Week 45 Sunday
Week 45 Sunday
Practical Suggestions for Growth
Luke 22:32; Acts 13:1-3; Ephesians 4:12-16; 2 Peter 3:18
We have seen that we have been put under a Living Mind, under a Law that is an unfolding Life. We must therefore grow, in order to remain Christian.
(1) Grow by your mistakes, even by your sins. A good many people collapse under a fall and stay down. But losing a skirmish does not necessarily mean losing the battle. Many have won battles by the very fact that they lost a skirmish, for it made them more watchful, more humble, more determined. “When a good man falls, he falls on his knees”—a good place to fall! Get up at once, and say: “Well, that was a jolt, but I’ve learned my lesson. I shall ask for reinforcements and get them for that weak place.” You can become strongest at your weakest places. Both the Apostle Paul and John Wesley were converted Pharisees, and they became strongest where they were weakest. They became men of humility who depended on grace. If you fall, don’t give up—get up.
(2) Grow by taking on a task beyond your powers. That will throw you back on God’s grace. Don’t limit yourself to things that you can do; that won’t stretch you. Do something that you can’t do, and that will make you grow in the doing. All my life I’ve done things I couldn’t do. I undertake them at God’s bidding, and, lo, somehow there is divine reinforcement. Paul grew with the size of his tasks. The opening of the Gentile world to him meant the opening and the enlarging of his whole nature, including his mind.
“Don’t ask for tasks suitable to your powers, but for powers suitable to your tasks.” And make the tasks big and demanding. When God called to Mary, she did not shrink or become proud, she simply said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said” (Luke 1:38 CEB). “I am ready for anything.” And she was. And how amazingly she grew under the greatness of her task!
O God, my Lord, give me this day spiritual tasks that are beyond me, so I may draw heavily upon your resources. Amen.
Week 45 Monday
Grow by Taking in More Territory
Acts 1:8; 16:9; 1 Corinthians 16:9; Revelation 3:8
(3) We must not only take on greater tasks in order to grow, we must take in more territory. Christendom has now grown up to the limits of many of its conceptions. It needs larger conceptions. It has gone as far as it can under the conception that religion has only to do with personal release and personal culture. It is finding that the roots of the personal run straight into the social, and, in order even to develop the personal, we must Christianize the social.
This is the area of growth in the future for many of us, for we have been like potted plants, confined to the cramping conceptions of a personal gospel. We must be transplanted to the garden of larger social conceptions and endeavors. Then we will grow. We have reached the limit of potted growth.
An expert told me that in planting out trees at the ashram, we should dig a very deep pit, put in a layer of manure, then one of ordinary earth, then another layer of manure, followed again by a layer of earth, and so on up to the top. This, he said, gives the growing tree something to reach after. Its roots get to one level and then feel the call of the deeper level of richness. The call of the beyond is ever upon it.
Christianity must put its roots into the total life of humanity, or else it will die, pot-bound. Or it will remain a dwarfed, pathetic thing in this modern world. But we must not talk about Christianity in general; we must talk about ourselves. We cannot wait until everybody else is ready to act. It is said in the parable of the mustard seed that the man cast the seed “in his garden” (Luke 13:19). We must begin there. Jesus announced his program at Nazareth first before he announced the program for the disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. We must do the same.
O Christ, help us today to set forth the stakes of your kingdom and claim new territory for your redemptive purposes. Help us to fear not, but to begin. Amen.
Week 45 Tuesday
Deliberately Planning to Grow
Isaiah 54:2-4; Luke 12:50; 1 Corinthians 15:13; Ephesians 5:8-11
(4) We said that we must take in more territory in the social application of this new life in order to further our growth. This should not be our motive, however. We should save the total life of humanity, not in order to cultivate our own souls, but because it is right. Nothing less than all belongs to Christ. But if we do so, it will result in our own enlargement. How shall we claim more territory?
(a) Do it mentally. Renounce in the depths of your heart a system based on the unchristian principle of selfish competition and give yourself inwardly to one based on the principle of cooperation. Refuse to sanction by your approval the present world order that breeds wars, hate, poverty, and disaster.
