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Thursday Treasures from Two Listeners
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
by Henry Drummond
First Published c1880

THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not LOVE I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind;
Love envieth not;
Love vaunteth not itself is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly,
Seeketh not her own,
Is not easily provoked,
Thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love.--I COR xiii.

EVERY one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the modern world: What is the summum bonum--the supreme good? You have life before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet?

We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is Faith. That great word has been the key-note for centuries of the popular religion; and we have easily learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in the chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source; and there we have seen, "The greatest of these is love." It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says, "If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. "So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts them, "Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love," and without a moment's hesitation, the decision falls, "The greatest of these is Love."

And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing student can detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all through his character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote, "The greatest of these is love," when we meet it first, is stained with blood.

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love as the summum bonum. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about it. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love among yourselves." Above all things. And John goes farther, "God is love." And you remember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what he meant by that? In those days men were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously fulfil the whole law. And you can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." If a man love God, you will not require to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. "Take not His name in vain." Would he ever dream of taking His name in vain if he loved Him? "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Would he not be too glad to have one day in seven to dedicate more exclusively to the object of his affection? Love would fulfil all these laws regarding God. And so, if he loved Man, you would never think of telling him to honour his father and mother. He could not do anything else. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only insult him if you suggested that he should not steal -.how could he steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not to bear false witness against his neighbour. If he loved him it would be the last thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging him not to covet what his neighbours had. He would rather they possessed it than himself. In this way "Love is the fulfilling of the law." It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life.

Now Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given us the most wonderful and original account extant of the summum bonum. We may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of the short chapter, we have Love contrasted; in the heart of it, we have Love analysed; towards the end we have Love defended as the supreme gift.

THE CONTRAST

PAUL begins by contrasting Love with other things that men in those days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over those things in detail. Their inferiority is already obvious.

He contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble gift it is, the power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing them to lofty purposes and holy deeds. Paul says, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." And we all know why. We have all felt the brazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable unpersuasiveness, of eloquence behind which lies no Love.

He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with mysteries. He contrasts it with faith. He contrasts it with charity. Why is Love greater than faith? Because the end is greater than the means. And why is it greater than charity? Because the whole is greater than the part. Love is greater than faith, because the end is greater than the means. What is the use of having faith? It is to connect the soul with God. And what is the object of connecting man with God? That he may become like God. But God is Love. Hence Faith, the means, is in order to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It is greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal of charity without Love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do it. Yet Love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at the copper's cost. It is too cheap--too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would either do more for him, or less.

Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I beg the little band of would-be missionaries and I have the honour to call some of you by this name for the first time--to remember that though you give your bodies to be burned, and have not Love, it profits nothing--nothing! You can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the impress and reflection of the Love of God upon your own character. That is the universal language. It will take you years to speak in Chinese, or in the dialects of India. From the day you land, that language of Love, understood by all, will be pouring forth its unconscious eloquence. It is the man who is the missionary, it is not his words. His character is his message. In the heart of Africa, among the great Lakes, I have come across black men and women who remembered the only white man they ever saw before--David Livingstone; and as you cross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up as they speak of the kind Doctor who passed there years ago. They could not understand him; but they felt the Love that beat in his heart. Take into your new sphere of labour, where you also mean to lay down your life, that simple charm, and your lifework must succeed. You can take nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It is-not worth while going if you take anything less. You may take every accomplishment; you may be braced for every sacrifice; but if you give your body to be burned, and have not Love, it will profit you and the cause of Christ nothing.

THE ANALYSIS

AFTER contrasting Love with these things, Paul, in three verses, very short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is. I ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is like light. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its component colours--red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colours of the rainbow--so Paul passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements. And in these few words we have what one might call the Spectrum of Love, the analysis of Love. Will you observe what its elements are? Will you notice that they have common names; that they are virtues which we hear about every day; that they are things which can be practised by every man in every place in life; and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is made up?

The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients:--
Patience . . . . . . "Love suffereth long."
Kindness . . . . . . "And is kind."
Generosity . . . . "Love envieth not."
Humility . . . . . . "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."
Courtesy . . . . . . "Doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness . . "Seeketh not her own."
Good Temper . . "Is not easily provoked."
Guilelessness . . "Thinketh no evil."
Sincerity . . . . . . "Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth."

Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness; good temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make up the supreme gift, the stature of the perfect man. You will observe that all are in relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common day.

There is no time to do more than make a passing note upon each of these ingredients. Love is Patience. This is the normal attitude of Love; Love passive, Love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth all things. For Love understands, and therefore waits.

Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's life was spent in doing kind things--in merely doing kind things? Run over it with that in view and you will find that He spent a great proportion of His time simply in making people happy, in doing good turns to people. There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.

"The greatest thing," says some one, "a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children." I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are? How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How superabundantly it pays itself back--for there is no debtor in the world so honourable, so superbly honourable, as Love. "Love never faileth". Love is success, Love is happiness, Love is life. "Love, I say, "with Browning, "is energy of Life."

"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."

Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God. God is love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is a difference between trying to please and giving pleasure Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit.

"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."

Generosity. "Love envieth not" This is Love in competition with others. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little Christian work even is a protection against un-Christian feeling. That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly need the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which "envieth not."

And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this further thing, Humility-- to put a seal upon your lips and forget what you have done. After you have been kind, after Love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing about it Love hides even from itself. Love waives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this summum bonum: Courtesy. This is Love in society, Love in relation to etiquette. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly." Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored person into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their heart, they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was because he loved everything--the mouse, and the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle with any society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It means a gentle man--a man who does things gently, with love. And that is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentleman cannot in the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The un-gentle soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature cannot do anything else. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly."

Unselfishness. "Love seeketh not her own." Observe: Seeketh not even that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, and rightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exercise even the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul does not summon us to give up our rights. Love strikes much deeper. It would have us not seek them at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal element altogether from our calculations. It is not hard to give up our rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is to give up ourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already. Little cross then, perhaps, to give them up. But not to seek them, to look every man not on his own things, but on the things of others--id opus est. "Seekest thou great things for thyself? "said the prophet; "seek them not." Why? Because there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a great purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is more difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all, than, having sought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of a partly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to Love, and nothing is hard. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's "yoke" is just His way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than any other. I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. And half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It consists in giving, and in serving others. He that would be great among you, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be happy, let him remember that there is but one way--it is more blessed, it is more happy, to give than to receive.

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: Good Temper. "Love is not easily provoked." Nothing could be more striking than to find this here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's character. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human nature.

The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" disposition. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is there are two great classes of sins--sins of the Body, and sins of the Disposition. The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second. Now society has no doubt whatever as to which of these is the worse. Its brand falls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another's sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him who is Love, a sin against Love may seem a hundred times more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianise society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood; in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence stands alone. Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful--let him get all credit for his virtues--look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his own father's door. "He was angry," we read, "and would not go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon the servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect upon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the Kingdom of God by the unlovely characters of those who profess to be inside? Analyse, as a study in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself as it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness--these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul. In varying proportions, also, these are the ingredients of all ill temper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are not worse to live in, and for others to live with, than sins of the body. Did Christ indeed not answer the question Himself when He said, "I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven before you." There is really no place in Heaven for a disposition like this. A man with such a mood could only make Heaven miserable for all the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born again, he cannot, he simply cannot, enter the Kingdom of Heaven. For it is perfectly certain-- and you will not misunderstand me--that to enter Heaven a man must take it with him.

You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not in what it is alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I take the liberty now of speaking of it with such unusual plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped involuntarily when off one's guard; in a word, the lightning form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins. For a want of patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolised in one flash of Temper.

