
We continue to look at the way evil thoughts may be overcome.
(4) Put your mind under a rigid discipline. The mind is the servant of the personality and can be made to obey. You can turn off your thoughts as you turn off a radio. The mind soon begins to understand who is master. Paul speaks of “captur[ing] every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5 CEB). But the mind will play tricks on you, if it knows that in the end you give in. Be unbending in your discipline of yourself.
(5) In order to determine your waking thoughts, think of the purest, finest thoughts just before going to sleep. Those last thoughts before dropping into unconsciousness are very determinative, for the door into the subconscious is opening, and they drop into it to work good or ill. The dream life can be largely controlled by your waking life. Psychologists tell us that you dream only of things that have occupied consciousness in the last three or four days. Of course, these things of recent occurrence may touch off older memories by association, but the dream life of the next three or four days can be controlled in great measure by the waking life of today. Remember you are fighting the battle of the waking and dream life of today and tomorrow when you are fighting that evil thought. Give it no quarter. Do not let your last waking thought be impure, for it will fasten itself upon the mind like a burr. Crowd it out by making your last thought the horizon-filling Christ.
(6) Take plenty of exercise. Take up games and become interested in them.
(7) Undertake to help someone else in the battle. The very sense of your responsibility for the other will help you in yours, for the thought will persist, “I must not let this person down. For the sake of this other, I sanctify myself.”
(8) Breathe a spontaneous prayer the moment an impure thought arises.
O Christ of the pure mind, make me pure in mind this day, and always. Amen.
Week 41 Wednesday
Take Heed What You Hear
Matthew 13:23; Hebrews 2:1; James 1:19; Revelation 2:7, 11, 17
In our study of the control of the mind, it will help us to look at a most important verse: “Take heed what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you” (Mark 4:24). Here Jesus says, “Be careful of what you hear, for the amount of attention you give to anything will come back to you in impression.” The degree of attention is the degree of impression.
After taking a course in Pelmanism (memory training), the only thing I remember (!) of the course is this: It is not a matter of memory, it is a matter of attention. A bad memory is the result of bad attention. So one should not really say, “I have a bad memory”; one should say, “I have bad attention.” Someone has said there are just three laws of learning: concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. So, Jesus said, be careful of the thing you attend to. For that part of your environment to which you attend influences you.
This age is thinking about sex, which is to the good. But it is thinking too much about sex, which is to the bad. If you concentrate your attention upon sex, don’t be surprised if it comes back to you in sex-impression. And then don’t be surprised if you lose your sex battle. Be frank about sex, by all means, but after taking a frank view of the fact of sex, dismiss it from the center of consciousness. If you are constantly wading through sex books in the name of frankness, you will soon be wading through filth, at least, in mind. For you follow your attention. Glance at the fact of sex, but gaze at the fact of Christ. Some gaze at sex, and then wonder that sex, and not Christ, has such hold on them.
So take heed what you hear and see, for that attention determines your spiritual destiny.
O Christ, we thank you that you have spoken this law so plainly. Help us to obey it just as plainly. Amen.
Week 41 Thursday
The Temptation to Look at Others
Psalm 73:2-3, 16-17; Romans 12:21; Hebrews 12:3; 2 Peter 3:17
We said that we must be careful of what we give our attention to, for the measure of attention determines the measure of impression. Some of us pay too much attention to what other people say and do. Our eyes are on people instead of on Christ. And then we wonder why we are so weak.
Peter once turned to Jesus and said, “Lord, what about this man?”
Jesus’ reply was penetrating: “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me” (John 21:21-22).
Many of us get our eyes on people, on their weaknesses in particular, and soon find we are stumbling over people. A great many of our spiritual problems come from stumbling over this insincere Christian, over that weak brother.
One of the outstanding Christians of the world became bitter and soured. As he recounted his grievances against this one and that one, I quietly quoted this passage, “What is that to you? Follow me.” He was startled, but resumed his criticisms. In one of the pauses I again quoted this passage, “What is that to you? Follow me.” He was great enough to say, “Good, you’ve got me.” He was on the wrong track and knew it. He had starved himself gnawing on these bones.
