My Utmost for His Highest - May 12th - Make a Habit of Having no Habits

For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. - 2 Peter 1:8

    When we begin to form a habit we are conscious of it. There are times when we are conscious of becoming virtuous and patient and godly, but it is only a stage; if we stop there we shall get the strut of the spiritual prig. The right thing to do with habits is to lose them in the life of the Lord, until every habit is so practiced that there is no conscious habit at all. Our spiritual life continually resolves into introspection because there are some qualities we have not added as yet. Ultimately the relationship is to be a completely simple one.

    Your god may be your little Christian habit, the habit of prayer at stated times, or the habit of Bible reading. Watch how your Father will upset those times if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes--I can't do that just now, I am praying; it is my hour with God. No, it is your hour with your habit. There is a quality that is lacking in you. Recognize the defect and then look for the opportunity of exercising yourself along the line of the quality to be added.

    Love means that there is no habit visible, you have come to the place where the habit is lost, and by practice you do the thing unconsciously. If you are consciously holy, there are certain things you imagine you cannot do, certain relationships in which you are far from simple; that means there is something to be added. The only supernatural life is the life the Lord Jesus lived, and He was at home with God anywhere. Is there anywhere where you are not at home with God? Let God press through in that particular circumstance until you gain Him, and life becomes the simple life of a child.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My thoughts

2 days ago Chambers talked about getting into the habit or maybe the practice of finding out daily what God says and coming to God about everything and today I think when he mentions losing habits it is thinking about our spiritual disciplines and how we need to make sure our habits don't keep us from our faith or our community with God. The focus is not on doing the habit but on the reason the habit is in place, to meet God and this may mean serving others. Be careful though that we don't get obsessed with the habit that we are forgetting the work of God in our lives. Jesus was at home with God anywhere and this is the idea - to be intertwined with the things of God that there are no habits, but rather this is how we live. 

My Utmost for His Highest - May 11th - You Won't Reach It On Tiptoe

And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. - 2 Peter 1:7

    Love is indefinite to most of us, we do not know what we mean when we talk about love. Love is the sovereign preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that that preference be for Himself (cf. Luke 14:26). When the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ is easily first; then we must practice the working out of these things mentioned by Peter.

    The first thing God does is to knock pretence and the pious pose right out of me. The Holy Spirit reveals that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now, He says to me, show the same love to others--"Love as I have loved you. (John 15:12)" "I will bring any number of people about you whom you cannot respect, and you must exhibit My love to them as I have exhibited it to you." You won't reach it on tiptoe. Some of us have tried to, but we were soon tired.

    "The Lord suffereth long . . .  (2 Peter 3:9)" Let me look within and see His dealings with me. The knowledge that God has loved me to the uttermost, to the end of all my sin and meanness and selfishness and wrong, will send me forth into the world to love in the same way. God's love to me is inexhaustible, and I must love others from the bedrock of God's love to me. Growth in grace stops the moment I get huffed. I get huffed because I have a peculiar person to live with. Just think how disagreeable I have been to God! Am I prepared to be so identified with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness are being poured out all the time? Neither natural love nor Divine love will remain unless it is cultivated. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained by discipline.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My Utmost for His Highest - May 10th - Take The Initiative

And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue (furnish your faith with resolution - Moffatt); and to virtue knowledge. - 2 Peter 1:5

    "Add" means there is something we have to do. We are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do. We cannot save ourselves nor sanctify ourselves, God does that; but God will not give us good habits, He will not give us character, He will not make us walk aright. We have to do all that ourselves, we have to work out the salvation God has worked in (see Philippians 2:12). "Add" means to get into the habit of doing things, and in the initial stages it is difficult. To take the initiative is to make a beginning, to instruct yourself in the way you have to go.

    Beware of the tendency of asking the way when you know it perfectly well. Take the initiative, stop hesitating, and take the first step. Be resolute when God speaks, act in faith immediately on what He says, and never revive your decisions. If you hesitate when God tells you to do a thing, you endanger your standing in grace. Take the initiative, take it yourself, take the step with your will now, make it impossible to go back. Burn your bridges behind you--"I will write that letter"; "I will pay that debt." Make the thing inevitable.