(b) Go out today and see how you can apply that inward renunciation in positive action in your circumstances. In business, begin to build a cooperative order within the area of your influence. If a laborer, organize a cooperative endeavor on no matter how small a scale. It will train you and others in cooperative thinking and endeavor.
(c) See where your vote can be cast on behalf of a more just order. For this new day must come down through the political, as well as up through cooperatives. This is the conclusion of many of those who are most eager for cooperatives. Cooperatives must be supplemented by political action.
(d) Break down some race or class barrier today. Invite to your home someone not of your race or class. Do not patronize them; they will sense it at once. The will to be in community is as important as the will to believe. For in the beginning you will have to act friendly before you can begin to feel friendly.
(e) Get as many others to come with you as possible. Win converts, unashamedly, unblushingly.
(f) Become saturated with the kingdom idea—the kingdom is the republic of socialized personality and the rule of Sovereign Love.
O God, our Lord, help me this day to begin the kingdom program and to know the kingdom power in every single one of my relationships. Amen.
Week 45 Wednesday
Beware of the Devil’s Atonement
Psalm 40:6-8; Matthew 23:4; James 2:16
We said that we should act as though the kingdom were already in operation; we must anticipate its full coming. During World War I, a youth was brought up before a court to be tried for refusing to sanction war. The judge said, “But the kingdom of God hasn’t come yet.”
“It has as far as I am concerned,” replied the youth.
That anticipating of the new day will cost you. It will mean a cross. You will find your cross at the point of tension between the new and the old.
(5) But here a temptation will set in. You will be tempted to plan other people’s sacrifices rather than your own. That is the devil’s atonement. When Caiaphas “had given counsel to the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people” (John 18:14), he was practicing the devil’s atonement, for he was preparing to sacrifice, not himself, but someone else to save the people. That is the devil’s atonement.
When “patriots” call for the sacrifice of youth for the sake of the country and sit safe and sound behind their counters and their desks—it is the devil’s atonement. When agitators get people to sacrifice for the sake of a cause, and they will not sacrifice themselves—again, it is the devil’s atonement. When ministers bind burdens of moral responsibility upon others and feel that their duty is thereby discharged, not touching the burden with their little finger—is this not the devil’s atonement? When we talk about the new day of social justice and thus get the prestige that comes from the renunciation of this order, and at the same time gladly take the comforts and special privileges that belong to it—it is the devil’s atonement.
If, therefore, we take our cross in order to bring in God’s order, let us be sure we take it and don’t put it on someone else instead.
O Christ, we pray that we may fulfill your word this day, that each shall take “his own cross” and come and follow you. Show me my cross and help me take it. Amen.
Week 45 Thursday
Bringing the Mind into Unity
Ephesians 4:23-24; James 1:5-8; 1 John 3:16-18
For real spiritual growth, there must be unity between the conscious and the subconscious minds. The subconscious can be taught the purposes of the conscious mind. It is educable. But it will not listen to what you say, only what you do. As Burnett H. Streeter says:
The subconscious is always learning from the conscious, but it both learns and forgets more slowly. And the lessons it takes to heart most deeply are not the purely intellectual notions of the conscious mind, but the values and emotions associated with them. A man, for instance, may believe with his conscious mind that God is good and that all men are brothers, but only if he plans and acts toward the universe and man as if these things were true will his subconscious mind believe them also. If his conscious mind affirms the principle of love, but he schemes injury to his brother, it is the attitude of hate that the subconscious mind will learn.*
You cannot, therefore, teach the subconscious mind any unreality. It will not learn it. Jesus put his finger on this when he said, “ ‘And do not,’ He said, ‘put on an extra under garment’” (Mark 6:9 Weymouth). Here is the man who takes only one cloak, the sign of his renunciation, but he puts on an extra, secret, inner garment. The subconscious mind will learn from the secret inner garment of comfort rather than from the outer garment of ostensible renunciation.