One of the most pathetic sights in India is a lean dog on a dry bone pile, gnawing on a dry bone. But it’s not more pathetic than a Christian gnawing on some dry bone of grievance against others. Poor diet—the soul grows lean on it.
You are not following that person; you are following Christ. To his own master we stand or fall. Christ is the only one who is always the same: dependable, sure, adequate. Follow him! He will never let you down. People will.
So, if you are tempted to go up or down according to the way people treat you, resist it.
O Christ, I pray you to help me get my eyes on you and you alone, so that, no matter what people may do or not do, I may be fixed. Amen.
Week 41 Friday
The Temptation to Look at Your Feelings
Matthew 26:38-39; Ephesians 6:11, 13; 1 Peter 1:6-7
Many stumble by getting their eyes on people, others stumble by getting their eyes on their emotional states. They go up or down as their feelings go up or down. I do not minimize the place of emotion, for it is the driving force of the soul. Only those ideals that have an emotional tone about them get us. But if you pay too much attention to emotion, you won’t have any ideals. Emotion is the by-product of a great driving conviction—the waves cast up as the ship pushes forward. Think about your directions and the adequacy of your power to go ahead, and your emotions—the waves—will take care of themselves.
Besides, our feelings are often largely determined by our physical condition. It is hard to feel religious with a tooth aching! As someone has put it, the light is still burning, but the lamp chimney has become smoked by some physical ailment. When you throw a stone into the water, you destroy the moon reflected there. Do you? The moon sails sublimely on in the sky. Your feelings are like the reflection on the surface of the water—subject to calm and storm and many changes. But your faith in Christ is like the moon in the sky, unchanged by what happens to the reflections in the water.
A lady who was up and down with feelings once dreamed that she was in a long tube. When she looked up, she was up, and when she looked down, she was down. She awoke to determine to keep looking up at Jesus, and not down at herself and her feelings. For looking at her feelings was a species of self-centeredness. The Italian activist Giuseppe Mazzini once said, “Whether the sun shine with the serene splendor of an Italian noon, or the leaden corpselike hue of the northern mist be above us, I cannot see that this changes our duty.” Great words and applicable to every Christian!
O Christ, save me when I, like Peter, get my eyes on myself and the waves around me instead of on you. For amid the flux of things you remain the same. Amen.
Week 41 Saturday
Outgrowing Temptation
Psalm 26:1, 12; 2 Peter 2:9; 1 John 4:4; Revelation 3:10
Temptation has its uses. As we grapple, we grow. Goethe says, “Difficulties prove men.” When Jesus went into the wilderness, it was said that he went in “full of the Holy Spirit,” but he came out “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:1, 14). Mere fullness had turned to power under temptation. His spiritual tissues had been hardened in the struggle. So it is with us. Two things happen as we grow spiritually: (1) Our temptations move up to a higher plane, and (2) we outgrow many of them.
The temptations of Jesus were on a very high plane indeed. In the wilderness, he did not struggle with lust and passion, but with the subtle questions of how to bring in the kingdom, and here light could very easily become darkness. It is a compliment to be tempted on that plane. As you grow spiritually, you find your temptations less gross and more subtle. Battle with things such as spiritual pride takes the place of battle with dishonesty and lies. And then there comes the time when you outgrow your temptations entirely. This is the highest state of all—to be on a spiritual level where these things no longer touch you or incite you. You have gone beyond them.
The last petition in the Lord’s Prayer is “and lead us not into temptation.” I used to think it an anticlimax, but I now see that it was the highest petition of all and is the very climax of all. Lead me to the place where temptation has lost its grip, where there is literally no temptation. We do that in many things. We say, “He can’t be tempted by bribery.” His character now automatically spurns it. It will be so with us in thing after thing. We will get the habit of victory. The unconscious effort will more and more take over the functions of the conscious effort. We become fixed in goodness. Habit is working with us now, not against us.
O Christ, I thank you that every battle now makes the next one easier. Help me to win every one today. Amen.