My Utmost for His Highest

You Can’t Go Back

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“The work of salvation means that in your real life things are dramatically changed. You no longer look at things in the same way. Your desires are new and the old things have lost their power to attract you. If you are born again, the Spirit of God makes the change very evident in your real life and thought. It is this complete and amazing change that is the very evidence that you are saved.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

That’s salvation. It’s way more than a mental assent to a set of beliefs. It’s even more than making a few behavioral changes. It’s as dramatic as going from death to life. You become a completely new creation with a new set of desires and actions.

The verse says that the old has gone and the new has come. You couldn’t go back to the old even if you wanted to. You might fall back into sin occasionally but you can’t stay there. It would be like a resurrected man climbing back into the grave and pretending to be dead again. You could try it for a bit, but the natural impulse will be for oxygen.

You could live in sin for a season but you’d be miserable. It’s not natural anymore. The new nature doesn’t thrive in the old ways. The evidence that someone is truly born again is a different way of living. If you say you’ve been saved but keep living like you did, then maybe your salvation isn’t real. If there’s no change, maybe there’s been no transformation.

But the beauty of the gospel is that Jesus is in the business of changing lives and making dead hearts beat again. He takes the old and makes it new. He takes the outcast and makes them wanted. He takes the lost and makes them found. He takes the enemies of God and turns them into sons and daughters of the risen King with all the blessings that come to the King Himself.

If you’re not sure, maybe it’s time to make sure. You can pray a prayer that comes from a heart of faith that goes like this: “Lord Jesus, I want to have a personal relationship with You. I know I am a sinner and I believe You died on the cross for my sins. I turn from those sins and put my faith in You right now to be my Lord and Savior” (Harvest.org).

Maybe today’s the day.

Do Something

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“When a truth of God is brought home to your soul, never allow it to pass without acting on it internally in your will. Record it with ink and with blood–work it into your life. The weakest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is liberated the second he acts and God’s almighty power is available on his behalf” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

My pastor often says at the end of his sermons that we need to take what we learned and determine to put it into practice or else it will stay in the room when we leave on Sunday. The Bible tells us not to be hearers only but doers of what we hear.

The best way to hear God’s voice is to do what you already know God has told you to do. You need to take that first step before God will show you the next one. You need to show yourself faithful with the smaller things before God trusts you with bigger ones.

Once you set yourself to obey, you find that you are operating in the strength and wisdom of the Almighty God. Once you surrender and commit to follow, God enables you to obey. You may be the least qualified to do what God has called you to do, but God’s strength is perfected in your weakness and as the old saying goes, He doesn’t call the qualified but He qualifies the called as they step out in faith and not as they sit in their recliners and talk about how they might one day be obedient when it’s convenient.

Following Jesus and falling on your face isn’t failure. Stepping out of the boat like Peter and sinking when you see the size of the storm isn’t failure. Staying in the boat and never taking a step is failure because you never get to see how God might have pulled you up and pushed you forward if you never step out of the boat.

Lord, help us not to read your Word to obtain more information. Transform us and renew our minds through Your word that we might be enabled and willing to obey and do what it says. Amen.

Go Into All the World

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“To ‘go’ simply means to live. Acts 1:8 is the description of how to go. He takes upon himself the work of sending us. Where we are placed is then a matter of indifference to us, because God sovereignly engineers our goings. That is how to keep going until we are gone from this life” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

I remember from my seminary days how Acts 1:8 could be translated as “Going into all the world” or “As you go into all the world.” The focus isn’t on the going but on the making of disciples.

I remember at my old church there was a sign as you exited the parking lot that read “You are now entering the mission field.” In other words, the mission field isn’t across the sea or across the country. It could be across the street or down the road. It’s wherever you live, work, and play. Where God has planted you is your mission field and you are a missionary, whether you raise your own support or make a living in a 9 to 5 desk job.

I wonder how that would change how you and I viewed our jobs or our errands if instead of seeing an office or a grocery store or a fitness center, we saw a mission field. I wonder how it would change how we saw the people around us that cross our paths on a daily basis.

I can confess that I am not very good at sharing my faith. When the opportunity comes, it seems like I always chicken out and talk about sports or the weather or anything but my faith. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am a missionary and the place where God has me is my mission field. And I can pray for those God has put around me.