Hence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go to the source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humours will die away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in--a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does. Therefore "Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember, once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I cannot help speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves. "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." That is to say, it is the deliberate verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to love. It is better not to live than not to love.

Guilelessness and Sincerity may be dismissed almost with a word. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. And the possession of it is the great secret of personal influence. You will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who influence you are people who believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement and educative fellowship. It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness. Love "thinketh no evil," imputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction on every action. What a delightful state of mind to live in! What a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them. For the respect of another is the first restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.

"Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." I have called this Sincerity from the words rendered in the Authorised Version by "rejoiceth in the truth." And, certainly, were this the real translation, nothing could be more just. For he who loves will love Truth not less than men. He will rejoice in the Truth--rejoice not in what he has been taught to believe; not in this Church's doctrine or in that; not in this ism or in that ism; but "in the Truth." He will accept only what is real; he will strive to get at facts; he will search for Truth with a humble and unbiased mind, and cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But the more literal translation of the Revised Version calls for just such a sacrifice for truth's sake here. For what Paul really meant is, as we there read, "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth," a quality which probably no one English word--and certainly not Sincerity--adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly, the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults; the charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but "covereth all things"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavours to see things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared or calumny denounced.

So much for the analysis of Love. Now the business of our lives is to have these things fitted into our characters. That is the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world, to learn Love. Is life not full of opportunities for learning Love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a play-ground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love What makes a man a good cricketer? Practice. What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer? Practice. What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in which we get the body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigour of moral fibre, nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round Christian character--the Christlike nature in its fullest development. And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice.

What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Though perfect, we read that He learned obedience, He increased in wisdom and in favour with God and man. Do not quarrel therefore with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is the practice which God appoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is moulding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful though you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. You remember Goethe's words: Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Doch ein Character in dem Strom der Welt. "Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life." Talent develops itself in solitude--the talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; Character grows in the stream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love.

How? Now, how? To make it easier, I have named a few of the elements of love. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined. Light is a something more than the sum of its ingredients--a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something more than all its elements-- a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing. By synthesis of all the colours, men can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love. How then are we to have this transcendent living whole conveyed into our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray. But these things alone will not bring Love into our nature. Love is an effect. And only as we fulfil the right condition can we have the effect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is?

If you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John you will find these words: "We love, because He first loved us." "We love," not "We love Him" That is the way the old Version has it, and it is quite wrong. "We love--because He first loved us." Look at that word "because." It is the cause of which I have spoken. "Because He first loved us," the effect follows that we love, we love Him, we love all men. We cannot help it. Because He loved us, we love, we love everybody. Our heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of Christ, and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ's character, and you will be changed into the same image from tenderness to tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot love to order. You can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it, and grow into likeness to it And so look at this Perfect Character, this Perfect Life. Look at the great Sacrifice as He laid down Himself, all through life, and upon the Cross of Calvary; and you must love Him. And loving Him, you must become like Him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence of a magnetised body, and that piece of iron for a time becomes magnetised. It is charged with an attractive force in the mere presence of the original force, and as long as you leave the two side by side, they are both magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him who loved us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will become a centre of power, a permanently attractive force; and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is the inevitable effect of Love. Any man who fulfils that cause must have that effect produced in him. Try to give up the idea that religion comes to us by chance, or by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law, or by supernatural law, for all law is Divine. Edward Irving went to see a dying boy once, and when he entered the room he just put his hand on the sufferer's head, and said, "My boy, God loves you," and went away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out to the people in the house, "God loves me! God loves me!" It changed that boy. The sense that God loved him overpowered him, melted him down, and began the creating of a new heart in him. And that is how the love of God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and begets in him the new creature, who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish. And there is no other way to get it. There is no mystery about it We love others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first loved us.

THE DEFENSE

Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for singling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. "Love," urges Paul, "never faileth." Then he begins again one of his marvellous lists of the great things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over the things that men thought were going to last, and shows that they are all fleeting, temporary, passing away.

"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail" It was the mother's ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet, and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when he appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, "Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail" This Book is full of prophecies. One by one they have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their work is finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to feed a devout man's faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly coveted. "Whether there be tongues, they shall cease." As we all know, many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this world. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for illustration merely, as languages in general--a sense which was not in Paul's mind at all, and which though it cannot give us the specific lesson will point the general truth. Consider the words in which these chapters were written--Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin--the other great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian language. It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The most popular book in the English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of Dickens's works, his Pickwick Papers. It is largely written in the language of London street life; and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader.

Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness adds, "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." The wisdom of the ancients, where is it? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy to-day knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You put yesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away. You buy the old editions of the great encyclopaedias for a few pence. Their knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been superseded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has superseded that, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion. One of the greatest living authorities, Sir William Thomson, said the other day, "The steam-engine is passing away." "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." At every workshop you will see, in the back yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city Men flocked in from the country to see the great invention; now it is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old. But yesterday, in the University of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day his successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian of the University to go to the library and pick out the books on his subject that were no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian was this: "Take every text-book that is more than ten years old, and put it down in the cellar."Sir James Simpson was a great authority only a few years ago: men came from all parts of the earth to consult him; and almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by the science of to-day to oblivion. And in every branch of science it is the same. "Now we know in part. We see through a glass darkly."

Can you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things Paul did not condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but he picked out the great things of his time, the things the best men thought had something in them, and brushed them peremptorily aside. Paul had no charge against these things in themselves. All he said about them was that they would not last They were great things, but not supreme things. There were things beyond them. What we are stretches past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that men denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is a favourite argument of the New Testament. John says of the world, not that it is wrong, but simply that it "passeth away." There is a great deal in the world that is delightful and beautiful; there is a great deal in it that is great and engrossing; but it will not last. All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the world therefore. Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration of an immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something that is immortal. And the only immortal things are these: "Now abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love."

Some think the time may come when two of these three things will also pass away --faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say so. We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be current in the Universe when all the other coinages of all the nations of the world shall be useless and unhonoured. You will give yourselves to many things, give yourselves first to Love. Hold things in their proportion. Hold things in their proportion. Let at least the first great object of our lives be to achieve the character defended in these words, the character,--and it is the character of Christ--which is built around Love.

I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how continually John associates love and faith with eternal life? I was not told when I was a boy that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting life." What I was told, I remember, was, that God so loved the world that, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I was to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But I had to find out for myself that whosoever trusteth in Him--that is, whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only the avenue to Love--hath everlasting life The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer men a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give men a more abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and therefore abundant in salvation for themselves, and large in enterprise for the alleviation and redemption of the world. Then only can the Gospel take hold of the whole of a man, body, soul, and spirit, and give to each part of his nature its exercise and reward. Many of the current Gospels are addressed only to a part of man's nature. They offer peace, not life; faith, not Love; justification, not regeneration. And men slip back again from such religion because it has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it. It offered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that was lived before. Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can compete with the love of the world.

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love for ever is to live for ever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love We want to live for ever for the same reason that we want to live tomorrow. Why do you want to live tomorrow? It is because there is some one who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and love back. There is no other reason why we should live on than that we love and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love him that he commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him and whom he loves, he will live; because to live is to love. Be it but the love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and he has no contact with life, no reason to live. The "energy of life" has failed. Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ's own definition. Ponder it. "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Love must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love never faileth, and life never faileth, so long as there is love. That is the philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason why in the nature of things Love should be the supreme thing--because it is going to last; because in the nature of things it is an Eternal Life. That Life is a thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that we shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living now. No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving, and unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is love.

Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in reading this chapter once a week for the next three months? A man did that once and it changed his whole life. Will you do it? It is for the greatest thing in the world. You might begin by reading it every day, especially the verses which describe the perfect character. "Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself." Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to. No man can become a saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the condition required demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time, just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires preparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at any cost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours. You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and beyond all the transitory pleasures of life, there leap forward those supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those round about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which you feel have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost all the beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that He has planned for man; and yet as I look back I see standing out above all the life that has gone four or five short experiences when the love of God reflected itself in some poor imitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem to be the things which alone of all one's life abide. Everything else in all our lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts of love which no man knows about, or can ever know about--they never fail.

In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is depicted for us in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then is not, "How have I believed?" but "How have I loved?" The test of religion, the final test of religion, is not religiousness, but Love. I say the final test of religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means that He suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not once near enough to Him to be seized with the spell of His compassion for the world. It means that:--

"I lived for myself, I thought for myself,
For myself, and none beside--
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if He had never died."

It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world shall be gathered. It is in the presence of Humanity that we shall be charged. And the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge each one. Those will be there whom we have met and helped: or there, the unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised. No other Witness need be summoned. No other charge than lovelessness shall be preferred. Be not deceived. The words which all of us shall one Day hear, sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books but of cups of cold water in the name of Christ. Thank God the Christianity of to-day is coming nearer the world's need. Live to help that on. Thank God men know better, by a hairsbreadth, what religion is, what God is, who Christ is, where Christ is. Who is Christ? He who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick. And where is Christ? Where?--whoso shall receive a little child in My name receiveth Me. And who are Christ's? Every one that loveth is born of God.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. Jude 1:24-25

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Thursday Treasures from Two Listeners
Excerpt from The Way, The Truth, and The Life, By Dr. Glenn Clark

Psalm 23

The Lord is my Shepherd: I shall not want.

I shall not want for peace: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.

I shall not want for serenity: He leadeth me beside the still waters.

I shall not want for healing: He restoreth my soul.

I shall not want for guidance: He leads me in paths of righteousness, for His name’s sake.

The Lord is my Shepherd: I shall fear no evil.

I shall fear no evil from death: For Thou art with me in the valley and the shadow.

I shall fear no evil from danger: For Thy rod and Thy staff shall protect me.

I shall fear no evil from famine: For Thou preparest a table before me.

I shall fear no evil from enemies: For Thou preparest this table in the presence of mine enemies.

I shall fear no evil from mental disturbances: Thou annointest my head with oil.

I shall fear no evil from want: My cup runneth over.

I shall fear no evil from sin: Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

I shall fear no evil from separation from my Heavenly Father :
I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Copyright 2023 Two Listeners, All rights reserved.

Thursday Treasures from Two Listeners
Desiderata

by Max Ehrmann 1927

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

This is the original text from the book where Desiderata was first published.

Thursday Treasures from Two Listeners
The Soul’s Sincere Desire
By Dr. Glenn Clark
Chapter 7 – Helps to Prayer
Prayer Psalms

A Psalm of Gratitude
Our Father, we worked for Thee till we thought we should
become weak in Thy service,
But Thou hast renewed our strength; we have mounted up with wings as eagles.
We gave unto Thee our all,
But Thou hast filled our barns with grain.
We gave ourselves utterly to Thee, without stint and without measure,
Only to find ourselves returning to meet ourselves, clad in garments of glory.

We made ourselves completely captive to Thy will,
And behold, Thou hast set us eternally free,
We let Thee have complete dominion over us;
And behold, Thou has given us dominion over every living creature.

How can we ever thank Thee, how can we ever repay
Thee, Thou Lord of our lives?
For even the thanks we send forth to Thee upon the wings of the morning
Return bearing gifts in the evening.
All we can do is to continue to give – give – give to the uttermost.
All that we have is Thine, all that we are is Thine.
Take us, use us, we cannot be exhausted;
The more we are used the more beautiful, the more eternal we become.
Thou hast set a Well within our hearts that springs up into eternal Life.
Thou hast set a Light within our hearts that radiates eternal Love.
And the Light of Love shining through the fountain of Life
reveals the rainbow of Joy,
Joy that is eternal, unending, complete,
The perfect promise of Thy perfect fulfillment.
Accept our thanksgiving, our praise, our gratitude
Without stint and without measure,
O Father,
For Thine is the Kingdom
and the Power
and the Glory
forever and ever.
Amen
Copyright 2023 Two Listeners, All rights reserved.
Our e-mail address is: webservant@twolisteners.org

Thursday Treasures from Two Listeners
The Soul’s Sincere Desire
By Dr. Glenn Clark
Chapter 7 – Helps to Prayer
Prayer Psalms

A Psalm of Guidance
We know, 0 Father, that mankind is not responsible for making plans,
For Thou are the only Designer.
We know that no one ever makes plans;
For plans as flowers and trees grow,
Are things of life with roots, ramification, and interweaving,
As beautiful as tapestries, as permanent as the eternal stars.
May our eye be always single, our vision always clear as light,
That the radiance of Thy infinite Love may light our path forever;
That we may see Thy Plan as it eternally is,
In all its beauty, in all its harmony, in all its grandeur,
And see ourselves as we always are-
Thy children, made in Thy image and likeness,
The perfect expression of Thy perfect direction,
Each instant conscious of Thy perfect ideas in perfect succession.
As Thou keepest the stars in their courses,
So wilt Thou guide our steps in perfect harmony,
without clash or discord of any kind,
If we but keep our trust in Thee.
We know Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on Thee,
Because he trusteth in Thee.
We know that is we but acknowledge Thee in all our ways
Thou wilt direct out paths.
For Thou are the God of Love,
Giver of every good and perfect gift,
And there is none beside Thee.
Thou are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent,
In all, through all, and over all,
The only God.

Thursday Treasures from Two Listeners
The Way of Discipline by E. Stanley Jones - Part 2 of 2
Excerpt from The Way  -  Part 2 of 2
E. Stanley Jones
 
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Week 33 in The Way
Discipline Your Courage
Discipline Your Beginnings
 Discipline Your Persistence
Discipline Your Time
 Discipline Yourself to “What Is”
 Discipline Your Tongue
 Discipline Your Disciplines
 
 8               Discipline Your Courage Josh. 1:6-9
We continue into this week our emphasis of the Way as the way of discipline.  There are some who would say that “salvation is by character.”  We do not accept that.  Salvation is by grace through faith – salvation is by Christ.  It is a gift.  But if it is a gift, it is also a growth, a growth in character.  And character is developed through discipline.
That leads us to this step:
 Discipline your courage.  Every time you refuse to face up to life and its problems you weaken your character.  Character needs courage to make it real character.  If we have no courage, we are what Nietzsche called “moral cows in our plump comfortableness.”  Present-day civilization is suffering from a lack of moral courage.  So many people are in the inglorious business of keeping their heads stuck in.  If you do that long enough there won’t be an idea left in that head when you do get it out.  We are in the process of being standardized morally – and at a very low level.  “Everybody does it,” is the new moral code to which we bow and which we obey.  A woman was losing her husband’s affections over a lot of little things, among them his dislike for highly painted fingernails.  When a counselor advised her to let this go for the sake of holding the family together, she replied in dismay: “But I couldn’t face society if I did – everybody does it.”  She lost her husband because she had no courage to get out of step with an imperious but senseless custom.
Many of us lose our souls for lack of courage.  We will not stand up and take it, so we crawl – become worms.  If you are on the Way you must get used to the sign of your own blood.  Paul speaks of four steps in development:  “Knowing that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope – a hope with never disappoints us.”  (Rom. 5:3-5, Moffatt)  Note the steps:

(1) trouble leads to (2) endurance; endurance to (3) character; and character (4) to hope.  Character is formed out of endurance which is formed out of trouble and character brings forth hope – the only hope that will never let us down, will not disappoint us.
 