    We have to get into the habit of hearkening to God about everything, to form the habit of finding out what God says. If when a crisis comes, we instinctively turn to God, we know that the habit has been formed. We have to take the initiative where we are, not where we are not.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My Thoughts

We cannot save ourselves not sanctify ourselves, but each day we need to put in place in our lives good habits. God provides us the ingredients, but we still must put them in practice and make choices that will glorify Him. He does not make us robots. Initiative is used 4 times in this lesson. 

My Utmost for His Highest - May 9th - Grasp Without Reach

Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, but happy is one who keeps the Law. - Proverbs 29:18

    There is a difference between an ideal and a vision. An ideal has no moral inspiration; a vision has. The people who give themselves over to ideals rarely do anything. A man's conception of Deity may be used to justify his deliberate neglect of his duty. Jonah argued that because God was a God of justice and of mercy, therefore everything would be all right (see Jonah 4:2). I may have a right conception of God, and that may be the very reason why I do not do my duty. But wherever there is vision, there is also a life of rectitude because the vision imparts moral incentive.

    Ideals may lull to rain. Take stock of yourself spiritually and see whether you have ideals only or if you have vision.

    "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" (Andrea Del Sarto by Robert Browning)

    "Where is no vision . . ." When once we lose sight of God, we begin to be reckless, we cast off certain restraints, we cast off praying, we cast off the vision of God in little things, and begin to act on our own initiative. If we are eating what we have out of our own hand, doing things on our own initiative without expecting God to come in, we are on the downward path, we have lost the vision. Is our attitude to-day an attitude that springs from our vision of God? Are expecting God to do greater things than He has ever done? Is there a freshness and vigor in our spiritual outlook?

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My Utmost for His Highest - May 8th - The Patience of Faith

Because you have kept My word of perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of the testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who live on the earth. - Revelation 3:10

    Patience is more than endurance. A saint's life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says--"I cannot stand any more." God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God's hands. For what have you need of patience just now? Maintain your relationship to Jesus Christ by the patience of faith. "Though He slay me, yet will I wait for Him. (Job 13:15)"

    Faith is not a pathetic sentiment, but robust vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. You cannot see Him just now, you cannot understand what He is doing, but you know Him. Shipwreck occurs where there is not that mental poise which comes from being established on the eternal truth that God is holy love. Faith is the heroic effort of your life, you fling yourself in reckless confidence on God.

    God has ventured all in Jesus Christ to save us, now He wants us to venture our all in abandoned confidence in Him. There are spots where that faith has not worked in us as yet, places untouched by the life of God. There were none of these spots in Jesus Christ's life, and there are to be none in ours. "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee. (John 17:3)" The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we take this view, life becomes one great romance, a glorious opportunity for seeing marvelous things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

Mom's thoughts

Reckless and Confidence

My thoughts

That is a great analogy of our life being in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. He holds us and let lets us go when He thinks it is appropriate. I can trust myself in His hands. It is called the patience of faith or faith patience. I am not simply patience, but patient because of faith. I know Him because of faith and so I can fling myself in reckless confidence on God. My purpose is know Him and know Him better - so I can then face anything as He lets me fly. 

I Corinthians 15:1-58 - Faith and Death

I Corinthians 15:1-58

Message: Faith and Death

Time: Paul spent 18 months in Corinth and this is his 2nd letter to them (the first did not survive). He penned his letter in AD 55. There was quarrelling already in this church and deep divisions. Sin needs to be confronted and he did this boldly. 

What the Lord is Saying:

This month's devotion (that has lasted probably a year for me) has been about justification by faith in Christ. Faith alone. Our entire lives or lived or walking by this faith (2 Corinthians 5:7), from start to finish. The other night at BSF was a question about what we are most concerned about in dying. Not necessarily what we are thinking after death, but at the point of dying. It was an interesting question and one that was hard to answer, but the premise here is that even up to the point of death, life is lived by faith. I think what pervaded my mind in answering that question and yet an answer I did not reveal to anyone there was thinking as it gets closer - is it going to come to pass. I mean, is all of this true. Is there going to be life after death? Everything tells me this is true. I believe in the Bible and it speaks of it and yet there is still that wonder. 

