Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.
— John 7:38
There is a well-known saying which I think originated with the French, that the more things change the more they remain the same. The wisdom of this saying may be seen in almost every department of human life, the reason probably being that of all the things that change and still remain unchanged, there is no better example than human nature itself. And when do we see the unchanging quality of human nature more perfectly than at Christmas-time? Consider the radical difference between today's world and the world into which the Baby Jesus was born.
Compared with our twentieth-century civilization, everything surrounding the wondrous Child was crude and primitive. Jesus was born in a stable, not in a hospital; His mother was attended by a midwife, not by a skilled scientist; His baby face was lighted by a tallow candle, not by an electric bulb; He traveled into Egypt on the back of the lowly burro, not by auto or streamlined train.
thought
Our great grandparents lived in a radically different world than ours. So shall our great grandchildren. But all of us have intense heart-thirst and find it satisfied only in Christ!
prayer
O God, may those streams of living water flow within me and my thirsting heart be satisfied.
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
— Romans 5:3-4
But Paul's trials yield for us more than this negative kind of blessing. They also teach us positive lessons to help us to endure affliction by that well-known psychological law by which we are able to identify ourselves with others and "halve our griefs while we double our joys." It is always easier to bear what we know someone has borne successfully before us. From the trials and triumphs of Paul, we gather, too, that happiness is really not indispensable to a Christian. There are many ills worse than heartaches. It is scarcely too much to say that prolonged happiness may actually weaken us, especially if we insist upon being happy as the Jews insisted upon flesh in the wilderness. In so doing, we may try to avoid those spiritual responsibilities which would in the nature of them bring a certain measure of heaviness and affliction to the soul.
The best thing is neither to seek nor seek to avoid troubles but to follow Christ and take the bitter with the sweet as it may come. Whether we are happy or unhappy at any given time is not important. That we be in the will of God is all that matters. We may safely leave with Him the incident of heartache or happiness. He will know how much we need of either or both.
thought
We can rejoice in our sufferings because of what God produces in us through those sufferings. Certain qualities of life are only produced through suffering. There is no other way to experience them.
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for trying to flee sufferings which You allow in order to grow me as Your servant.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
— Second Corinthians 4:8-9
In reading Second Corinthians, it is difficult to restrain a feeling of real pity for the noble old man as he sweats under the bitter lashings of the enemy. But such pity is wasted now. He has long been where the wicked cease from troubling and the toilworn are at rest. For many long years, his eyes have gazed upon the vision beatific in the land where The red rose of Sharon Distills its heartsome bloom And fills the air of heaven With ravishing perfume. He walks now with the noble army of martyrs and shares the goodly fellowship of the prophets and the glorious company of the apostles. He does not need our pity.
But from Paul and his afflictions we may learn much truth, some of it depressing and some altogether elevating and wonderful. We may learn, for instance, that malice needs nothing to live on; it can feed on itself. A contentious spirit will find something to quarrel about. A faultfinder will find occasion to accuse a Christian even if his life is as chaste as an icicle and pure as snow. A man of ill will does not hesitate to attack, even if the object of his hatred be a prophet or the very Son of God Himself. If John comes fasting, he says he has a devil; if Christ comes eating and drinking, he says He is a winebibber and a glutton. Good men are made to appear evil by the simple trick of dredging up from his own heart the evil that is there and attributing it to them.
thought
Paul had the wisdom to recognize that God's power can be experienced in trial. Not that He always delivers us from trials but that He brings us through trials more like Christ and closer to Him.
prayer
O Lord, may I recognize Your presence and power in trials because through them You are changing me. Thank You!
We put no stumbling block in anyone's path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: . . .
— Second Corinthians 6:3-4a
Paul's Corinthian detractors first tried to discredit him entirely by starting a whispering campaign to the effect that he was actually no apostle but a power-hungry impostor seeking to bring them under his control. When the apostle had written his reply in defense of his apostolic authority, they then shifted their attack and accused him of other kinds of double dealing. "He gives himself as a reference for himself," they said sarcastically. "He must have letters of recommendation like a common traveling preacher. Such a man cannot be an apostle." Paul had to answer that, and he did. But it was not easy. His second epistle to the Corinthians was surely one of the most difficult he was ever called upon to write, for he was forced for the church's sake to speak in his own defense.
His beloved fellow Christians must trust him if he is to help them, so he will state his case frankly, even if his whole soul shrinks from the task. The words "I am speaking as a fool," "I am become a fool," indicate how deeply he felt the humiliation. But he sacrificed himself for the good of the church and let his enemies think what they would. That was Paul's way.
thought
Paul commended himself to the Corinthian church by his sufferings. His detractors condemned. His life and ministry commended. What about our life and ministry?
prayer
May I, too, Lord, be ready to sacrifice myself for the good of your Church.
If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler.
— First Peter 4:15-16
The Christian who finds himself in trouble for his faith's sake may draw a lot of consolation from Paul's epistles to the Corinthians. Nowhere else in the entire New Testament is the humanity of the great apostle seen so clearly as when he staggers under the cruel attacks of the anti-Paul bloc in the Corinthian church. His sufferings are there the most poignant and nearest to the sufferings of Christ because they are inward and of the soul. For always the soul can suffer as the body cannot.
thought
Always must the suffering Christian make certain that he or she is suffering for Christ's sake and not because of his or her lack of love, understanding, sensitivity, or because of careless words or living.
prayer
Lord, strengthen me to suffer for Your sake and to understand when it is not for Your sake that I suffer.
