VICTORIOUS LIVING

Evening Star, Issue 22975, 4 June 1938, Page 24

VICTORIOUS LIVING

Sermon preached in Knox Church by Mr H. W. Turner. Text: Romans viii., 37. “In all this we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” There is one business in which we are all engaged—the business of living, livery one of us is concerned to make a success of that business. No one wants to be written down as a failure in life. The business of Jiving is something much wider than the life of business, the carving of a career, or earning a livelihood. It is something in which we are all engaged all the time, and its problems are the problems w r e all meet sooner or later—sin, suffering, death, and, above all, the great problem of living together, of how to get on with other people. What would you say of this modern world of ours ? Do you think it is succeeding in its dealing with life? Or is is failing? You read the daily paper; you know something of our police courts, of the wards in our hospitals, of the lives of your friends. What do you see? Everywhere hosts of men and women for whom life has been too much, who have gone down, beaten. And what of those who seem to manage well enough ? Is there anything more than barely keeping their heads above water,, a restless, anxious, careworn muddling through? The striking characteristic of our world is that we are n sorry mess of things, among the nations, and in our individual lives. We are helpless and drifting along, who knows where? It may be to war, to a social upheaval, even to the end of our civilisation. Who knows? There is a famous cartoon with the title, ‘ The Twentieth Century Looks at the Future.’ It shows a tall, immaculately dressed young man looking across a wide landscape towards the horizon. What does he see? A glad, confident dawn? Only a huge question markl No hope, no answer, to life. The most urgent necessity for human living to-day is to be able to face life victoriously. Men and nations are defeated, ineffective, because they do not know how to live. And the paralysis and bewilderment of the world have gripped the people who should have the answer, the men and women in the Christian Church. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, needed among Christians to-day so much as the rediscovery of the secret of victorious living. If we can find that, then anything can in the world that is waiting for it. Without that, nothing will happen except staleness and bitter disappointment with religion. Men and women, the answer is here, waiting to he taken. Let us turn to some of the people who seem to have it. Let us turn to the New Testament. We read through the Gospels and we mix with a varied company of men and women, and we are impressed and fascinated by the beauty of character and the noble teaching of the central figure, of Jesus. And then we read on into the Acts of the Apostles; but here we are halted and puzzled as we read. There is something; new here, something we cannot quite understand. A group of people brimming over with life has burst upon a jaded and weary world. Nothing can worry and overcome them. They have found the secret of victorious living. Here, as we read on ipto the Epistles, we listen to the most amazing of this company, to Paul. We follow him through perilous adventures and overwhelming difficulties, and it seems that nothing can conquer him. Put him in iprisbn, and he sings; watch him on a ship in a storm, and he takes command of, .the . situation and rallies the anxious" crew 1 ; flog him in this city, and he is off to the next before his wounds are healed, proclaiming the great thing he has found in life, the secret of victorious living. What would you do, what answer have you for situations like these: wrongful imprisonment, faced with, death in a storm, suffering under hitter persecution? JHave you the answer for the worst life can do to you; would you be the victor or would you go under as the victim? You are not secure till you have that answer.