May we pray for eyes to see what God is doing around us and then have the courage and boldness to join Him in what He’s doing. May we shift our focus from being employees and consumers and citizens to being missionaries who have been called and sent out by the same God who sends people to the Middle East and Africa and Europe. We have a mission field. We’re living in it.

Master and Teacher

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“Having a master and teacher means that there is someone who knows me better than I know myself, who is closer than a friend, and who understands the remotest depths of my heart and is able to satisfy them fully. It means having someone who has made me secure in the knowledge that he has met and solved all the doubts, uncertainties, and problems in my mind. Jesus wants us in a relationship where He is so easily our Master and Teacher that all we know is that we are His to obey” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

We are all disciples of something or someone. You can tell who is discipling you by your calendar and your checkbook. Where do you spend the most time and who or what gets your money? It’s not a matter of if you’re being discipled, but by whom.

Too many are being discipled by social media and the news. They’re getting fed a worldview that is not of God nor does it promote God or a healthy view of life and morality. Some are discipled by celebrities or influencers. Some by sports or hobbies. Some by their peers.

I’d rather be discipled by Jesus. I’d rather turn off the TV and the social media and spend time in God’s Word. But often, I don’t. Often, I find myself turning to Facebook instead of Scripture. I end up doing what I don’t want to do and not doing what I should.

But a question my pastor asked still haunts me. All who are believers need to have people to disciple them and to have people to disciple. The question is this: Who are you discipling and who is discipling you?

That’s it. That’s the question. Who are you discipling and who is discipling you?

More Pouring Out

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“‘The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.’ –John 4:14′

We are to be fountains through which Jesus can flow as ‘rivers of living water’ in blessing to everyone. Yet some of us are like the Dead Sea, always receiving but never giving. Whenever the blessings are not being poured out in the same measure they are received, there is a defect in our relationship with Him. Stay at the Source, closely guarding your faith in Jesus Christ and your relationship to Him, and there will be a steady flow into the lives of others with no dryness or deadness whatsoever” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

That’s the difference. The Dead Sea always takes but never gives. The result? No life, no benefit to anybody. Rivers give as continually as they take, and they are a constant source of life and blessing. We are blessed not in order to hoard but in order to give back. That way, our hands are always ready to receive more.

That’s the problem with most Christians in America. They sit and learn so much information but never put it into practice. They never take what they learn and pass it on to others. They consume but they never serve. All they do is take up a spot in a pew or a chair. But that’s not the Bible’s idea of being in a family of believers called a church.

The blessing comes to those who find a way to give back. The ones who only sit and absorb will inevitably find reasons to complain about how this or that isn’t done right or how they used to do it a different way. Those who are serving simply don’t have time for complaining. They’re too busy making a difference.

A Mic Drop Moment

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“Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer, we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not of the answer” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

I almost want to make this a mic drop moment and end this post here. There’s such a misconception about prayer being a way to inform God of what He didn’t already know or to ask Him for things He wasn’t aware that I needed.

Prayer isn’t about getting God to see things from my point of view but getting me to see things from God’s point of view. It’s not so much about answers as it is about awareness of God’s presence. When I pray, I’m acknowledging in that moment my deep need and God’s deeper provision.

What would I want from God apart from Himself anyway? As the old song says, “I’d rather have Jesus than riches untold.”

It’s like when Job asks all these questions to God. When God responds, He doesn’t answer a single one of those questions. Instead, God asks Job some of His own questions. At the end, what Job realized was that he needed not answers but God’s presence. He needed to know God hadn’t left him or forgotten about him.

My own prayers can easily become rote and full of requests. They can almost sound like the letters I used to write to Santa Claus before Christmas with my list of everything I wanted under the tree that year. They can be very me-focused when the idea of prayer is to get me very God-focused. It’s to help me see God’s purposes and plans for His entire creation and not just my own little world.

Sure, God answers prayer, but that’s not the main point of prayer. My character being transformed into the character of God and my will being transformed into His is.

Unglamorous

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“There is nothing thrilling about a labouring man’s work, but it is the labouring man who makes the conceptions of the genius possible; and it is the labouring saint who makes the conceptions of his Master possible. You labour at prayer and results happen all the time from God’s standpoint. What an astonishment it will be to find, when the veil is lifted, the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you had been in the habit of taking your orders from Jesus Christ” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

That’s the part about life that no one really tells you but you learn eventually. 99% of life is unexciting and unadventurous, despite what you may have seen in just about every single movie and television show ever made.