The German philosopher Immanuel Kent spoke of us all having a sense of right and wrong that drives our actions and decisions, and yet spoke that this only means something if we think there are consequences to this type of living. I think as a people we are about justice. We want to think that living right results in a good life while living in a wrong manner results in punishments. What is difficult right now in our culture is the blurry lines of what right and wrong mean. But, however that is defined, we still have an expectation that it will merit something in the end. 

Yet, even in this thinking is the reality that what is right is not always rewarded not what is wrong is always punished. Thus, is there someone that sees through all of this and in the end, declares people justified by His own desire. But again, ultimately either we live however we want, doing whatever we think is best at any time or we live by a standard.   

In 1 Corinthians it begins with the premise that Jesus and His gospel has been preached and ultimately this Gospel and our faith means something only if there is a resurrection. So faith in Jesus only has merit if there is something after death - and that Jesus has been resurrected. We all know 1 out of 1 person dies. We have a natural body but then also we are raised from death as a spiritual body. Adam was all man, but Jesus is all God and Man. Thus, he is a heavenly being and in His resurrection, if true, means that His heavenly life can be transferred to our life (For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. - I Cor 15:22). So our focus in on the fact that at death we go from a perishable being (Adam) to an imperishable being (Jesus). We live on. This is the promise. This is the crux of all faith. That there will be something in the end, beyond the end. 

This is big and this is significant. I go back to my question about death and my view of that death basically comes back to how significant my faith is. The scripture is clear. In Christ all will be made alive. So there should be no fear. If there is fear then it is because I do not believe. But I am here. I am studying. I am devoting myself to this word each day, to studying it, to sharing it with others, to letting it be my life and so Chris, you must believe in it. I can put my complete faith and trust in it which means that I can suffer if need be for my future is secure. It will work out. Believe in these words as others have believed and the apostles believed. take hold of being justified by faith in Christ and realizing that all the glory goes to Him. All glory. In Christ all will be made alive. Death will be abolished (I Cor 15:26). Death yields life (15:36). Death yields an imperishable body (15:52). So live, live, live. Live each day for Him. Do all that He has called me to do. Every day. All that i do is not in vain; it has a reason and purpose (15:58 - nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort (The Message)). 

Promise: This life is worth living because In Christ I will be made alive, imperishable will I become. I do not need to ever fear death for these words have been promised to me and I can hold on to them. Fear not.

Prayer: O God, thank you for bringing me this comfort. Thank you for speaking so clearly to me your truth - that you God have paved the way for me to be with You always and so living right now in this world, I live with no fear for You have taken care of my future. Keep my eyes on this, that in Christ all will be made alive. 

My Utmost for His Highest - May 7th - Building for Eternity

For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? - Luke 14:28

    Our Lord refers not to a cost we have to count, but to a cost which He has counted. The cost was those thirty years at Nazareth, those three years of popularity, scandal and hatred, the deep unfathomable agony in Gethsemane, and the onslaught at Calvary--the pivot upon which the whole of Time and Eternity turns. Jesus Christ has counted the cost. Men are not going to laugh at Him at last and say--"This man began to build, and was not able to finish. (Luke 14:30)"

    The conditions of discipleship laid down by Our Lord in vv. 26, 27, and 33 mean that the men and women He is going to use in His mighty building enterprises are those in whom He has done everything. "If any man come to Me, and hate not . . . , he cannot be My disciple. (Luke 14:26)" Our Lord implies that the only men and women He will use in His building enterprises are those who love Him personally, passionately and devotedly beyond any of the closest ties on earth. The conditions are stern, but they are glorious.

    All that we build is going to be inspected by God. Is God going to detect in His searching fire that we have built on the foundation of Jesus some enterprise of our own (see I Corinthians 3:10-15)? These are the days of tremendous enterprises, days when we are trying to work for God, and therein is the snare. Profoundly speaking, we can never work for God. Jesus takes us over for His enterprises, His building schemes entirely, and no soul has any right to claim where he shall be put.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My thoughts

We don't work for God, but rather Jesus takes us over for His work. But I do love Him with all of me and am willing to give up all for Him. I count the cost. The cost isn't mine, but it is all that He has done for me. That's the cost. My cost is simply seeing this and knowing this and therefore trusting in Him. The effort in me is simply surrender.