O Christ, I see that the trouble that comes from courage is strengthening my fiber, strengthening me, giving me hope, a hope that holds up.  Then give me that gentle courage that will be disciplined to face life bravely and cheerfully.   Amen.
 
Affirmation for the Day:  “The eternal is my light and aid; whom shall I fear?  (Ps. 27:1, Moffatt)
 
Josh. 1:6-9
6 be strong and courageous, for thou—thou dost cause this people to inherit the land which I have sworn to their fathers to give to them. 7 `Only, be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded thee; thou dost not turn aside from it right or left, so that thou dost act wisely in every place whither thou goest; 8 the book of this law doth not depart out of thy mouth, and thou hast meditated in it by day and by night, so that thou dost observe to do according to all that is written in it, for then thou dost cause thy way to prosper, and then thou dost act wisely. 9 `Have not I commanded thee? be strong and courageous; be not terrified nor affrighted, for with thee is Jehovah thy God in every place whither thou goest.'

 
9            Discipline Your Beginnings
Ps. 119:9-16
We continue our meditation on discipline.
Discipline your beginnings.  When Jesus spoke of the fire of discipline, He did so after mentioning three possible hindrances – hand, foot, eye.  If any of these offends, that is, cuts across the purposes of your life, cut it off or pluck it out.  We are to be disciplined at the place of the hand, the foot, the eye.
The hand is the thing that takes hold, the thing that grasps what we want.  Don’t take hold of a thing unless you want that thing to take hold of you.  For your possessions often end in possessing you.  Be careful of what you grasp.  Grasp it only if you are willing that the thing shall grip you.  That hand must be disciplined.

The foot approaches the thing desired.  Don’t walk toward a thing unless you are willing to take hold of the thing and have the thing take hold of you.  Discipline your approaches to life.  Many people think they can walk up to a thing and enjoy the anticipatory thrill of approach, but turn back this side of the deed.  This is deadly, for it is destiny.  You destine yourself to the deed when you decide to approach it.

The eye looks at the thing which you may approach and then may grasp and possess.  Watch what you see.  You first see, then seek.  For seeing creates desire and desire creates emotion, an din the battle between the emotion and the will, the emotion almost always wins.  Jesus put His finger on the necessity of the disciplined eye in these words:  “Anyone who even looks with lust at a woman has committed adultery with her in the heart.” (Matt. 5:28, Moffatt)  The look leads to adultery in the heart, and adultery in the heart leads to adultery in the act, so quench adultery at the place of the look.  Those who think they can indulge at the place of seeing and can pull back at the place of seeking, are putting their feet on a slippery bank.  Discipline the beginnings and the ends will take care of themselves.  In temptation, flight is better than fight.  To avert the eye is easier than to avert the destiny that comes from approach to and handling of the desired thing.

Discipline the beginnings.  The ends are in the beginnings.
 
O Christ, how wonderfully true Thou art to life.  Thou dost lay it bare before our eyes.  Through Thine eyes we see, really see.  Help us to see and to seek what Thou didst see and seek.  Then we shall be safe.  Amen.
 
Affirmation For The Day:  “When I think my foot is slipping, thy goodness, O Eternal, holds me up.”  (Ps. 94:18, Moffatt)
 
Ps. 119:9-16
9 Beth. With what doth a young man purify his path? To observe—according to Thy word.
10 With all my heart I have sought Thee, Let me not err from Thy commands.
11 In my heart I have hid Thy saying, That I sin not before Thee.
12 Blessed art Thou, O Jehovah, teach me Thy statutes.
13 With my lips I have recounted All the judgments of Thy mouth. 14 In the way of Thy testimonies I have joyed, As over all wealth. 15 In Thy precepts I meditate, And I behold attentively Thy paths. 16 In Thy statutes I delight myself, I do not forget Thy word.
 
10            Discipline Your Persistence
Phil 3:16; Heb. 12:1-6
We look at another place of discipline:
 Discipline yourself at the place of carrying through.A great many good but ineffective people discipline their beginnings.  They take up good things, but they don’t carry through.  Their lives are strewn with the wreckage of good beginnings and poor endings.
Don’t take up everything that comes along.  Save yourself for the best.  “Beware of sacrificing your burnt offerings at any sacred spot you see.” 
(Deut. 12:13, Moffatt) 

Save yourself to sacrifice your life offering on the Alter of the Worth-while.  Louis Untermeyer prays:
“From compromise and things half-done,
Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride.”

“You might not swerve to the right or to the left, but always follow the straight road of life which the Eternal your God has laid down for you, that you may live.”  (Deut. 5:32-33, Moffatt)  Get guidance from god, know your call, and then stay by it till you hear the recall.  That doesn’t mean that you may not have to retrace steps, change tasks, and callings – you may have to.  But it does mean that once you know your call and your task, stay by it with the persistence of a puppy with a root.  In  a long-distance race the little man who finished last finished, though he was several laps behind, and the winner was already across the tape.  Instead of dropping out as the rest had done when they say they were beaten, he kept doggedly on.  The crowd laughed at first, then applauded, and he got an ovation at the close.

“I am staying on … I have wide opportunities here …, and there are many to thwart me.”  (I Cor. 16:9, Moffatt)  Many of us would have said:  “I am quitting … I have wide opportunities here, but there are too many things against me.”

“The Lord said:  ‘Well, where is the trusty, thoughtful steward whom the lord and master will set over his establishment?”  (Luke 12:42, Moffatt)   Note two things:  “trusty” and “thoughtful” – honesty and intelligence.  Honesty without intelligence, or intelligence without honesty are both inadequate.  But the “trusty” means not only honesty, but that he can be trusted to go through to completion.
O Christ, I know you want to use me.  But I cannot be used unless I am trusty and thoughtful.  Help me to be trusted to go through – clear to the end with unwavering persistence.  Amen
 
Affirmation For The Day:  “Never will he let you slip; he wo guards you never sleeps.”  (Ps. 121:3, Moffatt)
 
Phil. 3:16, Heb. 12:1-6
Phil 3: 16 Only, we must let our steps be guided by such truth as we have attained.    (Moffatt)
Heb. 12: 1 Therefore, with all this host of witnesses encircling us, we must strip off every handicap, strip off sin with its clinging folds, to run our appointed course steadily, 2 our eyes fixed upon Jesus as the pioneer and the perfection of faith — upon Jesus who, in order to reach his own appointed joy, steadily endured the cross, thinking nothing of its shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Compare him who steadily endured all that hostility from sinful men, so as to keep your own hearts from fainting and failing. 4 You have not had to shed blood yet in the struggle against sin. 5 And have you forgotten the word of appeal that reasons with you as sons? — My son, never make light of the Lord's discipline, never faint under his reproofs; 6 for the Lord disciplines the man he loves, and scourges every son he receives.   (Moffatt)

 
11         Discipline Your Time
1 Thess. 5:14; Eph. 5:15-18
We look further at discipline:
 Discipline your time.If, in discussing the last point of disciplining yourself to carry through to completion tasks taken up, your rationalization is, “Well, I haven’t the time,” then the answer must be:  Discipline your time.  If you actually haven’t time for it, then you ought not to do it; it isn’t your task.  You must exercise the duty of refusing to do the good.  You must not take too much on your plate with a lot of leftovers.
But perhaps the real difficulty is that you don’t use to best advantage the time you have.  Your time is undisciplined.  You carry on conversations long after they have run out of intelligence, for most conversations run out of intelligence in half an hour!  You do not tackle your tasks decisively and get them done and out of the way.  You daydream instead of think; you dawdle instead of do.  You waste hours of time at games which are supposed to be recreation, but which wreck time and you.

