Frank Laubach: Learning the Vocabulary of God: A Spiritual Diary

    I have been thinking it is time to re-dig some wells.  Many years ago I became familiar with some great giants in the faith through Camps Farthest Out.  To me their wisdom and experience far surpassed most of what we see in Christian circles today and I was needing a 'shot in the arm'.  I looked through a box of books I brought from Tommy Tyson's library after he died and found a short book by Frank Laubach entitled Learning the Vocabulary of God: A Spiritual Diary.  It chronicles one of his trips to India where he was contemplating how to represent Jesus to these people and also how he could help them to rise above the poverty he saw there.  I am reading it slowly since it is a diary.

Here are a couple of gems I found today:

In the Preface of the book he says, '"Ask God, "How can I do the most for the world?" and will He not answer, "Live the most Christlike life you can, and let men see it"?'

On February 24, 1937, he wrote:  'HE said, "Where is your faith?"  We all feel amazed at Jesus and try to give Him praise.  What God seeks is not praise, but growth into the likeness of Christ, into the achievements of Christ.  Any fear that we cannot be like Him, even when we ask God, is what Jesus rebuked and rebukes yet, because we are to become strong, not to apologize for failing all our lives.  Astonishment does not please Jesus, for He is not a slight-of-hand performer but fearlessly real.  "They being afraid wondered."  We do that in the presence of illness or of nature's disasters.  We cringe like slaves; we do not stand unafraid like some.  In three consecutive pages of Luke, Jesus shows us how to command wind, waves, devils, and death.  We are making many Christians in India.  We do not seem to be making many miracle working Christians like Sadhu Sundar Sing.  We preach and practice a weak Christianity.
    "Be not afraid! Be strong in . . . the power of his might."  A flabby Christian is too weak to conquer self, afraid of other people--this curses our age.'