I often want to have all of the answers. Its not always fun walking by this thing we call faith. The more I walk in faith the more I realize that it is by walking in faith that it increases and I learn how to live in it more regularly. It still doesn’t make it easy. I posted about my desire at times for a flashlight HERE last week. Without faith to fully trust God, I wonder how deep our Christianity really goes? Today, I was reading some more of Oswald Chambers and was really inspired by what he wrote…
Getting There
June 13“. . . come, follow Me” Luke 18:22
Where our individual desire dies and sanctified surrender lives. One of the greatest hindrances in coming to Jesus is the excuse of our own individual temperament. We make our temperament and our natural desires barriers to coming to Jesus. 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 (see Romans 12:1). If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you- and His experiments always succeed. The one true mark of a saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered to Jesus Christ. In the life of a saint there is this amazing Well, which is a continual Source of original life. The Spirit of God is a Well of water springing up perpetually fresh. 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.
If you abandon everything to Jesus, and come when He says, “Come,” then He will continue to say, “Come,” through you. You will go out into the world reproducing the echo of Christ’s “Come.” That is the result in every soul who has abandoned all and come to Jesus.
Have I come to Him? Will I come now?
Two things stood out to me on this devotional:
- “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.” – Talk about TOTAL surrender. Jesus pays no attention to our natural desires. Does this mean that there is nothing about our humanity that can make a difference in the spiritual realm? Don’t get me wrong. I totally believe that God uses us, humans, flesh and blood, to make a difference and to advance his kingdom. However, I believe that without the power of God, we are powerless. I love where Chambers says, “You cannot dedicate what is not yours.” - I believe he is telling us that it is through these gifts that God has given to us that we are given the power to advance his Kingdom, not through our own physical or mental capacities. I wonder how effective I could be for Christ, if I would just stop (trying to figure things out in my own intellect & doing things in my own power) and fully surrender to His idea for my life?
- “If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you- and His experiments always succeed.” – I am posting the definition of Experiment for my readers, but I didn’t need it to grasp what was being said right off. This is awesome! EXPERIMENT = A test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown.- If we totally surrender our lives; our abilities, our intellect, our wills…God will throw us in his lab and make us his personal experiment. He will make us into an instrument to do something that is totally new, totally unknown, totally unique. I see men and women all over the world that God is using in tremendous ways, and a part of me envies them. I don’t envy them to be known or famous, but I envy what God uses them to do, the changes they inspire, the effect they have. I want God to throw me in his lab and make me his personal experiment. How about you? What’s your thoughts?
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I must confess, I have an issue with the so-called prosperity preachers and Christians. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to set myself up as a “judge and jury” against anyone, but my view of Christianity is a life of giving away and serving others rather than a life of obtaining and prospering. Jesus himself said, He did not come to be served, rather He came to earth to serve.
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