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

I can't believe this is the fifth day of this series of interviews with Dean Merrill, who has edited and updated the best-selling devotional of 1936, with more than a million copies sold,

victorious

living

by East Stanley Jones, beautifully bound, it seems which came out immediately. the shelf in 1936 dienes beautiful idea was nominated for a Nobel Prize let's put this in context this guy is a missionary yes, you know, he's an American from Baltimore spent most of his life in India he's a friend of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru and and he has visited Roosevelt several times he almost prevented Pearl Harbor but why was he nominated for the Nobel Prize his intervention to try to prevent war in the Pacific oh yes yes that came up finally it was noticed 1962 he is nominated he did not win the prize but he was nominated for He therefore won something called the Gandhi Peace Prize the following year to try to prevent the horrible suffering, death and carnage of World War II in the Pacific.

Now this man wrote twenty-eight books, twenty-eight, twenty books, he made ten. Their devotional span is like this. Another I would like to know is that there are 18 others. He spoke over 60,000 times, which boggles the mind mm-hmm as a public speaker. It's just amazing how he maintained a marriage. I mean, did he ever see his wife? Yes, they did, they did, he married another missionary, a woman who was a few years older than him, she was very involved in the education of children in the schools, so they would know that they were both deeply involved in the missionary work and shared a life together.

He had a daughter, that daughter is still alive today, she's in her nineties, but you know, there was a lot of separation back and forth, I'm sure most of that and around the time of the 1950s she decided That was fine, I'll do it. spend six months of the year in India six months in North America six months one plays six months the other to make this a little more tolerable but he would never stop he would never retire no no no no and we saw, we saw a small segment of him Speaking more ago or less, where he talked about

living

a full life into his 70s and 80s, there was another thing here that I wanted to ask you about, if I can find it, if I don't find it, then I won't do it, but oh yeah, here.

It's just that I mentioned these rules to get along with each other. He does a whole series here that he starts talking about as part of something bigger and, frankly, when he was reading this I thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his book Life Together, there's something real. Parallels between the advice that he gives to Bond Harbor and that given by II Stanley John Jones, but his 14th point and I think it is his last point, yes, is to maintain a life of prayer. Hey, does he write about prayer somewhere? Oh, yes, yes, well, and we. I only have a minute, what does he say about prayer?

He says I love the one about a day where he talks about what prayer is not. Prayer is not about bending God to do what we want. Prayer is an activity that bends. us towards God, he said when you cast a hook to bring in a boat and you hook onto something on the shore and start pulling, you don't pull the boat from the shore, no, you pull, but the boat moves toward the shore. that's prayer, prayer is steering our ship to the shore of God's will and God's plan and purposes, not making the shore move, that's not the way it

works

, these kinds of ideas continue arising all the time and particularly with respect to prayer. yes in fact when he uses illustrations like that and he uses several in this devotional he reminds me a lot of cs lewis casilas louis often when he takes you by surprise with the simplicity of zyliss trations yes but that prayer illustration is just me .

It makes sense, you can read the one about the man who wore the Ten on his roof, yes, it's about hearing the voice of God and he said. I just looked down and there was a worker carrying corrugated tin on his roof, which is like the roofs in India, and I called. at him and he didn't listen, he never heard it in someone else, he yelled at him, he didn't listen and he didn't listen to why, because the can makes a lot of noise bouncing around as he walks around this construction site. God is speaking to you God is speaking to us, can you hear or is there too much tin ringing just above your ear still in your head?

Yeah, I mean, it's so I'm not surprised that it became a bestseller and here it is. it's for you guys it's called

victorious

living east and lee

jones

edited and updated by my guest

dean

merrill

it's a beautiful beautiful book and it's available to you in limited quantities this week only this is the last day for you to get it and I know. I'm going to love it so I said P.O. do now and remember. Your ministry gift to Crossroads is very important, so I appreciate it and it's been a quick five days. Dean, thanks for coming, thanks for asking.