Magyar Egyház, 1968 (47. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1968-10-01 / 10. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 9 MAGYAR CHURCH BERTRAM J. SATHMARY STREAMS 1I\ THE DESERT Challenge of Cfjríőtían Change Christianity deals with vast realities, but it does so in an uncomplicated way. Read and reread the Gospels and the letters of St. Paul. They teach righteousness, truth, life and love. Those are the four ivords that give the essence of what Jesus taught. The question is—can we in this very sophisticated American civilization get back to these essential teachings again? Christianity teaches the facts about God and it teaches the facts about man. What does it say about God? That He is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.Because God is so vast that our minds can’t comprehend Him, He encompassed Himself for us in the form of a man. Therefore Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Christianity says to the world, “You want to know what God is like? He’s like Jesus.” And that means He’s full of truth and righteousness and love and goodness. And what does Christianity tell us about man? It says men are created in the image of God. It says, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The New Testament pictures man as a great soul who is a sovereign entity in himself. The great fundamental Christian teachings about man are that man can come to know the truth and that thereby man can change. That is the glorious message of Christianity—you don’t need to remain as you are! You cannot change by your own unaided power, but you can be changed by God. The Bible shows an enormous respect for the potential of the human being. A person who has recently achieved some wonderful changes in his life wrote to me describing the experience like this: “I realized that I was living on a minimum level. I was just getting by and that teas all. So I decided to change. I prayed to God for help and guidance. I filled my mind with great ideas from the Bible, developed new approaches to my problems. My life began to change. Now I am a scorner of minimum living. I wonder why I lived on a minimum level for so long.” The secret of that man’s release was that he became a real believer. Christianity in its deepest power will never open up to any of us until we become real believers. “If thou canst believe,” Jesus said, “all things are possible to him that believeth.” There is the crux of it: “If thou canst believe.” You have to learn to believe that which is hard to believe. There is power in this. You can rationalize it away if you ivish—but you do so to your own great loss. To have great faith you have to struggle for it. And when you achieve faith, what do you do? You throw back the barriers of defeat, frustration, hate, and conflict. Belief is after all a form of thought. All the believing you ever do will be done in your mind. You can either disbelieve yourself into a frustrated life or believe yourself into a great life. It is up to you. We do not half realize the power of thought to destroy or to create. Thoughts actually are forces. You cant see them, but they have substance nevertheless. They are dynamic forces. If you constantly think negative thoughts, you thereby activate negative forces around you and draw back upon yourself negative results. This is on the basis of the law that like attracts like. Send out hate, and what do you get back? Nothing but fear. Send out defeat, and what do you get back? Nothing but defeat. All destructiveness originates in thought! And by the same token, all creative, powerful, majestic living originates in thought. Get a good thought, build it up, nurse it. Get a faith thought, make it grow. Don’t let it stop on a minimum level. Make a giant of it. Take the New Testament as it is. Fill your mind with it. Saturate your soul with it. “Nothing is impossible to him that believeth.” Remember that our God is a Creator and a Recreator. “Create in me a new heart, 0 Lord!” This does not mean you can avoid having trouble in life. You are bound to suffer pain, frustration, hardship, and injustice. But that is only half the story. The rest of the story is that you can rise above these things. How much faith have you? Christianity teaches that God is a God of love. It teaches that He is a God of righteousness. It teaches that man gets full of sin, but that Jesus died on the cross for his redemption. It teaches that the Holy
