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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 38. The Mastery of Jesus.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 38. The Mastery of Jesus.
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The Mastery of Jesus.
That rarely masterful man Paul gives us a bit in one of his letters that is full of fascination here. He has been speaking of the fierce storms of passion that leave many a man badly shipwrecked. Then he passes quickly on to speak of the man who masterfully rides all storms, and brings his cargo safely in. The latter man has a pilot on board who is responsible for the glad result. But instead of a storm figure Paul uses a fruit figure. He says: (Gal_5:22) "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faithfulness," and then the climax is reached in "self-control," or self-mastery.
The eight traits named first are really an analysis of that named last. Each is a phase of self-mastery. Note them again. Self-mastery is the tender outgoing of the heart towards God and all men; this is the normal attitude of man unhurt by sin; anything less or different is abnormal. It is the deep glow of the heart-fires regardless of the dampening dews of outer circumstances; the quiet, steady stillness of spirit even when winds blow hard and storms beat fiercely; the patient enduring without time-limit of misunderstandings and all that hurts through them; the gracious bending of one's strength to the needs of others; the being thoroughly, wholesomely good; the forgetting of one's self in the absorbing thought of God and of man; and the full unflagging meeting of all that is due from us or needed from us.
This winsome picture of self-mastery is the result of the Spirit's sway. This is a return to original conditions. The wondrous Spirit who created man's home, and then man himself, comes down at Jesus' bidding to live in us. He restores the original likeness blurred and rubbed out by sin. Here is the secret of self-mastery. A man never achieves it alone. Self is no match for self. It takes more than self to master self. This mastery is not by self; it is of self by Another living within and working out His plans by our request and glad consent. He who in the early dawn of man's life breathed into his nostrils the breath of life comes to rebreathe in us, and reproduce all of his original ideal. Man had broken with Him through sin. Now the break has been mended by Jesus, and the original likeness is restored by His Spirit within.
The habitual cultivation of the friendly mastery of Jesus draws out most the mastery of self and of circumstances. The keeping of the body pure and sound and under the thumb of the will; the keeping of the mind clear and quiet and alert and ever bending towards a keener discipline; the keeping of the social contacts simple and warm and cheery; the keeping of the spirit ruggedly strong and softly gentle; the keeping of the heart pure in its loves and motives; the meeting of all difficulties and disappointments with the cheeriness which regards these as mere subways through to places farther up the road; and with all this, under and through, above and around all, a simple, confiding trust in God that sings most when the subway lights all go out—this is the roadway to self-mastery.
It was trodden by Jesus when down here. It may be trodden by every man who yields to the mastery of Jesus. There is no mastery without the Master. The same Holy Spirit who controlled Jesus' human life has come down at Jesus' request to control our lives. With Him alongside, in control, a man can climb the road up to the heights. Let us go along with Him.