Time is distilled opportunity.  Don’t waste it, for in doing so you lay waste yourself.  Every wasted moment is so much wasted man, that man you.  Budget your time.  Plan your work and work your plan.

Don’t always be running to try to keep up with your tasks, keep them in hand, anticipate them.  A sign says:  “Don’t write – wire.”  I’d like to reverse it:  “Don’t wire – write.”  For that means that you have looked ahead, have seen the thing coming, have met it ahead of time instead of waiting till the last minute and then fussily wiring, feverishly telephoning long distance.  That kind of person is upset and upsetting.  He demands that people atone for his procrastinations by answering his feverish requests with feverish response.

The Man who influenced the world most was the Man with the leisured heart.
A little boy, late for school, asked God to help him to be there on time.  He ran, stumbled, and breathlessly said, “God, I asked you to help me, but don’t push me.”  Don’t let your jobs push you; you stumble if you do.  Discipline your time.
 
O Christ, when I look at Thee I see that Thou was never in a hurry, never ran, but always had time for the pressing necessities of the day.  Give me that disciplined, poised life with time always for the thing that matters.  For I would be a disciplined person.  Amen
 
 
Affirmation For The Day:  “He that believeth (in Him) shall not make haste.”  (Isa. 28:16)
 
 
1 Thess. 5:14; Eph. 5:15-18
1 Thess. 5:  14 We beseech you, brothers, keep a check upon loafers, encourage the faint-hearted, sustain weak souls, never lose your temper with anyone
Eph. 5:  15 Be strictly careful then about the life you lead; act like sensible men, not like thoughtless; 16 make the very most of your time, for these are evil days. 17 So do not be senseless, but understand what is the Lord's will; 18 and do not get drunk with wine — that means profligacy — but be filled with the Spirit
 

 
12            Discipline Yourself to “What is”
II Cor. 1:4-6;  2:14;  4:15-18
We look at another place of discipline:
 Discipline yourself to “What is.”There are many who are uselessly beathing themselves upon the bars of life, beating their wings out, because they cannot fly.  “If I were only there or anywhere but here, I’d be all right.”  They dream of what they would do if they were not here.
But we’ve always got to live on what is.  The children of Israel lived on manna in the wilderness as they journeyed to the Promised Land.  Manna means, “What is.”  They didn’t know what it was, so they called it “What is.”  They lived on “What is.”  You and I must live on “What is,” no matter if we hope to live on “What will be.”  The children of Israel got tired of manna, but it sustained them till they got to the Promised Land.  You and I may get tired of “What is,” but we must learn to live by it till we get to our Promised Land.

I was off-loaded in Trinidad on my journey back from South America, off-loaded by two local passengers.  I was a “through” passenger.  It meant my missing important mass meetings in Miami, long planned.  The priority officer agreed that I had had a “raw deal.”  But these words came to me as clear as crystal: “Lord, I do not ask for special treatment; I ask for power to take any treatment that may come, and use it.”  Peace settled within me.  That sentence itself has lingered like a benediction within me ever since.  I lived by it during that waiting period, lived by “What is,” and have lived by it in many a situation since.  To get that sentence was worth the delay.  You can rescue out of every unjust, impossible situation something that makes that situation not confining, but contributing.  You can live on “What is.”  And the manna will feed you, sustain you till you get to God’s better thing – to God’s Promised Land.
 
A letter carrier at fifty had a stroke which impaired one arm and made one leg drag helplessly.  His letter-carrying days were done.  Not so.  He still distributes letters, all of them of good cheer.  He sits in front of his house, waves a cheery greeting to everybody who goes by – the center of the city’s good cheer.  He is living on “What is” and is helping a city to do the same.
 
O Christ, I thank Thee that Thou didst live on the manna of the silent years of obscurity in Nazareth – and live on it gloriously.  Help me to live on what comes, good, bad, indifferent.  Then I shall live.   Amen.
 
Affirmation For The Day:  If I don’t get what I like, then I shall like what I get.
 
II Cor. 1:4-6;  2:14;  4:15-18
II Cor. 1:  4 who comforts me in all my distress, so that I am able to comfort people who are in any distress by the comfort with which I myself am comforted by God. 5 For as the sufferings of Christ are abundant in my case, so my comfort is also abundant through Christ. 6 If I am in distress, it is in the interests of your comfort and salvation; if I am comforted, it is in the interests of your comfort, which is effective as it nerves you to endure the same sufferings as I suffer myself.

II Cor. 2:  14 Wherever I go, thank God, he makes my life a constant pageant of triumph in Christ, diffusing the perfume of his knowledge everywhere by me.
II Cor. 4:  15 It is all in your interests, so that the more grace abounds, the more thanksgiving may rise and redound to the glory of God. 16 Hence I never lose heart; though my outward man decays, my inner man is renewed day after day. 17 The slight trouble of the passing hour results in a solid glory past all comparison, 18 for those of us whose eyes are on the unseen, not on the seen; for the seen is transient, the unseen eternal.

 
13            Discipline Your Tongue
Jas. 3:1-12
We must look at a discipline that is needed by all:
 Discipline your tongue.  The expression of a thing deepens the impression, so a word uttered becomes a word made flesh – in us.  We become the incarnation of what we express.  Jesus said:  “By they words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”  This always sounded superficial until I saw that you become what you say.  If you tell a lie, you become a lie.  The deepest punishment of a lie is – the liar.  He has to live with a man he cannot trust.  That is an uneasy hell.  There are therefore no “white lies,” for they leave a black mark – on the soul.  “Isn’t a lie ever justifiable?”  No, absolutely, no.  Evil means produce evil ends always.  Let it be said of you as was said of Sara Teasdale:  “Her later lyrics grew more and more straight-forward, more dependent on an inner authority and less upon clever manipulation of facts.”
Discipline your tongue not only to the truth but to the relevant truth.  Discipline yourself to concise, straightforward speech.  A speaker introduced by a very flower, verbose chairman rose and said, “The adjective is the enemy of the noun.”  It is.  Sometimes it is the speaker himself who weakens his nouns by his adjectives.  A speaker sat down sadly after a wordy discourse and remarked:  “I couldn’t have said less, unless I had said more.”  He had preached his own funeral.  Discipline your tongue to the relevant, to speech that is straightforward, that says what it means and means what it says.

Discipline your tongue to the loving.  When in doubt, say the most loving thing and you will not be wrong.  I sked the Western Union clerk if I could put the word “love” into a tourate telegram, telling of arrival, without de-tourating it.  She replied:  “Yes, for if ‘love’ weren’t allowed to be put into tourate telegrams, it might cause trouble in homes.”  If we don’t put “love” into everything we say, it may cause trouble anywhere.  Paul says: “this is how I write.  ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.’”  (II Thess. 3:18 Moffatt)  Is that how we write and speak:  “grace ….all”?
O Christ, nothing but gracious words proceeded out of Thy mouth.  Discipline my tongue to the truthful, to the relevant, and to the loving.  For my words will condemn me to be what they are.  Then help me.  Amen
 
Affirmation for the Day:  “Set a watch upon my mouth, O thou Eternal, guard thou the door of my lips; may I have no mind to evil.”  (Ps. 141:3, Moffatt)
 
 
Jas. 3:1-12
1 My brothers, do not swell the ranks of the teachers; remember, we teachers will be judged with special strictness. 2 We all make many a slip, but whoever avoids slips of speech is a perfect man; he can bridle the whole of the body as well as the tongue. 3 We put bridles into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, and so, you see, we can move the whole of their bodies. 4 Look at ships too; for all their size and speed under stiff winds, they are turned by a tiny rudder wherever the mind of the steersman chooses. 5 So the tongue is a small member of the body, but it can boast of great exploits. What a forest is set ablaze by a little spark of fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, the tongue proves a very world of mischief among our members, staining the whole of the body and setting fire to the round circle of existence with a flame fed by hell. 7 For while every kind of beast and bird, of creeping animals and creatures marine, is tameable and has been tamed by mankind, 8 no man can tame the tongue — plague of disorder that it is, full of deadly venom! 9 With the tongue we bless the Lord and Father, and with the tongue we curse men made in God's likeness; 10 blessing and cursing stream from the same lips! My brothers, this ought not to be. 11 Does a fountain pour out fresh water and brackish from the same hole? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives? Or a vine, figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.
 
