It's So Easy

The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: April 6 Devotional

The ease to which our salvation can come to us is often the hardest thing to grasp. We borne nothing at the Cross and gained everything. It may be hard in our pride to accept the fact that we are insignificant in our own salvation, the hard work was done without us even being a part of it. How much more a salve to pride to think we accomplished it through great struggle and significant accomplishment on our part. Our salvation is not accomplished through our great struggle but despite our great sin.

That we grasp what is so freely offered, and so painfully won to hand over to us in an incredible ease. Grace pours out of the heart of God,, the heart that absorbed the pain of our sin and freed us from it.

The collision occurred, but we get to walk away from that crash, unscathed and saved. We get to come off of His mountain because He climbed it for us.




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Have You Given Your All?

I have not been blogging much the past few months, and I am not sure how much I will do this month or the next. Or the next. But once in a brief while I feel I can muster together a couple of hundred words in a semi-organized fashion and spit out a post.

Such is a day today.

I have been thinking, reflecting and praying on my relationship with Jesus a lot the past few weeks, it has been growing as Easter approached, and today I have already spent some time praying about what He gave today to set me free from my sin. And it makes me think about what I have been giving Him. Yes, I work full time in ministry now, yes I volunteer a bit at my church. Yet I know I can never give Him what He has given me, although I really should try harder. The mind too often gets distracted by worldly concerns, when I should be thinking about facing Him:

A Christian worker’s greatest need is a readiness to face Jesus Christ at any and every turn. This is not easy, no matter what our experience has been.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: March 29th Devotional

Mr Chambers sums it up. it is not always easy, but i find it really is necessary. If I struggle to face Jesus, at least I am thinking about what it takes to follow Jesus. If I am not thinking about facing Him, I am probably not giving Him my all.

I find it very hard to face Jesus today, especially in the hours leading up to His death. Sunday will be so easy, as I join others in celebrating His resurrection. But today is hard. I think about what I did to put Him on the cross, and I struggle to face Him because it is so painful, not to look at Him, but to look at myself. He is glorious, even in His death on the cross. I am the one not worth looking at.

Face Him today, face Him now. Give Him your all in doing so.

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Limit Yourself

"Joy comes from seeing the complete fulfillment of the specific purpose for which I was created and born again, not from successfully doing something of my own choosing...He is not offering us a choice of how we can serve Him; He is asking for absolute loyalty to His commission, a faithfulness to what we discern when we are in the closest possible fellowship with God...The call is to be faithful to the ministry you received when you were in true fellowship with Him. This does not imply that there is a whole series of differing ministries marked out for you. It does mean that you must be sensitive to what God has called you to do, and this may sometimes require ignoring demands for service in other areas."

Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: March 5 Devotional

Limit yourself to the work, the ministry God has called you to do, and know that all of us are called to a ministry, it is just that not all are to do it in a setting we traditionally consider to be a ministry. Yes, your workplace, your school, your community, your family can be the setting of your ministry. You can share Jesus in any of these settings, you can be faithful to the Lord anywhere.

Limit yourself to the work, the ministry God has called you to do, and you will find you have just the strength and time to do it. Limit yourself to the work, the ministry God has called you to do, and you will find that it is more than you could ever have thought up to do on your own. And you will know it is He who placed the task before you.


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Giving My All

We should quit asking ourselves, "Am I of any use?" and accept the truth that we really are not of much use to Him.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: February 21 Devotional

You read this and it hits you. Surrender requires a true self evaluation in the face of God. He does not need us and yet He wishes to. Stop trying to figure out how you can help God and just give yourself over to Him. I have been thinking a bit about this since I read this yesterday. You really got to be broken to think of yourself as no use to God, except that He chooses to use you by grace. That is a hard lesson to learn, I feel it hammering at me even as I type this. Only God can make use of the useless. I am thankful for that.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Deuteronomy 6:5 (NASB)

That is a pretty simple instruction. If you follow this passage of Scripture, you should come to the place where you turn yourself over to God. Chase after Him to surrender to Him. Not run away to be able to live as you desire. This is a verse I reflected on in my journal over the past two years about a day apart in timing, but similar thoughts keep popping up when I reflect on this verse. I really need to run to Him and throw myself down in surrender.