Saint Francis, when induced to wear a woolen inner garment, insisted on wearing a piece of wool pinned on the outside, so there no one would take him for more than what he was. Many of our renunciations are of the kind Jesus warned against; we give up outwardly, but hold extra inner garments of comfort, so that we try to get the prestige of renunciation and the comfort of keeping.
Go over your life and ask whether there are any extra inner garments being held to: special privileges, special securities. Growth is growth in reality.
O Christ, help me this day to tolerate no unreality, no make-believe. Help me to be real. Amen.
* Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 261.
Week 45 Friday
Live Today!
Isaiah 40:27; Matthew 6:11; James 4:13-15
(6) In your spiritual growth you must learn to live today. One of the most important things Jesus said was, “Stop worrying about tomorrow. . . . Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt. 6:34 CEB).
Many of us spoil today by bringing the troubles of tomorrow into it. Worry is the advance interest we pay on tomorrow’s troubles. Many of us go bankrupt paying interest on troubles that never come. So worry becomes sin, sin against the goodness and love of God.
Originator of the Emmanuel movement, Elwood Worcester, says, “You could pack all the actual misfortunes of your life into a moderate-sized closet, while your whole house, no matter how big it is, would scarcely hold all the unrealized evils and misfortunes you have feared and looked forward to.”
While writing this book, a telegram was handed to me. A series of calamities flashed through my mind: “Eunice is ill, come home at once.” In a flash I saw all the implications of what that would mean—all plans tumbling to pieces. I opened the telegram and it read, “Jacob fully reconciled”—the good news of the healing of a misunderstanding. Life is like that! Nine-tenths of our troubles never come, and we can stand the one-tenth.
English novelist Charles Kingsley says, “Do today’s duty, fight today’s temptation, and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see and could not understand if you saw them.” Live today!
Let the words of poet Ragindranath Tagore become true for you, “Thou didst press the signet of eternity upon many a fleeting moment of my life.” You do not have to win tomorrow’s battles today. Win these that you face today, and tomorrow will take care of itself. God’s power keeps you this present moment; that keeping will extend to the next, and to the next, and at the end of the day you will whisper to yourself, “Victory.”
O Christ, we thank you that you have called us to the adventure of today. Help me to make today eternal because I have put eternal worth into it. Amen.
Week 45 Saturday
Grow through Obstacles
2 Thessalonians 1:3-6; James 1:3-4; 1 Peter 1:7
(7) You will learn to grow through the coming of obstacles. When Beethoven, going deaf, said, “I will seize fate by the throat,” he meant it, and did. He grew by that very obstacle. When the Samaritans refused to receive Jesus and his disciples, the account says that after rebuking the disciples for wanting to retaliate, “They went on to another village” (Luke 9:56). Life always has “another village.” If you are blocked in this one, pass on to the next. There is always a “next.” And that next village was nearer Jesus’ final goal. He didn’t have so far to go the next day. He advanced toward his goal by the snobbery of that village.
Thank God, life always has another village. Were you disappointed in not finding the life-mate whom you had hoped to find? Then pass on to another village. The early impact of Christianity produced this fact: “[Philip] had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied” (Acts 21:9). Singleness emerged as the result of Christianity. It is seldom met in the non-Christian faiths. The unmarried feel the call to be wedded to the sorrows and sufferings and ignorance of the world. Like the daughters of Philip, their singleness becomes prophetic.
Have you been disappointed in your life work? Grow by that disappointment. The nineteenth-century missionary Henry Martyn, after years of patient toil, had translated the Bible into Persian. He journeyed to present it to the Shah at court. As he placed it before them, they began to realize what book it was, and they went out one by one, including the Shah. Henry Martyn was left alone with his Book, rejected. His comment was, “I refuse to be disappointed.” And he passed on to another village.
“I refuse to be disappointed,” for the disappointment can be a spiritual growing place. It may make me put out new endeavors, jolt me out of old ruts, deepen my sympathy, and altogether make me a better person. Grow by obstacles!
O Christ, I thank you that you made your frustrations into fruitfulness. Help me to do that this day. Amen.