Paul was in no two minds about it. He had nothing to fear from any quarter, not even from God. He had no illusions about himself and his own moral failure. With great frankness he tells how he had gone down under sin all his life. “ I cannot understand my own actions; I do not act as I desire to act; on the contrary, I do what I detest.” Paul knew that moral defeat deserved the judgment of God. He had known what it was to fear the wrath of God upon his own sins. But now he had the answer on that point; he had been given the victory over the sickening remorse that follows moral defeat, victory over the fear of divine punishment. The past could no longer rise up to haunt him, for God had forgiven him for all that he had been, and he can write exultantly: “ Who is to accuse? ... When God acquits who shall condemn?” At last he can face God and man, and fear nothing. Are you in a position to do that? If you cannot, you desperately need the answer that Paul has for you.' Perhaps you have in the past accepted God’s offer of forgiveness and of new life in Christ, but you have fallen away, and you hardly dare look into the_ eyes of Christ again. Will not Christ condemn us, His unprofitable servants? As Paul says in another place: " We have all to appear without disguise before the tribunal of Christ.” . What if His sentence is one of condemnation? “Who shall condemn?” he asks. “Will Christ?—the Christ who died, yes and rose from the j dead 1 The Christ who is at God’s right | hand, who actually pleads for us.” Unthinkable, Paul cries. “ What can ever part us from Christ’s love?” He knows that he cannot have a clear conscience when faced with the standard of Christ, and yet he knows the answer for that, too. The very love of God that he has segn in the face of Christ will forgive him and accept him in fellowship. And then he hastens on to proclaim the victory over the worst that life itself can do to him. “ What can ever part us from Christ’s love? Can anguish or calamity or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword?” There is urgent meaning for him in some of the items of this list. He is writing on the eve of his last visit to Jerusalem. He was putting his head into the lion’s mouth, as he well knew. Persecution, likely enough the sword, awaited him. But there is no fear, no_ suspicion of defeat in the man. His victory covers all the trial and turmoil of life; suffering, calamity, poverty, danger. Just the common experiences or us all, the places where we go down defeated. We suffer pain of body and torture of mind; we dread the calamity of moral failure, of exposure, of financial disaster, of the break-up of our home; we walk in fear of poverty in our old age, and_ live under the shadow of disease and in the fear of sudden death. These things part us from God and make our lives weary and worried._ Oh, how desperately we need the victory! “ Who will rescue us?” we erv with Paul. Listen to his answer. “ God will! Thanks bo to Him through Jesus Christ our Lord!” . . . “ In all this we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” “ More than conquerors.” Yes, absolutely nothing can defeat us and

separate us from God. In a wonderful outburst of confidence he challenges fhe whole of life and all Creation to do battle with him. “I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, no powers of the height or of the depth, nor anything else in all creation, will bo able to part ns from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord! Death, life, the present, the future, the laws of Nature, the mysterious forces of the universe—what are these and all of these to the man who is in the hand of God? If God is for us, who can bo against us?” There is a man with the answer, with the secret of victorious living. His life proved it. There is no arguing with a man like that. Either you don’t believe he ever lived, or you know that lie has outlived you, and that nothing you can say can shake him. Yes. you say, that is very fine and very wonderful, but after all, Paul was Paul, quite an exceptional person; and in any case lie lived long ago, and men don|t live like that now; and then again, life is so much more complicated and difficult nowadays, with its strain and all the new problems of a new age. Do you think it is so very different? Tii some ways it is. But what of it? Either Paul’s answer is the answer for all time, .or he was greatly deluded. There are men who have found the same secret of victory in our day and in our midst. Many of you have heard or read of that great little Japanese Christian, Kagawa. There is a man whose life is proving that he has the answer. Disease, suffering, imprisonment, persecution, poverty, nothing can defeat him or destroy his joy in life. The victory is his. Yes, you say again, that too is very fine and very wonderful, and it must be great to have that kind of life; but, after all, Kagawa is out of the ordinary, and that sort of thing does not happen among ordinary folk right here in Dunedin. But either the secret that Paul and Kagawa have is what wo sorely need and can have in our lives—or it is not what they sav it is. There are men and women in this city who have the answer, and who are progressively finding the victory, here in our midst. Their' lives are proving it: and there is no arguing with them when that is so. Ten dnvs ago I saw one young woman discover the way to victory. She had the same kinds of defects that f olk_ have everywhere. She was excessively shy and nervous: she was worried by all kinds of intellectual problems as to why God allowed pain and evil in the world: she was selfish in her family, and wrapped up in herself; and the outcome of it all had been a series of nervous breakdowns; the same old story that we hear so often. She accepted what Christ was willing to do for her and surrendered her life to God. She became a different girl, with a certainty, a fearlessness, a radiance-about her that proclaimed the victory. Now she knows how to live and how to conquer.