Completely and daily.

More often as necessary.

What Is Easy, What Is Hard

There is nothing easier than getting saved, because it is solely God’s sovereign work— "Look to Me, and be saved . . ." ( Isaiah 45:22 ). Our Lord never requires the same conditions for discipleship that he requires for salvation.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: February 2 Devotional

Read this yesterday and it hit me hard. There really is nothing easier than salvation because God does all the work. There is nothing harder than discipleship because following hard after Jesus, living like Christ, cuts against our sinful and selfish nature.

What is His alone is easier for He is sovereign. What is ours to do is hard for we are sinners. Yet the first brings great joy to any who He calls in for it is eternal salvation that we face. The second pleases God because being like His Son is the highest goal we face and it is what He wants for us more than anything else.

You can have the easy through faith, you can get closer to the hard through faithful obedience. You cannot lose the first, but you will never achieve the second until He brings you home.

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Convergence of Thought

This year I am once again working through My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers. I am also using Handbook to Scripture by Ken and Karen Boa as a Bible reading guide for 2010. Here are some thoughts out of yesterday's readings that converge quite nicely in my mind:

Teach me to look to You alone as my source of provision in all things, and not to put my hope in people, possessions, or circumstances to deliver me.
Handbook to Scripture, Day 30

Never ask another person’s advice about anything God makes you decide before Him.
My Utmost For His Highest - January 30 Devotional

The Lord made it clear to me yesterday, when He is speaking to me, to seek not the advice of others. I am not sure not seek wise counsel, for I think to do so is biblical, it is all over Proverbs as an example. But what I took away from the above is that at the point you are on your knees before God, seeking Him and listening for and to His voice, that is all you should be doing.

God's place is everywhere, we need to know our place and that of those around us.

Once we are before God, God must be before anyone else.


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Going Out

By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
Hebrews 11:8 (NASB)

Have you ever "gone out" in this way? ... Continually examine your attitude toward God to see if you are willing to "go out" in every area of your life, trusting in God entirely...Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do— He reveals to you who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you "go out" in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised one iota by anything He does? Believe God is always the God you know Him to be when you are nearest to Him. Then think how unnecessary and disrespectful worry is! Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to "go out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to "go out" through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God.

Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: January 2 Devotional

Heading out into God's will without knowing your destination, do you have that kind of faith? I am not sure I always do. No, I am sure I do not, because I know I am a work in progress, and will be as long as I walk this earth. Taking a step being unsure of the next is one thing, taking a step unsure where your foot will land is even another. That is the kind of faith God calls us to, the kind of faith and trust that Jesus demonstrated with the Father when He walked the earth as a man.

God will not tell you His destination for you, but He will reveal it. And you will never start coming to the destination until you start going out on the journey. Start the journey today.

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Crisis of Faith

But before we choose to follow God’s will, a crisis must develop in our lives. This happens because we tend to be unresponsive to God’s gentler nudges. He brings us to the place where He asks us to be our utmost for Him and we begin to debate. He then providentially produces a crisis where we have to decide— for or against. That moment becomes a great crossroads in our lives. If a crisis has come to you on any front, surrender your will to Jesus absolutely and irrevocably.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: January 1 Devotional

God's invitation for you to work with Him always leads you a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
Henry Blackaby- Point Five of the Seven Realities of Experiencing God from Experiencing God

It is now 2010, and one thing should be apparent, I am reading Chambers again after a several month hiatus. I had started the devotional in 2008 part way through the year, so after completing it, I stopped and waited to pick it up again from the beginning. So here I am. I guess you could expect to see him in posts from time to time going forward.

Another thing that should be apparent is that both the quotes have a common theme; faith in God and acting in His will involves a crisis of some sort within you. We went through Experiencing God at my church this past fall, and spent some time on this concept of crisis. I had not made the connection between these two works until I read Chambers again this morning. I am not saying Blackaby borrowed from Chambers, I would like to think two godly men can be moved in very similar ways to write about the Lord in a similar fashion. It happens in the Bible all the time.

