Victorious Living. E. Stanley Jones

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Victorious Living - E. Stanley Jones

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around something else, it is eccentric, and thus self-destructive and society­-destructive.

      Was Christ strange? To the men of his day he was. We now see that his was the only sanity. He moves through those scenes, poised and masterful, at home in the huts of the poor and in the houses of the rich—the one sane one, to whom we must turn or lose our sanity and ourselves.

      O God, our Lord, we have become so used to the insanities of life around us that we look on the sane as the insane. Give us clarity of mind and heart, that we may turn from the insanities of selfishness and greed to the sanities of your way. For we know that life will not work in any way save your way in Jesus’ name. Amen.

      Week 3 Sunday

      Week 3 Sunday

      Toiling in the Dark

      John 6:16-21

      We must get clear this whole matter of whether the Christian way will work before we can go on to “victorious living,” for as long as we have the suspicion lurking in our minds that we are about something that cannot be done, that the universe won’t back it, there is a paralysis at the center. If, however, we are sure that the sum total of things is behind our acting, then our wills are steeled to do the hitherto impossible.

      It was said of the disciples that they were toiling in the dark, rowing and getting nowhere. The wind and the waves were against them and the whole thing was ending in futility. Then Jesus came. They cried out against him, in fear that he was a ghost. But finally they took him in, and “immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going” (John 6:21). Is that the history of our lives? We strive for goals we cannot reach. The whole thing ends in futility—toiling in rowing and getting nowhere. The sense of meaningless striving is upon us. We are “up against it.” And everything is very dark. Life is too much for us. Then Jesus comes and we are afraid of him; he is ghostly, unnatural, and will demand the unnatural and the impossible. This is our first reaction. But finally we let him in; and, lo—we are at the very place we were striving to reach—we are at the land to which we were going! This is the very way it works.

      But there is no doubt that we are afraid of Jesus. It was said that when Herod heard that Jesus came, he “was troubled, and everyone in Jerusalem was troubled with him” (Matt. 2:3 CEB). Troubled at the coming of the Deliverer! They were naturalized in their own lostness. But should the dynamo be afraid of the coming of electricity? The flower at the coming of the sunshine? The heart at the coming of love? Should life be afraid of the coming of Life?

      Help me, gentle, redeeming, impinging God, not to keep you at a distance through fear. Help me, then, to take you into my little troubled boat. Amen.

      Week 3 Monday

      How Do We Get to the Goal of Self-expression?

      2 Corinthians 2:14-16; Galatians 2:20; 6:14

      We saw yesterday that we toil in futile striving until Jesus comes. Take the natural things within us, which are part of our very makeup; can these instincts be fulfilled, can they reach their goal apart from him?

      Take the instinct of self-expression. Noted psychologist Alfred Adler said that the instinct of self is the strongest of the three major instincts: self, sex, and the herd. Hence self-expression is natural and normal and right. We therefore strive to get to the goal of self-expression. We all do. The smallest member of our ashram, a three-year-old, after singing at the top of her voice, will announce triumphantly at the conclusion of the grace, “I sang.” We all laugh. In polite society, we do not laugh at sophisticated attempts at self-promotion—we get irritated. Place a dozen people in one situation, all of whom want to express themselves, and you have the stage set for clash and confusion and jealousy. The result is refined strife. The whole thing ends in futility. We thwart one another. We are toiling in rowing and it is getting dark . . . darker. Then across the troubled waters Jesus comes to us. We cry out in fear against him, for we suspect what he will ask of us. He will ask that we cease all this and lose ourselves. And that is exactly what we do not want to do; we want to express ourselves. It is unnatural, ghostly, impossible. But as we toil further into our futilities, he keeps coming, until at last we let him in. Then we lose ourselves in his will and purposes. We forget about our self-expression. And, lo, we are at the land to which we were going!

      We are never so much ourselves as when we are most his. For then, we have found ourselves. We have arrived. We have obeyed the deepest law of the universe: the one who saves his or her life shall lose it, and the one who loses it for the sake of Jesus shall find it. It works.

      O Christ, we feared you. The drowning feared the lifeline—forgive us. But your very coming to us is your forgiveness. We thank you. Amen.

      Week 3 Tuesday

      How Do We Get Rid of Enemies?

      Matthew 5:43-48; Romans 12:19-21

      Take another natural instinct—the instinct to get rid of our enemies. Those who thwart us, who hurt our feelings, who do us harm become our enemies. So we strive to get to the land of the riddance of enemies. Sometimes we try the crude method of fists; sometimes, if we are more refined, we strive to cut off their heads by the sharpness of our tongues, or socially we “cut them dead.” Or we go to the court and hope thus to make them bend the knee. Or collectively, we go to war with waving banners, lying propaganda, and belching cannon. In all these ways, and many others, we strive to get rid of our enemies. But we are soon toiling in rowing and getting nowhere. We are not getting rid of our enemies. We are multiplying them.

      For we soon find that harsh words produce harsh words; sharp tongues have a way of sharpening other tongues. “Cutting other people dead” results in isolating ourselves. Court cases produce court cases. And as for war getting rid of enemies, we find it only produces them. Mailed fists, shaken at the world, turn the world into a looking glass from which mailed fists shake in return. We get nowhere. Blank futility. Then Jesus comes to us across our troubled waters. We are afraid, for we suspect that he will ask us to love our enemies. And we do not want to love them. We want to get rid of them. But he keeps coming, until finally we let him in. And then something strange happens. As we catch his way we find a positive desire, even a craving, to do good to people, even to our enemies. And lo, we are at the land to which we were going. Our enemies are gone. We have got rid of them in the only possible way of getting rid of them—we have turned them into friends. Even if they do not respond, our enmity has gone and hence our enemies. We have arrived.

      O Christ, help us today to take your way, even toward our enemies. And it may be that at nightfall we shall have no enemies. We too shall arrive. Amen.

      Week 3 Wednesday

      How Can We Arrive at Greatness?

      Mark 10:35-45

      The instinct to be great is another phase of the instinct of self. We all want to be great. The little one in the corner and the ruler on the throne feel the same way about themselves.

      Two little boys, children of missionaries, argued over the respective greatness of their fathers, when one little fellow capped it all with this: “My father, why he teaches subjects in the school so hard that he himself doesn’t understand them!” That settled the matter; he was greatest, and the son also, by implication!

      We laugh at the little ones, but it becomes serious when it gets to us. We try by thought to add a cubit to our statures (see Matt. 6:27). We buy expensive clothes to try to make our neighbors “green with envy.” By acting the “he-man,’’ some men try to be forceful and impressive.

      A

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