It’s Finally Friday…and I’m Pastor James St. John.
This week has been a bit trying. Today, I was feeling a bit defeated, honestly. Do you ever have those days? Anyway, I was trolling through my e-mail and decided to read the Wake Up Call from this past Sunday. I had skipped it for some odd reason. I needed it, today, so I felt compelled to share it. It is from In Christ: Devotions For Every Day of the Year, by E. Stanley Jones.
“We pondered last week over the phrase: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37). The emphasis was “in all these things”—in the midst of things, hard things, easy things, exasperating things, material things, spiritual things, impossible things—yes, in all these things we are conquerors.
I can conquer “in” because He has conquered “in.” Everything I meet He has already met. When temptation, sin, difficulty, opposition, misunderstanding, criticism, fear, resentment, inferiority, pride, loneliness—yes, anything comes upon me to bully me, I ask that thing to bend its neck. When it does so, I exclaim with joy: “There I told you so—there is the footprint of the Son of God upon your neck. He has conquered you. I’m in Him and I conquer in His conquering!” Everything I face is a defeated foe—I’m dealing with the already conquered. I do not have to conquer by struggling, trying—I simply take my stand by surrender to Him and am therefore in Him. Everything there is in Him is in me—in me by appropriation and receptivity—no trying, just trusting; no agonizing, only appropriation; no resistance, just receptivity.
Jesus said: “I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). “In me” you have peace. You have peace not by trying this mental discipline or that exercise, this program or that plan—you have peace by simply being “in me.” The Christian life is not a struggle; it is a surrender—a surrender to Him, and therefore to everything in Him. Fully surrendered then I’m strong in His strength, pure in His purity, loving in His love, victorious in His victory. The father said to the elder son, “All I have is thine,” and in a new way Jesus says, “All I have is thine”—thine for the asking and appropriation.