My Utmost - May 31

My favorite line from today's reading:

God came as a baby, giving and entrusting Himself to me. He expects my personal life to be a “Bethlehem.”

A great turn of phrase. Bethlehem was the place into which God the Son was born. It is the place where His presence on earth was first revealed, and from which He moved, into other places, living a life that would grow in influence and extend God's gradce, love, healing, blessing and forgiveness to all.

MY life (and yours) is intended to be like Bethlehem - revealing Christ's presence on earth, carrying God's presence with us into other places, allowing our lives to influence the world in good and gracious ways, communicating love, healing, forgiveness and blessing.

Some days I definitely feel that I am doing that. What would the world look like if everyone who loves Him could live that way all the time?

My Utmost - May 27

My Utmost for His Highest

I resonate with this. "Tarry"... Wait. I don't like waiting. But the disciples are told to wait.

Oswald writes "Our waiting is not dependent on the providence of God, but on our own spiritual fitness."

I don't like reading that but I accept it as true. There is work God is doing in me right now that He feels is necessary.

"The attitude of receiving and welcoming the Holy Spirit into our lives is to be the continual attitude of a believer. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive reviving life from our ascended Lord."

Had a friend in England who I remember for saying that if someone asks if you are filled with the Spirit, the correct answer is "If you have to ask, I must not be".

Remember the illustration: What does a glove do when it is not filled with the hand? Nothing. But when the hand fills the glove, the glove's actions are identical to the hand's intent and action.

Let me be a filled glove today.

My Utmost • May 19

My Utmost for his Highest
I love this passage about being secure in the love of Christ. And I like where Oswald takes us: to realize that our experience of being "more than conquerors" comes to use when we are in all of these trying experiences.

I don't like going through trying experiences. But the times I have most experienced God's power to save and lift me have all been in times of trials. And what greater trial is there than the knowledge that I am lost? What greater lift than the lift I experience by trusting in Him?

My Utmost - May 18

My Utmost for His Highest

I can't count the number of times when I have been stressing about some circumstance or other in my life (and like everyone, I have plenty) as I am driving down the road, when my attention will be caught by the flight of a bird, and I will recall the words of Jesus:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

...and I think to myself, how small is my faith. How quick I am to question, to doubt God's faithfulness. I like Oswald's remark,

So often we impair God’s designed influence, which He desires to exhibit through us, because of our own conscious efforts to be consistent and useful. Jesus said there is only one way to develop and grow spiritually, and that is through focusing and concentrating on God. In essence, Jesus was saying, “Do not worry about being of use to others; simply believe on Me.” In other words, pay attention to the Source, and out of you “will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38 ).

My Utmost • May 17

I remember processing with a friend years ago the whole concept of the ascension of Jesus. Something about it just seemed not quite right. What was it? Was it that it seemed so other-worldly? So different from any experience we might have? That felt like part of it. After all, a Jesus who goes fishing with friends, I can relate to. A Jesus who eats bread and drinks wine with his buddies, I can understand. I've fished; I've enjoyed bread; I've shared evenings with friends over a glass of wine. That part, I get.

But on further reflection, that's not the "bind". I've gone fishing, but I haven't calmed a storm, or any of the other miracles Jesus did, and yet they don't bother me.

Finally we arrived at the real issue. I didn't like the idea of Jesus leaving - being gone - in essence, what feels like abandonment.

And once I named it, I realized this was the turning point. Because the Jesus who ascended, seemingly leaving His friends, is the Jesus who said "I will never leave you or forsake you".

My friend Doug Hanks wrote about it in a song that I've always appreciated. The chorus:

"I'll never leave you or forsake you;
You will never be alone;
I'm with you always,
until I bring you home".

The presence of Jesus is mine through the person he promised and sent: The Holy Spirit of God. And that's Oswald's point today. Because Jesus was ascended, he through the Holy Spirit is present to me moment by moment. And to you as well.

My Utmost • May 15

I have been away from blogging for a season and considering how to jump back in and decided that I am going to resume by responding to Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest", which I read almost daily.

Today's reading is in many ways an expansion and continuation of yesterday's counsel. There I read these words:

It is adversity that makes us exhibit (Jesus’) life … The only thing that will enable me to enjoy adversity is the acute sense of eagerness of allowing the life of the Son of God to evidence itself in me. No matter how difficult something may be, I must say, “Lord, I am delighted to obey You in this.”

You must keep yourself in the proper condition to allow the life of the Son of God to be manifested in you, and you cannot keep yourself fit if you give way to self-pity. Our circumstances are the means God uses to exhibit just how wonderfully perfect and extraordinarily pure His Son is. Discovering a new way of manifesting the Son of God should make our heart beat with renewed excitement. It is one thing to choose adversity, and quite another to enter into adversity through the orchestrating of our circumstances by God’s sovereignty. And if God puts you into adversity, He is adequately sufficient to supply all your need.

Delighting in obeying, in following - even when difficult, even when painful. That is a challenge. I have gotten pretty good at accepting, at following. But not at finding joy in it.
 
So today Oswald coaches us on "rising to the occasion". For me these are the key words:

May God not find complaints in us anymore, but spiritual vitality—a readiness to face anything He brings our way. The only proper goal of life is that we manifest the Son of God; and when this occurs, all of our dictating of our demands to God disappears ... We are here to submit to His will so that He may work through us what He wants. Once we realize this, He will make us broken bread and poured-out wine with which to feed and nourish others.

And this is precisely my cutting edge. Incredibly, once I get that into my head, a change in attitude is following, and joy is more readily showing up.
 
The one passage that causes me to wrestle is this:

You did not do anything to achieve your salvation, but you must do something to exhibit it. You must “work out your own salvation” which God has worked in you already ( Philippians 2:12 ).

How does this challenge to "work it out" relate to the reminder of Galatians 3:3 -

After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?

In other words I wrestle with the call to invest energies into the process of sanctification, while also wanting to embrace the certainty of Philippians 1:6 -

being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.