14            Discipline Your Disciplines
Acts 20:28-35
Today we sum up our meditations on discipline.  Discipline is not something imposed on a reluctant human nature by an arbitrary God.  True, it is said, “Hel let you hear his voice out of heaven, for discipline.” (Deut. 4:36, Moffatt)  But the “voice out of heaven” is exactly the same as the voice out of our needs.  For the voice out of heaven only voices what we need, but often cannot voice.  God’s voice and our needs are one.  Our choosing of disciplines is the choosing of the laws and demands of our beings.  If this is true, then we must:
 
 Discipline our disciplines.  We must not allow them to become too obvious, too much a living by rule of thumb, too stilted.  A person who is obviously trying to be disciplined is not rhythmical and winsome.  The disciplines must be buried in the subconscious where they work naturally as a part of you.  In the beginning you may have to impose them until they take root within you.  But the end is to make them artesian instead of artificial.  The disciplines must be as hidden as the art of the violinist who obeys rules, but seems not to be obeying anything except the creative urge within him.  The rules have become a regularity, the laws have become a liberty.
Jesus said to His disciples, “Take heed to yourselves” just after He had said:  “That will turn out an opportunity for you to bear witness.”  *(Luke 21:324, 13 Moffatt)  The connection was obvious:  Keep yourselves spiritually fit and ready, so that when you are suddenly brought by circumstances before an opportunity for witnessing you may not be nonplused.  Your disciplines will then function as spontaneous habit.  For the disciplines have become you. 
The end of the discipline is not merely to make you, but to make you a Christlike you.  “If he (the disciple) is perfectly trained, he will be like his teacher.”  (Luke 6:40, Moffatt)  the end of the discipline is to make you “perfectly trained” so that you may be like your Master.  You are being disciplined into Christlikeness.
 
O Christ, I thank Thee that Thy disciplined heart didst sing its song of freedom, give me the song of freedom through discipline.  Bring every desire into captivity to the obedience of Thy will.  Then I too shall sing the song of freedom.  Amen.
 
Affirmation For the Day:  “The Eternal your God disciplines you as a man disciplines his son.”  (Deut. 8:5, Moffatt)
 
Acts 20:28-35
28 Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock of which the holy Spirit has appointed you guardians; shepherd the church of the Lord which he has purchased with his own blood. 29 I know that when I am gone, fierce wolves will get in among you, and they will not spare the flock; yes. 30 and men of your own number will arise with perversions of the truth to draw the disciples after them. 31 So be on the alert, remember how for three whole years I never ceased night and day to watch over each one of you with tears. 32 And now I entrust you to God and the word of his grace; he is able to upbuild you and give you your inheritance among all the consecrated. 33 Silver, gold, or apparel I never coveted; 34 you know yourselves how these hands of mine provided everything for my own needs and for my companions. 35 I showed you how this was the way to work hard and succour the needy, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, who said, 'To give is happier than to get.'"
 
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Excerpt from The Way by E. Stanley Jones - Part 1 of 2
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Excerpt from The Way – Part 1 of 2
E. Stanley Jones
Excerpt from Preface: “This book is designed to put our feet upon the Way. It is not an argument, but an adventure. It is an experiment in living. If it doesn’t work, don’t take it. If it does work, bet your very life upon it. If you do, you will not be working in the dark. As soon as you really get hold of it – or better, when it gets hold of you – you will know that this is the Way. Everything else will become irrelevant. This book begins, not with those who have attained, but with those who want to attain.”
Week #32 in The Way
A Disciplined Life
The Way is the Way of Discipline
Discipline Produces Spontaneity
Discipline Produces Liberty
Steps Toward A Disciplined Life
Discipline Your Habits
Out of Good and Evil Stores

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1. A Disciplined Life
I Cor. 6:12-20
We turn now to the truth that must be set over against the one we have been considering. We have been saying that the first law of life is receptivity, to know how to accept what Life offers to us.

A soldier asked Lilian Eubank in a U.S.O. club, “What kind of vitamins do you take?” He explained: “I have watched you for a month, and it does not matter how confusing a situation you are in, how disagreeable the people you are with, you always have a smile and a cheery word. I can’t understand it.” She said: “It isn’t a vitamin at all, but a philosophy of life, that one has to smile when he or she really believes basically that everything works together for good – if you let it.” That is the point – if you let it. If you know how to be receptive and responsive to God and let Him work things out for you.

But to do that we must learn to be disciplined persons. While the Way is the way of dependence, drawing strength from Another, nevertheless, in order to do that we must be disciplined. Very often “free grace” has been preached in such a way that it has weakened character. Paul warns against this in these words, “Do not make your freedom opening for the flesh.”) (Gal. 5:13, Moffatt) Here, liberty had become license. Discipline was needed.

The acceptance of grace is a privilege, a blessed privilege, provided it is permeated with discipline. Dependence plus discipline equals dependable disciples. This combination was shown in this incident in which God apparently showed a sense of humor. A woman writes that she had been healed, gloriously healed of paralysis in the legs and arthritis when she surrendered it all to God. Then she said: “Now, Lord, you’ve healed me, what are you going to do about my overweight?” The answer: “This kind goeth not out save by fasting.” Where only dependence could heal, that was the answer. Where only discipline could heal, that was the answer. The balanced life is the Way. The Christian is blessedly balanced.

Discipline, then, is not a turning into an unnatural, screwy type of person, but it does mean that the forces of life are not unharnessed forces that roam everywhere and get nowhere, except into trouble. They are harnessed to God’s ends; they are disciplined.

O disciplined Christ, so disciplined and yet so free, teach me Thy secret. For only as I am disciplined can I dance the dance of freedom. I want my powers to be at the disposal of the highest. Amen.

Affirmation For The Day: “Happy are they who follow his injunctions, giving him undivided hearts. (Ps. 119:2, Moffatt)

1 Cor. 6:12 – 20 (Moffatt)
12 'All things are lawful for me'? Yes, but not all are good for me. 'All things are lawful for me'? Yes, but I am not going to let anything master me. 13 'Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food'? Yes, and God will do away with the one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body; 14 and the God who raised the Lord will also raise us by his power. 15 Do you not know your bodies are members of Christ? Am I to take Christ's members and devote them to a harlot? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one with her in body (for the pair, it is said, shall become one flesh), 17 while he who joins himself to the Lord is one with him in spirit. 18 Shun immorality! Any other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his body. 19 Do you not know your body is the temple of the holy Spirit within you — the Spirit you have received from God? You are not your own, 20 you were bought for a price; then glorify God with your body.

2. The Way is the Way of Discipline
1 Cor 9:23-27
The Way is the way of discipline. Yesterday I saw a beautiful elm tree which had been blown over in a storm because some of the roots had strangled the tree. They had twined themselves around the base of the tree underground, so that the very things which were intended to sustain the tree had strangled it.

