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.