Song of Ascents

Quote by E. Stanley Jones from p. 182 of MacDonald’s book, Organizing Your Private World:
“I know that there are certain mental and emotional and moral and spiritual attitudes that are anti-health: anger, resentments, fear, worry, desire to dominate, self-preoccupation, guilts, sexual impurity, jealousy, a lack of creative activity, inferiorities, a lack of love. These are the twelve apostles of ill-health. So in prayer I’ve learned to surrender these things to Jesus Christ as they appear. I once asked Dr. Kagawa: ‘What is prayer?’ And he answered: ‘Prayer is self-surrender.’ I agree. It is primarily self-surrender, blanket surrender, day by day. It is all we know and all we don’t know. ‘All we don’t know’ covers the unfolding future and involves problems as they arise. So in prayer if any of these twelve things arise, and they do arise, for no one is free from the suggestion of any one of them, I’ve learned how to deal with them: not to fight them, but to surrender them to Jesus Christ, and say, ‘Now, Lord, you have this.’”
(Song of Ascents, Nashville: Abingdon, 1968, p. 337)