"Beware of anything that competes with your loyalty to Jesus Christ. The
greatest competitor of true devotion to Jesus is the service we do for
Him. It is easier to serve than to pour out our lives completely for
Him." (January 18)
Some days, the readings from My Utmost for His Highest are more challenging than others. There are some days when I truly don't agree with some or all of Chamber's ideas, and this is one of them. However, the quote is challenging and convicting to me nonetheless. As someone whose "default setting" is serving others, I need to examine my motivations. Do I serve because Jesus' love and life are flowing out of me, or because it is something I am "supposed to do"? Serving is good, but if I don't serve out of love for Jesus, then my service is mere filthy rags.
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.--Isaiah 64:6
My heart's desire is that I will serve because Jesus love is overflowing in my life. May He ever fill me with His Spirit and the living water that truly quenches every thirst!
Monday, September 19, 2016
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Costly obedience?
Right now I am chewing on this passage from My Utmost for His Highest...
"If we obey God, it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the pain begins. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything— it is a delight. But to those who do not love Him, our obedience does cost a great deal. If we obey God, it will mean that other people’s plans are upset. They will ridicule us as if to say, “You call this Christianity?” We could prevent the suffering, but not if we are obedient to God. We must let the cost be paid...A lack of progress in our spiritual life results when we try to bear all the costs ourselves. And actually, we cannot. Because we are so involved in the universal purposes of God, others are immediately affected by our obedience to Him. Will we remain faithful in our obedience to God and be willing to suffer the humiliation of refusing to be independent? Or will we do just the opposite and say, “I will not cause other people to suffer”? We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but it will grieve our Lord. If, however, we obey God, He will care for those who have suffered the consequences of our obedience. We must simply obey and leave all the consequences with Him." (January 11)
This counter-intuitive idea of the cost of obedience brings up hard questions for me. First of all, it is far easier for me to consider how my obedience affects me than how it might affect others. Jesus talks about counting the cost of our obedience in Luke 14 where He reminds us that we must be willing to give up everything to follow Him. I think in many ways the decision He requires is both a one-time and an every-day decision. When we first choose to follow Christ, we are making a choice that He is worth any cost, but it is our day-to-day lives which reveal exactly how much we must be willing to sacrifice for Him. We must daily be willing to continue to choose Jesus above all.
However, it seems that what Chambers is suggesting is that our love for the Lord should cause us to always delight in obedience rather than focusing on what trivial things we must sacrifice. I have certainly not reached that level of obedience yet in my life, and I pray that I will continue to grow in this area. I draw a parallel here to how I love Jonathan--when I focus on my love for him, doing any task, however unpleasant, is something to be enjoyed rather than dreaded. However, when I choose to focus on myself, doing unpleasant tasks seems much more difficult.
Moving on to Chambers' second point, I don't remember ever purposefully pondering the effects of my submission on the people around me. There have certainly been times in my life when my decisions to obey the Lord did hurt other people, but I don't think that I specifically "count the cost" to someone else when I make decisions. In general, I do try to be fair to others in decision making when it is not an issue of right or wrong, obedience or disobedience; the idea of considering others as more important than oneself is a lesson I have learned both early and often.
Thankfully, I can't remember a time when I allowed the cost to someone else to change the decision that the Lord was calling me to make. On the other hand, I know that people in general (including myself specifically!) are often blinded by pride and selfishness to seeing the truth of our own motives. I pray that the Lord will reveal to me if there are places in my life where I am allowing my desire to please others to negatively influence my willingness to respond to Him. I am thankful to know that in every choice that He calls me to make, He is looking out not only for my best interest, but also the interest of those around me, for whom His love extends just as far and deep as it does for me.
