Week 46 Sunday
Week 46 Sunday
Grow through Obstacles by Prayer
Genesis 32:24-29; Luke 18:1; Acts 12:5; 1 Corinthians 16:9
Read these illuminating verses: “They [the scribes and Pharisees] were furious and began talking with each other about what to do to Jesus. During that time, Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night long” (Luke 6:11-12 CEB).
Here was an obstacle—the madness of his opponents that drove them to counsel what they would do to Jesus. They felt they had the final say. Over against that, Jesus matched prayer. They counseled together as to what they should do to him, and he counseled as to what the Lord should do through him. Prayer made it possible that he should not be a victim of circumstances. He met his circumstances from above.
What will my circumstances do to me today? Rather, what shall I do today through my circumstances by prayer? Again, here are my limitations, and they conspire to cramp me, to keep me from being effective. Is the last word with them? Not at all. I decide through prayer, and the power that comes through it, what I shall do with my limitations.
Many a person, spurred on by a limitation, has become great through that very limitation. Alfred Adler says, “This feeling that the individual has of his own inferiority furnishes the inward impulse to advance.” This is much more so, if coupled with prayer, which gives power to advance. Sir Francis Bacon says, “Whosoever hath anything fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn.”*
What shall my enemies do with me? Rather, what shall I do with my enemies through prayer? I shall have power to forgive them. I meet them from above.
“I have power to kill you,” said a Roman judge to a martyr, who replied, “But I have power to be killed.” And that was the greater and the final power.
You grow by the meeting of an obstacle, not merely through the obstacle, but through prayer induced by that very obstacle.
O Christ, I thank you that the last word, even upon the cross, was not with your enemies, but with you. Help me this day to turn every obstacle into opportunity through prayer. Amen.
* The Essays of Francis Bacon (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1908), 135.
Week 46 Monday
Growth in Quality of Life
Acts 20:28; 1 Timothy 4:16; 6:11; Hebrews 12:1
We have seen that our circumstances do not decide our destiny, but prayer does. Philosopher and biologist Herbert Spencer said, “Whatever amount of power an organism expends in any shape, is the correlate and equivalent of a power that was taken into it from without.”
Our spiritual lives are determined by the power we take into them through prayer. So when the calamity of blindness struck poet John Milton, he could say, “I argue not against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer right onward.” He was not the victim of circumstances, but the victor over circumstances.
So God says to Paul, “Dismiss your fears: go on speaking, and do not give up. I am with you, and no one shall attack you to injure you” (Acts 18:9-10 Weymouth). Note that God doesn’t say that there will be no attacks, but that no attack will injure. No attack from without can injure you. You can be injured only from within by wrong choices. You are absolutely safe as long as you are right with God.
(8) Grow in your victory over half-sins, things that may be lawful to you, but are not expedient. Hebrews 12:1 suggests that we are to “lay aside every weight and the sin” that besets. Every weight! Things that bring no condemnation, but also no contribution. Do not ask, “Is it wrong?” Ask, “Does it contribute?” Away with every noncontributing thing!
In Mark 13:9, Jesus says to his disciples, “Take heed to yourselves.” Why? So that you might escape coming calamity? No. “Take heed to yourselves” so you will be prepared “to bear testimony.” Be spiritually fit, he says, so that you may not be taken unawares when called on to give your witness before high and low. For that hour depends not on your circumstances but on you. Therefore, let everything go that will not help you in that hour. Grow in quality of spiritual fitness.
O Christ, help me this day to let go of every weight that might slow up my pace. For I would be spiritually fit. Amen.
Week 46 Tuesday
Growth in Creative Faith
Matthew 21:21-22; Mark 9:23; Luke 8:50; Acts 3:16
Jesus used that phrase, “Take heed to yourselves,” in another connection:
“Take heed to yourselves; if your brother sins . . . seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine tree, ‘Be rooted up, and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:3-6)
Jesus suggests that they “take heed”—about what? About having an undiscouraged, creative faith in people. When the disciples asked that their faith be increased, it wasn’t so much faith in God as faith in people, in wobbly people, that needed to be increased.
