Blogotional

E. Stanley Jones devoted his whole life to the subject of conversion. He was one of the best-known missionaries and religious writers in the first half of the twentieth century. Beginning in 1908, Jones worked among the high-caste Hindus and Muslims in India. Later in his life, he divided his time be¬tween missionary work in India and evangelistic missions in the United States.

One of his great accomplishments was the establishment of the Ashram, a Hindu word that means ?retreat.? This movement spread across the United States in the middle part of this century and continues in some mea¬sure today. The Ashram is a week-long structured Christian retreat that fo¬cuses on solitude and community building.

E. Stanley Jones had a keen understanding of the spiritual life and the means of spiritual renewal. The following selection discusses the delicate balance between the activity of God and the response of his children in the establishment and cultivation of conversion.

EXCERPTS FROM CONVERSION

Receptivity and Response

Conversion is a gift and an achievement. It is the act of a moment and the work of a lifetime. You cannot attain salvation by disciplines?it is the gift of God. But you cannot retain it with¬out disciplines. If you try to attain salvation by disciplines, you will be trying to discipline an unsurrendered self. You will be sitting on a lid. The result will be tenseness instead of trust. ?You will wrestle instead of nestle.? While sal¬vation cannot be attained by discipline around an unsurrendered self, nevertheless when the self is surrendered to Christ and a new center formed, then you can discipline your life around that new center?Christ. Discipline is the fruit of conversion?not the root.

This passage gives the double-sidedness of conversion: ?As therefore you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith? (Col. 2:6?7, RSV). Note, ?received??receptivity; ?so live??activity. It appears again, ?rooted?? receptivity; ?built up in him??activity.

The ?rooted? means we take from God as the roots take from the soil; the ?built up? means we build up as one builds a house, a character and life by disciplined effort. So we take and try; we obtain and attain. We trust as if the whole thing depended on God and work as if the whole thing depended on us. The al¬ternate beats of the Christian heart are recep¬tivity and response?receptivity from God and response in work from us.

Simple Habits

The best Man that ever lived on our planet il¬lustrated this receptivity and response rhythm. No one was so utterly dependent on God and no one was more personally disciplined in his habits.

He did three things by habit: (1) ?He stood up to read as was his custom??he read the Word of God by habit. (2) ?He went out into the mountain to pray as was his custom??he prayed by habit. (3) ?He taught them again as was his custom??he passed on to others by habit what he had and what he had found.

These simple habits were the foundation habits of his life. They are as up-to-date as to¬morrow morning. No converted person can live without those habits at work vitally in his life.

Keep the Fire Burning

First, cultivate the new life by daily disciplines. Commissioner Brengle of the Salvation Army, a center of great spiritual power, suggests three things to keep the fire burning: ?Keep the draught open; clean the ashes out; keep put¬ting in fuel.?

Second, keep honest at any cost. A South African boy had won a swimming champion¬ship, but he was six months over age when he won it. Then he was converted. He brought his beloved trophy in his hands and made a clean breast of it before the committee.

Third, keep confessing your sins after con¬version. Don?t be afraid to say: ?I am sorry. I was wrong.? The rule about confessing your sins should be, the circle of confession should be the circle affected by the sin. If the sin has been against an individual, confess it to that in¬dividual; if against a family, to a family; if against a group, then to a group; if against a church, to a church.

# posted by John Schroeder @ 3/21/2005 05:10:00 AM