I can take you to a young man who knows the answer. For years he was beaten in the battle of life. Behind the scenes he had personal defeats that shamed him; in the home there were nroblems that made him afraid and critical; he had been going with a voting woman, hut their relationship seemed so tangled that nothing could set it right. In desperation, he was on the verge of taking his own life, but somehow he was led to see what Cod could do. And now, one after another. his problems are being faced and the victory given. A threatening tragedv has turned into triumph. A few days ago I had an evening meal at the home of a man in business in this city. After the meal we gathered round the fire with his wife, small son, and the maid, for a quiet half-hour before God. In a real and natural way we all took part. A year ago that rrtan was a nominal Christian, hut unhappy in his home, disloyal to his wife, dishonest in his business, greedy, and selfish. Now he has the victory. He has the answer for marriages that have failed, and for lives that are strained, and. for business that is corrupt and selfish. And with such absolute proof in his 1 possession he is giving the answer away, the secret of victorious living. I could go on to tell you of many such lives in our midst. If you care to you can meet these very people and hear for yourself. The answer is there, waiting to be taken. Christianity works when men and women really mean to let it. Religion is not a problem to be solved. It is the solution of all problems. Christiana are not folk sitting in their churches as waiting rooms for heaven. There is a great and glorious hope before all Christians, but as Paul says in another of his_ letters, “if in this life we have nothing but a mere hope in Christ, we ere of all men to be pitied most.” The New Testament may be many things, but it is never wistful; there rings in the lives of the people who move through its pages a joyouscertainty. “ They have light on the mystery of life and power for the mastery or life.” Why can we say these things about the Christian religion and about nothing also in the world F Christianity works not because it has teaching that is nobler than any other teaching; not because its ideals are finer than all othersnot because it is a point of view for which a great deal can be said: Christianity works because it brings a man to God and puts him under the control of God._ The God whom Christ revealed to us is a living God who does things in the world; God acts in the Jives of men and nations, changing them and using them for His great purposes. God is no far-off Being about whom men speculate, and whom they blindly seek. God is a living Person present in His world, confronting you and me with the offer of love and forgiveness, and with the ‘command to obey Him. Unless every ordinary man and woman can enter into this kind of personal relationship to God through Jesus Christ, there is nothing in religion for them, nor victory in life. And .this is the only way to victory. It is the way of surrender. There is another way that men try, the way of striving. How often is someone who is beaten and down told to pull himself together, to turn over a new leaf, to exert his will-power, to save himself by sheer self-effort. If there is anything that I have proved to myself it is that it will not work. We can try it all right. It may take us quite a long way. But in the end it is like pushing a heavy pendulum, struggling to push it up higher and higher, till the moment that we relax it swings back on us and knocks us over; again and again we may raise it, but again and again it comes back on us. There is a picture of man’s self-effort, strained and futile. Striving is not the secret of the victorious life, and that is one of the hardest lessons we have to learn. We ■would so like to work out our own salvation in independency of God and of other people. To accept the gift of the victorious life from God cut clean across our pride; to surrender to Him and to obey Him runs counter to our will. But it is that or nothing. It is letting go of all that we call “ ours ” and giving in to God at every point. It is humiliating to have to admit that wo are beaten, and to have to accept from God something that we know we do not deserve.

Somo of us will not admit that we are beaten. But have we the victory. Are we completely honest and truthful in every way? Yes or no ? Are we absolutely pure and clean ? Yes or no? Are we easily offended, or are we full of an overflowing love; are we selfish, or is all that we have in the service of God and our fellows ? Yes or no? Are we shy and self-conscious, always feeling inferior, full of mental pride, or fears and worry? Yes or no? Daily are we being given the victory in these things ? If we are not we are part of the tragedy of the world. That is bad enough. But there is something even worse than that. I have someone who loves me. If alter long planning and at great sacrifice my friend brings me a gift in token of love and affection, a gift that he knows I badly need, there is no greater insult or injury or pain that I can offer him than to turn away from his gift and ignore his affection. That is the supreme tragedy of all love that is spurned. God, the living God, the God who broke into the misery of the world in Christ; the God who is giving new life to men and women in this city daily is offering each one of us the gift of life victorious, not because we deserve it, but because He made us and He loves us, and we need it. Can we, dare we, do anything but surrender to love like His? Once we have done that definitely, concretely, in detail and without reserve, then . . . “ What can ever part us from Christ’s love?” What can ever defeat us in life’s battle? “In all—we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us,”