He says that if you have faith, you can make a tree be planted in the most unstable soil of the world—the sea! You can make souls stable by a creative faith. Never did we need people of creative faith so much as now, for a vast cynicism has crept across our spirits. We are going to pieces for lack of people of creative faith.
The Epistle to Diognetus says of Christians, “They hold the world together.” This was written in the second century, at a time when the social order was going to pieces around them. The Christians did not belong to that decaying order; they belonged to the undecaying kingdom of God. Therefore they held the world together by their faith. They did then; they must now. By our creative faith, we must hold society and individuals from going to pieces.
Grow in your belief in people, in their possibilities, in the fact that the worst can become the best. Take heed to yourselves, and let nothing hurt your faith in the weakest. For if you lose your faith in humanity, your faith in God goes too.
O Christ, help me this day to believe in people as you believed in them. And help me to remake them by that very faith. Amen.
Week 46 Wednesday
A People Prepared
2 Timothy 2:15, 21; 3:16-17
(9) As we discuss this matter of being spiritually fit to carry out God’s purposes, we must pause at this remarkable statement:
For [John] will be great in the Lord’s eyes. He must not drink wine and liquor. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit. . . . He will go forth before the Lord, equipped with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will turn the hearts of fathers back to their children. . . . He will make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Luke 1:15-17 CEB)
A people prepared! Did we ever, ever need a people prepared so much as we need them now? A world in change, a world seeking new moorings, a world feeling after a new order! Are we Christians “a people prepared”?
What kind of community can be a people prepared? The account tells us that John was sound in three directions: toward God, toward himself, and toward the people.
(a) Toward God—he was “great.” We need Christians who are great “in the sight of the Lord” and care not a rap if they are great or small in the sight of others.
(b) Toward himself—he could renounce; he drank no wine or strong drink. But positively, he was filled with the Holy Spirit. We need Christians who can give up things for a great cause and who are filled with God’s Spirit.
(c) Toward others—he summed up the best and finest of the past; he came in the spirit and power of Elijah. We need Christians who do not lose sight of God’s dealings in history and who will hold to every fine gain in the past. They must be conservative; but they must also be radical—“he will turn the hearts of fathers back to the children.” We should have thought it would have been the other way round. But no, this older generation must turn its heart to the children, must think in terms of making the world safe, just, and welcoming for our children. We must therefore be radical.
Let us be Christians sound in these three directions, with these emphases, and we shall be a people prepared.
O Christ, make me this day a person prepared, that I may help to produce a people prepared. Amen.
Week 46 Thursday
A People Prepared in Mind
Isaiah 26:3; Matthew 22:37; 2 Timothy 1:7; 1 Peter 1:10, 13
(10) In our study of growing, we must face the necessity of growing in mind. No people can be prepared unless they are growing mentally. Religion today is up against the most complex problems within both people and society, for our faith is being challenged from both psychology and economics. Social reformer Charles Henry Parkhurst defined skepticism as “the friction caused by a small brain trying to absorb a great idea.” We must be able to show how the “great idea”—God—is great enough and dynamic enough to meet a world need.
Today Christians are being forced to think because they have come to grips with the making of a new world. Our religion must function there, or it will be discarded as irrelevant. The kingdom conception demands it. We are grateful for what unlettered Christians have done, but this is no time for ignorant piety. For the world suffers almost as much from wrong ideas as from wrong wills. Wrong ideas in history have produced as much havoc as wrong intentions. Christians, therefore, must think straight as well as act straight.
