"Victorious Living"-- Dean Merrill brings us the works of E. Stanley Jones

back as promised with Dean Merill, who edited and updated this remarkable Christian classic Victorious Living by East Stanley Jones, a million-copy bestseller in the Great Depression, and Merill brought it back and it is beautifully bound and we put it out available to you and us. I'll tell you at the end of this interview how to get it uh Dean uh we're talking about Victoria who lives here and you know you look at a title like that and you wonder if this is going to be an exaggeration, is it you? he knows everything sub, not everything is subjective and it's not exaggeration, he really sticks to his worldview of the kingdom of God, and he focuses on personal transformation, social transformation and world transformation, I mean, and he stick to that.

They're obviously core values ​​of his, but one thing that he says, um, maybe just a quarter of the way through the book Victorious Living, he centers them and then on one thing, mainly the surrender of the self in the two points. What do you suppose he meant by that surrender of self? He means that if you try to manage your own life and make your own decisions and take your own direction uh, you're probably going to hit a dead end and he says if you're willing to let the one who formed us, the one who formed us, the one who has it.

I discovered that let him guide you and direct you, then you can come out

victorious

from all these things that bind you and try to bind you and hurt you. There's another one there where he talks about the difference of

living

like uh uh. he uses that story of Jesus coming in the middle of the night to the disciples who are rowing against the storm, yeah, and the Scriptures say in one story you know they're surprised, they're afraid they don't understand. anywhere they are rowing in the dark and he says and then the scriptures say he came to them and immediately they were on the shore where they wanted to go, he said our lives, many of our lives are rowing in the dark and we are Working and we are pressing a lot to try to get where we want to go and we're just not gaining ground and if we just let him get on the boat we'd be on the coast, yeah we'd be where we want.

Where we've been trying to get to for so long for so many of us, our lives are a metaphor for rowing in the dark on our own, he says, let him in, let him in the boat and then you. You're going to get to where you want to be, yes, that rowing metaphor is very effective and you know, I find the rowing metaphor interesting, but there are also many other places in the U devotional series where you choose a topic. and he keeps adding to it for four or five days, you know, you know, there's a series near the end here, I think it's page 288 where he starts one thing in part of something bigger and he, he, like he gives his own rules, I think There were about 11 or 12 of them, actually 14, about how to get along with each other, you know, in a local church and it's a really, really good thing, one of the points he made was being willing to laugh at yourself now.

I assume he must have had a pretty good sense of humor uh yeah, yeah, he doesn't take himself that seriously, he's not that pompous, it's uh um, when they would have the what. They call the ashram the Retreats, you know, everyone has a manual job to do, including him, you know, picking up trash, whatever you're supposed to do, yeah, yeah, he's, um, he's very, very laid back. because he wants something more than he showed up asham in India refers to a retreat in the forest yes yes a getaway a getaway and he, he, started this kind of Asam movement that continues to this day in some places, in some places, yes, there are some even here in the north.

America, yeah, yeah boy, time flies here folks, this is a really special offer we're making to you. Dean Mer has done an excellent job here editing, updating Victorious Living by East Anley Jones and to get your copy, there is the coordinate you write or your phone or log in more than a million of these were soldiers in the Great Depression of all the times the best selling devotional of 1936 can you believe it? If you want your copy, we certainly want to send it to you, remember your The best gift from the Ministry when you order it.

Well, tomorrow we will be back with another installment of this fascinating series of interviews.