Daily Devotionals

'Every Day Light' with Selwyn Hughes

Devotional: June 1st

For Reading and Meditation:
     Romans 13:7-14

We continue considering on the fact that the Beatitudes are the finest prescription for mental and spiritual health that has ever been given. It is helpful to keep in mind at this stage in our meditations that the Beatitudes are be-attitudes, not do-attitudes; the doing comes out of the being. Some ministers and commentators refer to them as "the beautiful attitudes" - a description I find greatly appealing. Our attitudes have a tremendous and powerful influence upon every part of our being - physical as well as emotional. A missionary from the Philippines tells how, during the war, he and his wife were ordered into prison camps by the Japanese, and were instructed that they could take with them all they could carry in their suitcases and no more. His wife, weighing just over 100 pounds, and not at all strong, carried a load of 200 pounds, mostly tinned food, a distance of five miles - a load neither of them could even lift after they arrived. Mannheim, a famous scientist, says that we normally use about one-eighth of our physical reserves, and that these reserves are only called upon when we employ the right attitudes. If our attitudes can help tap hidden physical reserves, then think of what our experience can be if we adopt the "beautiful attitudes" which our Lord expounds for us in His Sermon on the Mount. We can maximise our potential and multiply our effectiveness, not only in the physical area of our being, but in our mental and emotional areas also. Many doctors and scientists agree that it is not our arteries but our attitudes which have the biggest say in our personal well-being.

Loving heavenly Father, help me to do as Your Word commands and "clothe myself with the Lord Jesus Christ". Show me how to have His attitudes - the "beautiful attitudes" - so that I might live fully and abundantly. Amen.