"If we obey God, it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the pain begins. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything— it is a delight. But to those who do not love Him, our obedience does cost a great deal. If we obey God, it will mean that other people’s plans are upset. They will ridicule us as if to say, “You call this Christianity?” We could prevent the suffering, but not if we are obedient to God. We must let the cost be paid...A lack of progress in our spiritual life results when we try to bear all the costs ourselves. And actually, we cannot. Because we are so involved in the universal purposes of God, others are immediately affected by our obedience to Him. Will we remain faithful in our obedience to God and be willing to suffer the humiliation of refusing to be independent? Or will we do just the opposite and say, “I will not cause other people to suffer”? We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but it will grieve our Lord. If, however, we obey God, He will care for those who have suffered the consequences of our obedience. We must simply obey and leave all the consequences with Him." (January 11)
This counter-intuitive idea of the cost of obedience brings up hard questions for me. First of all, it is far easier for me to consider how my obedience affects me than how it might affect others. Jesus talks about counting the cost of our obedience in Luke 14 where He reminds us that we must be willing to give up everything to follow Him. I think in many ways the decision He requires is both a one-time and an every-day decision. When we first choose to follow Christ, we are making a choice that He is worth any cost, but it is our day-to-day lives which reveal exactly how much we must be willing to sacrifice for Him. We must daily be willing to continue to choose Jesus above all.
However, it seems that what Chambers is suggesting is that our love for the Lord should cause us to always delight in obedience rather than focusing on what trivial things we must sacrifice. I have certainly not reached that level of obedience yet in my life, and I pray that I will continue to grow in this area. I draw a parallel here to how I love Jonathan--when I focus on my love for him, doing any task, however unpleasant, is something to be enjoyed rather than dreaded. However, when I choose to focus on myself, doing unpleasant tasks seems much more difficult.
Moving on to Chambers' second point, I don't remember ever purposefully pondering the effects of my submission on the people around me. There have certainly been times in my life when my decisions to obey the Lord did hurt other people, but I don't think that I specifically "count the cost" to someone else when I make decisions. In general, I do try to be fair to others in decision making when it is not an issue of right or wrong, obedience or disobedience; the idea of considering others as more important than oneself is a lesson I have learned both early and often.
Thankfully, I can't remember a time when I allowed the cost to someone else to change the decision that the Lord was calling me to make. On the other hand, I know that people in general (including myself specifically!) are often blinded by pride and selfishness to seeing the truth of our own motives. I pray that the Lord will reveal to me if there are places in my life where I am allowing my desire to please others to negatively influence my willingness to respond to Him. I am thankful to know that in every choice that He calls me to make, He is looking out not only for my best interest, but also the interest of those around me, for whom His love extends just as far and deep as it does for me.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Worship through surrender
I have recently started a year-long daily devotional read-along of My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers with a group of Christians on Ravelry (this is a free site somewhat like Facebook for yarn enthusiasts, only 1000x better...don't get me started on how wonderful it is unless you want me to try to convince you that you should join). We have decided to start from the beginning of the book, reading in sequence rather than starting in the middle and aligning our readings with the prescribed dates. Only six days into the journey, and already I have found so much to chew on spiritually. The overarching theme so far seems to be surrender. Here are a couple of thought-provoking quotes I have encountered thus far, and some of my personal reflections concerning them:
"...surrender your will to Jesus absolutely and irrevocably." (January 1)
Reading this culminating thought for the first day of the devotional caused me to prayerfully consider what surrendering my will to Jesus means in everyday life. How am I doing this already? How can I grow in this area?
“Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you “go out” in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised on iota by anything He does?…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.” (January 2)
Here I feel the Lord is showing me a small piece of what surrender means for my life. I am a planner by nature, and I do try to keep that from limiting how I actively work to serve God, but there is always room for growth.
"Once, the Bible was just so many words to us--"clouds and darkness" [Psalm 97:2] --then, suddenly, the words become spirit and life because Jesus re-speaks them to us when our circumstances make the words new. That is the way God speaks to us; not by visions and dreams, but by words." (January 3)
Am I living in surrender to the word of the Lord? Do I keep His word ever in my mouth, written on the tablet of my heart? How can I expect Him to speak to me if I do not listen to His words? Lord, will You continue to increase my faith?
"Wait for God's timing...When it is a question of the providential will of God, wait for God to move." (January 4)
Patience...that virtue we are always told, tongue-in-cheek, not to pray for, because we just might be given the opportunity to learn. It is easy to jump ahead of God's timing because we think we see the right fix.
"All our promises and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to accomplish them. When we come to the end of ourselves, not just mentally but completely, we are able to "receive the Holy Spirit"...the idea is that of invasion. There is now only One who directs the course of your life, the Lord Jesus Christ." (January 5)
It is so easy to “get it right” in my head when I read Scripture and pray and study the things of God, and then to turn around and “get it wrong” in my heart throughout the rest of the day. May I be content to be directed only by Him!
“Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love-gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship…God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.” (January 6)
This is the portion that stood out to me today. I want to always accept God’s blessing with open hands, allowing Him permission (not that He needs it, but because I need to offer it!) to take as freely as He gives, and use me as a serving vessel, not a storage vessel.
At the same time that I am reading Chambers, I am also working to complete a study of Hebrews which I began earlier this year. I am just wrapping up Hebrews 10, and this is a quote from Kay Arthur's New Inductive Study Series:
"We live our lives in faith, we persevere, and we love the Lord's appearing...We acknowledge that all we have came from Him and belongs to Him, so we give it back to Him in worship...We aren't persevering in order to get; we're persevering in order to give. Our faithfulness is an act of worship that culminates in giving everything to God. That's what our everyday lives should be like--living worship of the living Word."
Interestingly, all of these quotes and ideas also tie in well to the crux of the sermon from this past Sunday: "What sacrificial thing are you doing today for the sake of the gospel?"
While I appreciate the intent of this question to dig for a specific example as an answer, I think that seeking true surrender to Jesus is the best possible answer. If I am willing to surrender my will to Jesus every minute of every day, He will show me how He has planned for me to spread the gospel to those around me. I pray that the Lord will continue grow me in surrender each day.
"...surrender your will to Jesus absolutely and irrevocably." (January 1)
Reading this culminating thought for the first day of the devotional caused me to prayerfully consider what surrendering my will to Jesus means in everyday life. How am I doing this already? How can I grow in this area?
“Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you “go out” in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised on iota by anything He does?…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.” (January 2)
Here I feel the Lord is showing me a small piece of what surrender means for my life. I am a planner by nature, and I do try to keep that from limiting how I actively work to serve God, but there is always room for growth.
"Once, the Bible was just so many words to us--"clouds and darkness" [Psalm 97:2] --then, suddenly, the words become spirit and life because Jesus re-speaks them to us when our circumstances make the words new. That is the way God speaks to us; not by visions and dreams, but by words." (January 3)
Am I living in surrender to the word of the Lord? Do I keep His word ever in my mouth, written on the tablet of my heart? How can I expect Him to speak to me if I do not listen to His words? Lord, will You continue to increase my faith?
"Wait for God's timing...When it is a question of the providential will of God, wait for God to move." (January 4)
Patience...that virtue we are always told, tongue-in-cheek, not to pray for, because we just might be given the opportunity to learn. It is easy to jump ahead of God's timing because we think we see the right fix.
"All our promises and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to accomplish them. When we come to the end of ourselves, not just mentally but completely, we are able to "receive the Holy Spirit"...the idea is that of invasion. There is now only One who directs the course of your life, the Lord Jesus Christ." (January 5)
It is so easy to “get it right” in my head when I read Scripture and pray and study the things of God, and then to turn around and “get it wrong” in my heart throughout the rest of the day. May I be content to be directed only by Him!
“Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love-gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship…God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.” (January 6)
This is the portion that stood out to me today. I want to always accept God’s blessing with open hands, allowing Him permission (not that He needs it, but because I need to offer it!) to take as freely as He gives, and use me as a serving vessel, not a storage vessel.
At the same time that I am reading Chambers, I am also working to complete a study of Hebrews which I began earlier this year. I am just wrapping up Hebrews 10, and this is a quote from Kay Arthur's New Inductive Study Series:
"We live our lives in faith, we persevere, and we love the Lord's appearing...We acknowledge that all we have came from Him and belongs to Him, so we give it back to Him in worship...We aren't persevering in order to get; we're persevering in order to give. Our faithfulness is an act of worship that culminates in giving everything to God. That's what our everyday lives should be like--living worship of the living Word."
Interestingly, all of these quotes and ideas also tie in well to the crux of the sermon from this past Sunday: "What sacrificial thing are you doing today for the sake of the gospel?"
While I appreciate the intent of this question to dig for a specific example as an answer, I think that seeking true surrender to Jesus is the best possible answer. If I am willing to surrender my will to Jesus every minute of every day, He will show me how He has planned for me to spread the gospel to those around me. I pray that the Lord will continue grow me in surrender each day.
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