As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
— James 2:26
We would make a clear distinction here between moral action and mere religious activity. In truth there is already too much of that popular type of activity which does little more than agitate the surface of religion. Its never-ending squirrel-cage motion gives the impression that much is being done, when actually nothing really important is happening and no genuine spiritual progress is being made. From such we must turn away. By moral action, we mean a voluntary response to the Christian message: not merely the acceptance of Christ as our personal Savior but a submission to the obligation implicit in the doctrine of the Lordship of Jesus. We must free ourselves from the inadequate concept of the gospel as being only "good news," and accept the total meaning of the Christian message centering in the cross of Christ.
We must restore again to the church the idea that the offer of salvation by faith in Christ carries with it the condition that there must be also a surrender of the life to God in complete obedience. Anything less than this puts the whole thing in the passive voice. A lifetime of passive listening to the truth without responding to it paralyzes the will and causes a fatty degeneration of the heart. The purpose of Bible teaching is to secure a moral and spiritual change in the whole life. Failing this, the whole thing may be wasted.
thought
Vital faith results in radically changed living. Biblical teaching calls not just for intellectual assent but life obedience. Faith unreflected in deeds is highly suspect.
prayer
Father, I have sometimes done well in hearing the Word but doing has not always followed. Forgive me in Jesus' name.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
— Romans 6:11
Most readers will remember (some with just a trace of nostalgia) his or her early struggles to learn the difference between the active and the passive voice in English grammar, and how it finally dawned that in the active voice, the subject performs an act; in the passive voice, the subject is acted upon. Thus, "I love" is active, and "I am loved" is passive. A good example of this distinction is to be found at the nearest mortuary. There the undertaker is active and the dead are passive. One acts while the others receive the action. Now what is normal in a mortuary may be, and in this instance is, altogether abnormal in a church. Yet we have somehow gotten ourselves into a state where almost all church religion is passive. A limited number of professionals act, and the mass of religious people are content to receive the action.
The minister, like the undertaker, performs his professional service while the members of the congregation relax and passively "enjoy" the service. One reason for this condition is the failure of the clergy to grasp the true purpose of preaching. There is a feeling that the work of the preacher is to instruct merely, whereas the real work of the preacher is to instruct with an end to securing moral action from the hearers. As long as there has been no moral response to the instruction, the hearers are passive merely and might as well be dead. Indeed, in one sense they are dead already.
thought
Rather than counting ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus, are we living as though we were dead to Christ and all too alive to sin?
prayer
Lord, deliver me from casket living! I'm alive in Christ.
I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism.
— First Timothy 5:21
Gospel churches which mostly begin with the lowly are usually not content till they attain some degree of wealth and social acceptance. Then they gradually fall into classes, determined largely by the wealth and education of the members. The individuals that comprise the top layer of these various classes go on to become pillars of the religious society and are soon entrenched in places of leadership and influence. It is then that their great temptation comes upon them, the temptation to cater to their own class and to neglect the poor and the ignorant that make up the swarming population around them.
They soon become hardened to every appeal of the Holy Spirit toward meekness and humility. Their homes are spotless, their clothes the most expensive, their friends the most exclusive. Apart from some tremendous moral upheaval, they are beyond help. And yet they may be among the most vocal exponents of Bible Christianity and heavy givers to the cause of the church. Let us not become indignant at this blunt portrayal of facts. Let us rather humble ourselves to serve God's poor. Let us seek to be like Jesus in our devotion to the forgotten of the earth who have nothing to recommend them but their poverty and their heart-hunger and their tears.
thought
Are we receiving those who are different than we? In his He Sent Leanness David Head includes these prayers prayed in the heart when saying something else with the mouth: 'Bless all foreigners, but don't let them come to live next door. Bless all natives in foreign parts and keep them there.'
prayer
O Lord, may I welcome with open arms all who are Your people, even when they are quite different from me.
Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have insulted the poor. . . .
— James 2:5-6a
In spite of our lip-service to democracy, Americans are a decidedly class-conscious people. The very politicians and educators and church leaders among us who sound abroad the praises of the common man and plead for equal rights for all are in private practice as aloof from the plain people as the proudest monarch could ever be. There exists among us an aristocracy composed of famous people, rich men, social lions, actors, public figures and headliners of one kind or another, and these are a class apart. Beneath them, standing off in wild-eyed admiration, are the millions of anonymous men and women who make up the mass of the population.
And they have nothing in their favor ? except that they were in the heart of Jesus when He died upon the cross. Within the church also there exists a class consciousness, a reflection of that found in society. This has been brought over into the church from the world. Its spirit is completely foreign to the spirit of Christ, utterly opposed to it, indeed; and yet it determines to a large degree the conduct of Christians. This is the source of the evil we mention here.
thought
It is often the materially and reputationally poor who are richest in faith. Kingdom status is marked by faith and humility, in extraordinary contrast to worldly status.
prayer
Lord, help me to see people as You see them.