Therefore, grow in mind. Try to read at least fifty pages of some book each day. If your mind ceases to grow, your soul will cease to grow. You will become the victim of set phrases and stereotyped ideas, caught in mental ruts. A new book will help jolt you out. Sell your coat and buy a book, if you have to. The seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza spoke of “an intellectual love of God.” In Matthew 22:37, Jesus spoke of loving God “with all your mind,” substituting “mind” for “might” in his quotation of Deuteronomy 6:5. It must have been important to him. It is.
“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7 KJV). Did Paul put the “sound mind” last for emphasis?
O Christ, we pray you to help us this day to conquer some new worthy idea and harness it to the purposes of your kingdom. Save our minds from ruts. Amen.
Week 46 Friday
Growth in Love
Ephesians 3:17; Philippians 1:9; 1 Timothy 1:5; 1 John 2:5
(11) In all our growth, we must grow in love. Unless we are growing in love, we are not growing at all.
“Jesus knew that his time had come to leave this world and go to the Father. . . . He loved” (John 13:1 CEB). It was the greatest thing he had done in life, and it would be the last thing he would do in death. Nothing greater in life or death, either for him or for us. Therefore, make love your quest.
But let it be an intelligent quest. Go over your life and see if there are unloving and, therefore, unlovely spots. Perhaps you will find some tinge of jealousy toward someone. Set yourself to say something nice about that person today. I found a touch of jealousy in my heart toward someone. I set myself to say everything fine I could about him. Today we are the closest of friends, and the jealousy is all gone.
Or perhaps you will find that your service of Christ is becoming mixed with motives other than pure love. A doctor I know tells this story: One morning Bradley put beside his mother’s plate a little piece of paper. His mother could hardly believe it, but this is what Bradley had written: “Mother owes Bradley: For running errands, $0.25. For being good, $0.10. For taking music lessons, $0.15. Extras, $0.05. Total, $0.55.”
His mother smiled, but did not say anything, and when lunchtime came she placed the bill on Bradley’s plate with the fifty-five cents. Bradley’s eyes danced. But there was another little bill which read: “Bradley owes Mother: For being good, $0.00. For nursing him through a long illness, $0.00. For shoes, clothes, gloves, playthings, $0.00. For all his meals and beautiful room, $0.00. Total: Bradley owes Mother $0.00.”
Tears came into Bradley’s eyes; he put his arms around his mother’s neck, thrust his little hand with the fifty-five cents into hers, and said: “Take this money all back, Mamma, and let me love you and do things for nothing!”
O Christ, cleanse from my heart this day all bargaining, and help me to serve you and others for love alone. Amen.
Week 46 Saturday
Growth in the Social Application of Love
Luke 10:25-37; Ephesians 4:15; 1 John 3:17
The real test of spiritual growth is whether or not we are growing in love. This test applies to society as well as to individuals. To test how civilized any society is, measure to what degree love is being built into the social structure, manifested as social justice and the abundant life for all.
There are two great driving forces in human life: hunger and love—the struggle for life, and the struggle for the life of others. We have organized the collective life largely around the hunger drive with love coming at the edges to soften here and there the grim struggle. This puts disruption and clash at the very center.
If we should change the center from hunger to love, then we should organize life cooperatively. In that case, hunger would be at the edges and love at the center as the driving force. This would not only be good Christianity but good economics, for we have now discovered the means of supplying all the economic needs of every man, woman, and child, provided we can cooperate to do it. To get cooperation, life must be organized on the basis of love. So, sound economics is pushing us to the Christian solution.
When hunger is at the center, we live a cow’s existence, nine-tenths of whose time is taken up with eating or rechewing what it has eaten. The supplying of economic needs should be an incident in human life instead of its absorbing passion. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, the account says, “After this, knowing that everything was already completed, . . . Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty’” (John 19:28 CEB). After he had done all he could for others, he thought of his own needs—thirst.
We have put our thirsts first. This is not civilization; it is chaos. Love must be dominant and individual thirsts subordinate, if we are to be Christian.
O Christ, we pray you that we may grow in your way—the way of love. For only as we love do we live. Amen.