Our natural urges are given to sustain us, but if they get out of place, they can strangle us. Sex dedicated is sustaining. But sex out of place, an end in itself, coils about the rest of life and strangles it. Self dedicated is sustaining, but if the self becomes the center of life it can strangle the personality. The trouble with the roots of that fallen tree was that, instead of reaching out beyond themselves, they turned back on themselves and the trunk. They were not disciplined to their original purpose. The natural became the unnatural.

Dr. Charles Mayo, one of the greatest surgeons of the world, came into a room dragging one of his legs clumsily. A friend of mine asked him about it. He replied: “There is a passage in the Bible which says, ‘They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.’ I saw this coming on, but I would not pay heed.” He had not disciplined himself to the advice he gave others, and he dragged a lame leg through life as the result. Many of us are dragging ourselves lamely through life because we would not be disciplined to what we knew. They tell us that civilization depends on the top nine inches of topsoil on the earth; if that goes, we go with it. And yet we have wasted those precious nine inches with the result that millions languish upon eroded, impoverished lands, and gain a precarious living in dust bowls. The lack of discipline strikes back to undernourished bodies and decaying civilizations. Our personal lack of discipline strikes back at us in impoverished souls and bodies and in a decaying spiritual life. Be disciplined or be decadent.

I glanced up from my writing on a train and saw on a lever these words, “Lift up to release.” We have to lift up to release. If we think we can turn our powers to lower purposes and be free, we are mistaken. You have to lift up to release.

O Christ, help me to lift up my powers to Thy purposes and Thy plans; then I shall be released and free. I am blinded by local clamorings. Give me the long look and the far-seeing purpose. Amen.

Affirmation For the Day: “I am Eternal … training you for your good.” (Isa. 48:17 Moffat)

1 Cor. 9:23-27 (Moffatt)
23 And I do it all for the sake of the gospel, to secure my own share in it. 24 Do you not know that in a race, though all run, only one man gains the prize? Run so as to win the prize. 25 Every athlete practices self-restraint all round; but while they do it to win a fading wreath, we do it for an unfading. 26 Well, I run without swerving; I do not plant my blows upon the empty air — 27 no, I maul and master my body, in case, after preaching to other people, I am disqualified myself.

3. Discipline Produces Spontaneity
I Cor. 10:23-24, 31-33
The Way has been called “The Christian discipline.” “The aim of the Christian discipline is the love that springs from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith.” (I Tim. 1:5, Moffatt) Strange that the end of discipline is defined as spontaneity – “love that springs.” And that is the end of discipline, to make you free.

There is a false idea of freedom prevalent in modern civilization: “You are free to do as you like.” The Christian answer is, “You are free to do as you ought.” Said a high-school boy to his principal: “Sir, they say that this is a free country. But where’s my freedom? They tell me to go to school, and I have to do it; to study or to go home and I have to do it. Where’s my freedom?” He was serious – and in serious trouble with himself. A returned soldier, rebuked for something he said, replied, “I have fought over there to say and do exactly as I please.” In both cases, life did not approve; both these persons were in trouble with themselves and others. Liberty comes through obedience to law. A man who had lived a defeated life told how he became victorious: “It is silly for a poor mortal to buck the stream of life. I have always sought out its currents and sought to flow with it.”

Love can “spring,” be spontaneous and free, only if it comes “from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith.” In other words, from a disciplined life. Any supposed freedom that leaves you with an impure heart, a bad conscience, and an insincere faith ends not in springing and singing, but in sighing and dying.

Another passage puts discipline as the result (the first passage puts it as “the aim”): “God has not given us a timid spirit but a spirit of power and love and discipline.” (II Tim. 1:7, Moffatt.) The aim of discipline is to produce discipline. The first result of that discipline is courage – “not a timid spirit.” A disciplined person has a sense of courage. He is afraid of nothing for he knows that the sum total of reality is behind him. He has a sense of “power” for he knows he is working with God, and God is working with him, and he has a “love” that springs and sings

O Thou singing Christ, teach me Thy way, the way of discipline. For I too would sing. I too would be free. For Thy will is freedom; my will is bondage. When I take my way I end in a mess. When I take Thy way I end in courage, power, and love. Amen

Affirmation for the Day: “My son, spurn not the Eternal’s schooling. (Prov. 3:11, Moffatt)

I Cor. 10:23-24, 31-33 (Moffatt)
23 'All things are lawful'? Yes, but not all are good for us. 'All things are lawful'? Yes, but not all are edifying. 24 Each of us must consult his neighbor’s interests, not his own
31 So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, let it be all done for the glory of God. 32 Put no stumbling-block in the way of Jews or Greeks or the church of God. 33 Such is my own rule, to satisfy all men in all points, aiming not at my own advantage but at the advantage of the greater number — at their salvation.

4. Discipline Produces Liberty
Rom. 8:1-2, 5-6
Discipline is not something that is imposed on us. It is discovering the laws of our being and finding that they are the laws of God. “Happy are they who follow his injunctions, giving him undivided hearts.” (Ps. 119:2, Moffatt) The opposite could be this: “Unhappy are they who follow their own inclinations, giving themselves a divided, conflicting self.”

Again, the psalmist puts it thus: “The statutes are my songs, as I wander through the world.” (Ps. 119:54, Moffatt) Statutes become songs! Laws become a liberty – to sing! The idea of the disciplined person as a disagreeable person is false. The disciplined person is full of rhythm and song, for he is attuned to Life. It is true that Jesus said: “Everyone has to be consecrated by the fire of the discipline.” (Mark 9:49, Moffatt), but this “fire of the discipline” only burns away the fetters. When the three Hebrew children fell bound into the fiery furnace, the fire did nothing to them except to burn their bonds. They walked around free in the fire. And the form of the Fourth was with them. The fire of discipline does nothing to you except to burn every clinging fetter and make you walk free with the Fourth. You are “consecrated by the fire of the discipline.” The fire frees you to be dedicated to the worth-while.

Someone has said that “beauty is the purgation of superfluities.” Discipline takes away superfluities, confines us to the essentials, and makes life beautiful, for nothing clutters up the picture. We must so discipline our lives that nothing remains except that which counts and contributes.

“Miss America of 1945,” addressing high-school students said” “You cannot hate and be beautiful.” They don’t jibe. For hate is undisciplined love. Lust is undisciplined sex. Worry is undisciplined foresight. You cannot have an undisciplined life and be beautiful. For beauty is the harmony of lines. Discipline brings life into central harmony by directing it toward great ends. Discipline is a development – development in harmony.

O Christ, I know I shall surrender myself to the discipline of something, to the discipline of the pressures around me, or to the discipline of Thy will and purposes. If I do the first I shall pass away, if I do the second, I shall remain forever. Help me. Amen.

Affirmation for the Day: “Happy is he who has thy discipline and thine instruction, training him calmly to wait on, in adversity.” (Ps. 94:12-13, Moffatt)


Rom. 8:1-2, 5-6 (Moffatt)
1 Thus there is no doom now for those who are in Christ Jesus; 2 the law of the Spirit brings the life which is in Christ Jesus, and that law has set me free from the law of sin and death.
5 For those who follow the flesh have their interests in the flesh, and those who follow the Spirit have their interests in the Spirit. 6 The interests of the flesh mean death, the interests of the Spirit mean life and peace.


5. Steps Toward A Disciplined Life
II Tim. 1:6-7; 2:1-4
Many people accept grace and rise to a new life and then it leaks out because of a lack of discipline. A brother prayed very often, “Fill me, Lord.” A man near by was overhead to say, “You can’t, Lord. He leaks.” Many of us are not “filled,” because if we were, we would leak out. God isn’t going to pour the water of His grace down the ratholes of undisciplined living.