Not everyone will like the term crisis in characterizing how they must take the step and place faith in God to act as He wills. Sounds like we are weak, we are doubting, we are fearful. Probably all are true and that is why we do not like the term. In our hearts we often want to trust in self, not God, we want to be in control. That we face a crisis in facing the truth within ourselves is an uncomfortable thought that does not fit well with our view of self, and doesn't speak well of our view of God.

Knowing my own weakness, I look forward to a crisis within me in 2010, for then I will know without a doubt the fact that God is moving in my life.


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The Nature of Sin

We have to recognize that sin is a fact of life, not just a shortcoming. Sin is blatant mutiny against God, and either sin or God must die in my life. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue— if sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is nothing more fundamental than that. The culmination of sin was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and what was true in the history of God on earth will also be true in your history and in mine— that is, sin will kill the life of God in us. We must mentally bring ourselves to terms with this fact of sin. It is the only explanation why Jesus Christ came to earth, and it is the explanation of the grief and sorrow of life.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 23 Devotional

Sin is mutinous, sin kills, sin is a fact of life. Pretty dismal if that was all there was, if that was all we had to work with. If there was only our sinful selves, each and every one of us.

²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:23 (NASB)

But we cannot give up for there is a hope we all have in our Savior.

¹Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ²fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2 (NASB)

We can mess things up on our own, we have proven that since the beginning, but we cannot make right what has gone astray. Not alone. Not without help.

But by the Lord's grace we have it.

The Only Good News

Who of us would dare to stand before God and say, "My God, judge me as I have judged others"? We have judged others as sinners— if God should judge us in the same way, we would be condemned to hell. Yet God judges us on the basis of the miraculous atonement by the Cross of Christ.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 22 Devotional

How true this is. We never seem to apply the same standard to others that is applied to us. That's the bad news. Others never apply the same standard to themselves that they would apply to us. That's more bad news.

God is loving, merciful, patient and gracious. He never treats us like we treat each other.

That is the only good news here today.

A Voice Softly

If you debate for even one second when God has spoken, it is all over for you. Never start to say, "Well, I wonder if He really did speak to me?" Be reckless immediately— totally unrestrained and willing to risk everything— by casting your all upon Him. You do not know when His voice will come to you, but whenever the realization of God comes, even in the faintest way imaginable, be determined to recklessly abandon yourself, surrendering everything to Him. It is only through abandonment of yourself and your circumstances that you will recognize Him. You will only recognize His voice more clearly through recklessness— being willing to risk your all.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 18 Devotional

God does not always boom away in our lives, sometimes the voice voice is soft. Always sure, but sometimes soft. I usually need to be hit with a 2 x 4, but I think in His infinite mercy, He wants to stop putting splinters in my head. I need to listen closely, quietly at times, then move decisively on what He is saying to me.

That is why we need quiet time before the Lord. To listen, but more importantly, to hear.

Listening to His voice, hearing what He has to say. Getting the wisdom and strength to proceed along His path, my Narrow Road.

Eye Timber

The average Christian is the most piercingly critical individual known. Criticism is one of the ordinary activities of people, but in the spiritual realm nothing is accomplished by it...The Holy Spirit is the only one in the proper position to criticize, and He alone is able to show what is wrong without hurting and wounding...There is no escaping the penetrating search of my life by Jesus. If I see the little speck in your eye, it means that I have a plank of timber in my own. Every wrong thing that I see in you, God finds in me.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 17 Devotional

Do not judge, do not criticize others, pull that plank out of your own eye. Why is it that we who have been shown the most grace are often the most critical of others (who most likely are no worse and probably better than we are)?

I for one am relieved that I am not held to the same standard of perfection by God that I would in my weakness try to hold others to at times.

God is good. And we certainly need Him to be that way. Because most of us live with a lumberyard sticking out of our eyes.

Dedication

Yet the first thing we realize when we do come to Jesus is that He pays no attention whatsoever to our natural desires. We have the idea that we can dedicate our gifts to God. However, you cannot dedicate what is not yours. There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself...A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus. Never try to make your experience a principle for others, but allow God to be as creative and original with others as He is with you.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 13 Devotional

You cannot give what you do not have. yesterday I wrote about we are not our own, talking about Calvin writing in the Institutes. Today it is Chambers. Two very different people bringing very similar thoughts into my head. I have to think about this, I hear the voice of God in my ears, now I need to listen. Since we are His and not our own, we cannot "dedicate" ourselves to Him. We can only pray that He pray that He takes us and allows us to discern His will for us. From that comes the joy that lasts.

