"My Response to His Ability"

E. Stanley Jones was a missionary, a theologian, and a prolific writer. In his devotional book titled In Christ he shows that we live by receptivity, not by trying:

"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.

". . . In the world we have peace amid tribulation, for the deeper 'in' is being 'in me.' Being in the world is a surface 'in,' but being in Him is a depth 'in.' It is a depth 'in' and an eternal 'in.' Being in Him we are in everything good, everything joyous, everything creative, everything healthy, everything I need for time and eternity. I am in His Everything.

"The business of my life, and the only business of my life, is to abide in Him. All else follows. That is life reduced to its utmost simplicity, and to its utmost vitality. There life is lived in Life. There is nothing, and there can be nothing in life greater than Life.

"A saint has been defined as 'one who tries a little harder.' Another definition was given by someone who saw the light shining through the figure of a saint in a stained-glass window: 'A saint is one who lets the light through.' The first definition is unsatisfactory; it depicts a tense, anxiously striving person living by 'by.' The second definition depicts a person who is passive--just letting the light through. The saint is not one who lives 'by' his own struggles or 'through,' but 'in.' He lives 'in,' and therefore in appropriation, in assimilation, in co-operation.

"A motto on the Sat Tal Ashram wall gives it: 'Not my responsibility, but my response to His ability.' I live in response to His grace, His love, His resources, His purity, His power, His Everything. The alternate heartbeats of the Christian life are receptivity and response, receptivity and response--I take and I give. As I take from Infinity, I can give infinitely."