We must now take these steps in becoming a disciplined person:
Let discipline begin at the center, not at the margin. The center is you. You must be undivided in affection. It was said, “Asa’s mind was undivided all his life.” (II Chron. 15:17, Moffatt) That is at the basis of all successful, effective character. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” (Jas. 1:8, Moffatt) “Purify your hearts, you double-minded.” (Jas. 4:8, Moffatt) “Keep, then, an undivided mind for the Eternal our God, to live by His rules and to obey His orders.” (1 Kings 11:4, Moffatt) One of the greatest tragedies of history is this: “When he grew old, he had no undivided mind for the Eternal his God. His wives seduced him to follow foreign gods.” (I Kings 11:4, Moffatt) Solomon was a wise man turned foolish because of a lack of inner discipline – a discipline at the place of his affections. He wanted mutually incompatible things and fell between stools. Listen to this sound advice: “To those who find them, they are life and health to all their being. Guard above all things, guard your inner self.” (Prov. 4:22-23, Moffatt) Solomon must have said that with a wistful sigh, for it was the very thing he did not do. He did not guard his inner self, so his outer life came down in ruin around him.
Discipline the inner self by a complete self-surrender to God.Don’t give up this thing, that thing.Give up the self and that carries everything else with it.God has you – and that means all you’ve got.I know of a man who is a marginally surrendered person.He is centrally unsurrendered, the self sticks out through all he does for God.A very discerning friend commented, “He comes near being a great man.”He surrendered the marginal, kept back the central.
O Christ, I know Thou are relentless for Thou art love. Thou canst not be satisfied with my marginal allegiances. Thou art asking for me. And I give Thee that – now and forever. I am disciplined through self-surrender. The inner tension is gone. Thou hast me. I’m glad. Amen

Affirmation For The Day: “The Eternal’s law is in his heart, his footsteps never falter.” (Ps. 37:31 Moffatt)

II Tim. 1:6-7; 2:1-4
II Tim. 1: 6 Hence I would remind you to rekindle the divine gift which you received when my hands were laid upon you; 7 for God has not given us a timid spirit but a spirit of power and love and discipline.

II Tim. 2: 1 Now, my son, be strong in the grace of Christ Jesus, 2 and transmit the instructions I gave you in presence of many witnesses to trustworthy men, that they may be competent to teach others. 3 Join the ranks of those who bear suffering, like a loyal soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No soldier gets entangled in civil pursuits; his aim is to satisfy his commander.


6 Discipline Your Habits
II Tim. 2:22-26
We are now on the discipline of the center. Of one man someone said: “He cared little for his character and everything for his reputation.” He tried to discipline a reputation, leaving an undisciplined character untouched.

Someone has said that “there are Seven Deadly Sins: The first is dishonesty, the other six are selfishness.” But dishonesty too is a species of selfishness, so the seven are one – self-centeredness. The first discipline, then, must strike at the first sin – egocentricity.
Discipline your habits. Having surrendered the center, you may now deal with the margin. Go over your life and see if there is anything that is incompatible with that fundamental surrender of the self. Someone has defined a preacher as “one who preaches a whole gospel and wholly lives it.” Evelyn Underhill speaks of “a willed correspondence to the world of spirit.” Would it not be more Christian to speak of a willed correspondence to the will of God – in everything? A very intelligent woman who had gone through many cults in her quest writes: “After reading your chapter on discipline in Abundant Living, I finally stopped smoking after twenty years of consuming twenty cigarettes a day. I prayed God to replace my will with His will, as you teach, and really, it was not difficult.” Perhaps your experience will be like this pastor’s: He battled with cigarette smoking, gave it up several times, would go back to it. One day he really prayed and these words came: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me.” The desire left.
Perhaps the habit may be of another type: a sex habit that saps the lifeblood from the central purposes of life; or a habit of taking the line of least resistance instead of standing up for your principles; or a habit of evading responsibility,


excusing yourself when opportunities are presented; or a habit of negativism, of always raising objections to positive plans; or a habit of criticism and faultfinding, of picking flaws in others; or a habit of living in a state of self-reference - “How would that affect me?” – or a habit of comparing yourself with others instead of with the will of God. Discipline all these.

O Christ, thou art making me a disciplined person and I am glad. I feel that these barnacles which have accumulated through the years and have slowed own the progress of my ship are being sloughed off. I’m getting ready for action. I thank Thee. Amen.

Affirmation For The Day: “Happy are they who hold to what is right, who do their duty at all times!” (Ps. 106:3, Moffatt)


II Tim. 2:22-26
22 So shun the lusts of youth and aim at integrity, faith, love and peace, in the company of those who invoke the Lord out of a pure heart. 23 Shut your mind against foolish, popular controversy; be sure that only breeds strife. 24 And the Lord's servant must not be a man of strife; he must be kind to everybody, a skilled teacher, a man who will not resent injuries; 25 he must be gentle in his admonitions to the opposition — God may perhaps let them change their mind and admit the Truth; 26 they may come to their senses again and escape the snare of the devil, as they are brought back to life by God to do his will.


7 Out of Good and Evil Stores
II Tim. 2:15, 21; 4:5
Before we leave the disciplining of our habits, we must turn to the positive side – replacement of the old by the new. Habit can work with you as well as against you.

Someone said to the exuberant Billy Bray, who was always praising the Lord: “Isn’t it possible to get into the habit of praising the Lord?” “Yes,” replied Billy, “and it’s a very good habit, and so few have it.” You can build up a set of good habits so that you habitually take the Christian way without thought. Every act repeated drops into the subconscious mind and becomes an attitude that easily repeats itself. Jesus says, “The good man brings good out of his good store.” (Matt. 12:35, Moffatt) the good which he brings forth is out of his good store, which is the sum total of accumulated good habits which have passed into attitude and character. No good action, therefore, is lost. Even though it seems to have no effect on the other person, it does something to you, becomes a part of yore good store. This becomes a part of inevitable goodness. You are fated in the direction of good.

On the other hand, Jesus says,” The evil man brings evil out of his store of evil.” (Matt. 12:35, Moffatt) Every evil thought, every evil act or attitude becomes a part of the “store of evil.” The “store of evil” becomes fate, destiny. Every temptation yielded to makes inevitably easier the yielding to the next temptation, until the character is fixed – in evil. Only the power of God can break it.

But to return to the “good store.” You can add to the good store of your children by your example and your teaching. A magazine editor told of his boyhood days when his Irish father would say to him as he came back from work, “Have you told the truth? Have you fought square? If so, then begorra, you’re all right. But if you haven’t, I’ll break every bone in your body.” Rough teaching; but years later, when the editor was offered a half-million-dollar bribe to print certain things, he wouldn’t accept it. There was his father’s teaching – the “good store” held him in the crisis.

We speak of a man “making his pile.” The “good store” is the pile that counts when you most need it.

O Christ, the simple thought, the simple act, the simple habit becomes a part of my store, a part of me. Teach me to watch day by day the little things that make me inevitably. I want to be a truly disciplined person, to be good inevitably. Amen.


Affirmation For the Day: “I know that his orders mean eternal life.”
(John 12:50, Moffatt)

II Tim. 2:15, 21, 4:5
II Tim. 2: 15 Do your utmost to let God see that you at least are a sound workman, with no need to be ashamed of the way you handle the word of the Truth.
II Tim. 2: 21 If one will only keep clear of the latter, he will be put to noble use, he will be consecrated and useful to the Owner of the House, he will be set apart for good work of all kinds.
II Tim. 4: 5 Whatever happens, be self-possessed, flinch from no suffering, do your work as an evangelist, and discharge all your duties as a minister


Fetters: a chain or shackle for the feet; something that confines
Superfluities: something unnecessary or superfluous; immoderate and especially luxurious living, habits,
or desires
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