It is an intensely personal experience between you and God; it is not the same for two people. Understanding that, and being content with His will for you, without regard for His will for another, is a sign of a high level of christian maturity. God knows what is best for you, stop looking around and look to Him for that answer.

Do not be so proud as to think you can dedicate yourself, offer yourself to God. Be so humble as to beg Him to take you.

Stubborn

Your will agrees with God, but in your flesh there is a nature that renders you powerless to do what you know you ought to do. When the Lord initially comes in contact with our conscience, the first thing our conscience does is awaken our will, and our will always agrees with God...What causes you to say "I will not obey" is something less deep and penetrating than your will. It is perversity or stubbornness, and they are never in agreement with God...The only thing to do with this barrier of stubbornness is to blow it up with "dynamite," and the "dynamite" is obedience to the Holy Spirit.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 6 Devotional

That's what I need to do at times: dynamite my stubbornness (or more likely, nuke it. I wonder if Chambers would have used that imagery if he had written 50 years later). But it is comforting to think that the will, which strives to align with God is deeper than the sinful nature which stubbornly struggles against it.

I think that is why we need to dig deep into ourselves when we look for God in our lives: sin is on the surface skimming along, God is in there deep, waiting for us to come down and find the treasure buried deep within us. Jesus came and died to open up the white washed tombs of our faithlessness.

So today (and every day going forward) would be a good day to pray that the Holy Spirit pries us open and dynamites away the sin covering over our deeper nature which is crying out for fellowship with God.

Dear Lord, nuke me.

Pride and Patience

It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we see the activity and mistake panic for inspiration. That is why we see so few fellow workers with God, yet so many people working for God. We would much rather work for God than believe in Him. Do I really believe that God will do in me what I cannot do?...When God wants to show you what human nature is like separated from Himself, He shows it to you in yourself. If the Spirit of God has ever given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God (and He will only do this when His Spirit is at work in you), then you know that in reality there is no criminal half as bad as you yourself could be without His grace.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 1 Devotional

This guy really does not pull any punches. I love it. Chambers is getting at the heart of our pride and arrogance here. We really think at times if we cannot accomplish something by ourselves, then God could not accomplish it in us. We have to doing and achieving, not waiting in faith and trust.

I am most guilty of this. I am not by nature patient. I feel I need to take the lead, to do it, and then try to make it seem like it was God's will after the fact. I wonder how many times I pray to the Lord but leave the room before He starts to speak so that I never hear what He has to say to me. I wonder, but I know it is a lot.

How convicting to stand in front of the mirror and be shown by God how lost I would be without His grace. Lost in my pride. Lost without my patience to wait on His timing.

How fortunate that He has the patience I lack.

A Sane God

Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back?...Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits...By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad, but when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 30 Devotional

That God may ask us to do something we think makes little or no sense is not a thought we seem to dwell on much. But it is not outside the realm of possibility for no other reason than God's ways are not our ways. We are quick to come before the throne with our requests and desires that fit quite nicely into our worldview. But what if we were asked to do something we thought lacked common sense? Or worse yet, something others thought lacked common sense?

Is your faith strong enough to know that God is not crazy?

How and What Are You Asking?

Our Lord does not mean that our lives will be free from external difficulties and uncertainties, but that just as He knew the Father’s heart and mind, we too can be lifted by Him into heavenly places through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, so that He can reveal the teachings of God to us...Just as Jesus stood unblemished and pure in the presence of His Father, we too by the mighty power and effectiveness of the baptism of the Holy Spirit can be lifted into that relationship...Once in that wonderful position, having been placed there by Jesus Christ, we can pray to God in Jesus’ name—in His nature.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 29 Devotional

Jesus did not promise everything in our desire, He promised us everything in His name. If you feel that God is not listening, is it because you are not asking in His name?

The Lord wants us to have as He has, be in a relationship with Him that models the relationship within the Trinity. If you are not asking in the nature that Jesus prayed to His Father, do not be surprised at the answer you get. For that answer will be no. It doesn;t please God toi have to say no to us; the glory we give Him comes from our obedience, of our being in His name.

Good or Great

The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 25 Devotional

I have seen this concept in many business books, but it is interesting to see in a devotional such as this. Good is the enemy of great, because good is acceptable but may not be the best we can do, the best we have to offer. Good is usually good enough to get by, but getting by is not way we should be about it when we are talking our faith. Great is what we should strive for.

We know we will fall short of God's standards. He is holy and just, we are not. He is without sin, we are not. He is divine, we are His created beings; made in His image but not of His essence. And so we fall short, but He loves us anyway.

If you ask someone whether they think they are going to heaven, you will often hear something along the lines of "Yes, I am a good person". And they either believe (or desperately want to believe) that. No one says "Yes, I am a great person". But they will read that business book, that self help journal and nod their heads when it says things like you need to be great, that good isn't good enough.

"Yes, I am a good person."

"But good isn't good enough to satisfy the standards of a perfect God."

"Oh".

Personally, this "good" person is glad he has placed faith and trust in; that he serves a great God.

He Comes First

My post yesterday talked about peace, and coming to peace with God first. After writing that post, I read Oswald Chambers which I have excerpted below. I think I see a pattern here:

When we look at these words of Jesus, we immediately find them to be the most revolutionary that human ears have ever heard. ". . . seek first the kingdom of God . . . ." Even the most spiritually-minded of us argue the exact opposite, saying, "But I must live; I must make a certain amount of money; I must be clothed; I must be fed." The great concern of our lives is not the kingdom of God but how we are going to take care of ourselves to live. Jesus reversed the order by telling us to get the right relationship with God first, maintaining it as the primary concern of our lives, and never to place our concern on taking care of the other things of life.

Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 21 Devotional

I have been trying to walk in my faith long enough to realize when the same message comes through different means it is something I should stop, stand still and listen to. Have I been thinking about myself more than I have been thinking about putting God first? I didn't think so, but the message coming through is "Yes, you have."

So now I need to stop, stand still and listen to what it is God is trying to tell me, to get through that thick skull of mine. (I have always felt that if I had become President of the United States, I would wind up on Mt. Rushmore. No extra granite needed, just put my skull up there after I am gone from this world.)

My prayers need to focus less on worry and more on listening for God's voice and God's will. Future plans for school, ministry and life are in His hands, I need to await quietly for Him to open Them and show me what He holds in His palm for my future.

Less anticipation of what I seek, more expectation of what He will provide. Less praying for specific direction (which turns out to be my view of things), more praying for opportunities to discern His will (which forces me to look at things the way He does).

He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this:
Revelation 3:7b (NASB)

If God wills it, no one can stop it, nor make it happen if He wills it not. Let me put Him first in thought and prayer and the rest will work out. I get the message, I pray for wisdom and strength to carry it out.

True Humility

We think it is a sign of true humility to say at the end of the day, "Well, I just barely got by today, but it was a severe struggle." And yet all of Almighty God is ours in the Lord Jesus! And He will reach to the last grain of sand and the remotest star to bless us if we will only obey Him. Does it really matter that our circumstances are difficult? Why shouldn’t they be! If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we remove God’s riches from our lives and hinder others from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it removes God from the throne of our lives, replacing Him with our own self-interests. It causes us to open our mouths only to complain, and we simply become spiritual sponges— always absorbing, never giving, and never being satisfied. And there is nothing lovely or generous about our lives...Be marked and identified with God’s nature, and His blessing will flow through you all the time.

Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 16 Devotional

True humility comes form accepting God's will without complaint, without making statements of how hard life is. God knows how hard things are for us. Going forth and doing His will, quietly and without complaint is true humility, not telling everyone you are struggling but getting through by the grace of God. That sunds like seeking approval, favor or accolades from others:

¹"Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 6:1 (NASB)

I am not saying that is what we do when we talk about our struggles, but can you see the possibility? And I think we can all easily fall into this trap, myself included (You can probably move me to the front of the line, and if I am not around, save me a place).

Be humble before the Lord, putting Him first, surely and quietly. Proclaim His good news, not the struggle you face in proclaiming it.

That will make Him smile in love. That is what He will bless. That is true humility.