Most of living is showing up and being faithful in your job, at your church, and in your home. Very rarely will anything you do be worthy of a news story or a newspaper headline (or a news website headline to make it 21st century). Hardly anyone outside of your immediate circle will know about most of what you do.

But that’s where God does His best work. When you are committed to be faithful in the small and menial tasks God has placed in front of you, then God can multiply those offerings like the fish and the loaves. He can open up new avenues of service that would not have been available if you weren’t already doing God’s work.

Each person who belongs to Jesus can reach those no one else can reach. Not your pastor. Not your worship leader. Not anyone but you. And your witness is showing up every day and not giving up. That will open up opportunities for you to be able to give a reason for the hope you have in Jesus and lead to gospel conversations.

I truly believe that those who have done the most for the Kingdom of God are those you and I will never know about 99% of the time. They will be the behind the scenes folks who went to work every day, came home and loved their families, and showed up every Sunday to worship and serve.

If you’re not satisfied with where you are or what you’re doing, maybe reframe it as a way of serving Jesus Himself rather than working for an employer. See what you’re doing for your family as serving Jesus. Remember that as you minister to the least of these through your church you are ministering to Jesus Himself.

God honors the longsuffering effort of patient faithfulness. If you can serve not out of your own strength but out of the overflow of the joy of the Lord that comes from time with the Lord, God sees and rewards you and those you serve. You may not get rich or famous, but you will have God’s favor which is by far the best reward of all.

The Funeral of Your Own Independence

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“The things that are right, noble, and good from the natural standpoint are the very things that keep us from being God’s best. Once we come to understand that natural moral excellence opposes or counteracts surrender to God, we bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. The cost to your natural life is not just one or two things, but everything. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

A lot of what passes for Christianity is simply behavior modification. Back in the day, there were a lot of don’ts. Don’t drink, don’t gamble, don’t play cards, don’t dance, etc. As one pastor put it, we’d get to church on Sunday and celebrate that we hadn’t done anything.

But Christianity is a lot more than being moral. If you want to play that game, the standard is impossibly high, as in be perfect as God in heaven is perfect. Simply put, you can’t be good enough. But Jesus could. And Jesus was.

Christianity is not behaving better. It’s not being an upstanding citizen or a good moral human being. It’s about surrender. It’s about dying to self. It’s about letting God form the Christ-life within you and make you more like Jesus.

As my friend says, it’s not about making bad people good. It’s about making dead people alive. It’s about being transformed rather than just upgraded. And Christmas is the season where we celebrate the hope that means that we can be better or more improved but made brand new.

The Call of God

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“The call of God in a person’s life may come like a clap of thunder or it may dawn gradually. If a man or woman is called of God, it doesn’t matter how difficult the circumstances may be. God orchestrates every force at work for His purpose in the end. If you will agree with God’s purpose, He will bring not only your conscious level but also all the deeper levels of your life, which you yourself cannot reach, into perfect harmony” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

This makes me think of so many people called by God in the Bible who were just as flawed as I am. Or maybe I’m just as flawed as they were. Or maybe we’re all flawed and God uses us anyway.

Esther was one who happened to be in the right place for God to use her to save His people. She was by no means perfect, but she was obedient, and that’s what matters in the end. It’s not our ability but our availability that God seeks.

The key is God’s timing. I’ve learned it’s best not to anticipate what God will do or to rush His hand. God’s timing is always perfect, right on time, and never a split second late.

God uses flawed and broken people because that’s where He gets the most glory. It’s not the most popular or prestigious ones whom God calls but the nobodies and the also-rans. He chooses those no one else would ever choose and makes their lives spectacular because of His light shining through.

A Good Word from Oswald

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“‘The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life’ (John 4:14).

‘We are to be fountains through which Jesus can flow as “rivers of living water” in blessing to everyone. Yet some of us are like the Dead Sea, always receiving but never giving. Whenever the blessings are not being poured out in the same measure they are received, there is a defect in our relationship with Him. Stay at the Source, closely guarding your faith in Jesus Christ and your relationship to Him, and there will be a steady flow into the lives of others with no dryness or deadness whatsoever'” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

I don’t see Oswald climbing the charts as a popular baby name, but the man to whom the name belonged left a legacy of wisdom behind when he died at a young age.

If you want to read about his incredible life, I recommend the book Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God: The Life Story of the Author of My Utmost for His Highest by David McCasland. Here’s a link to the amazon site where you can purchase the book.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=oswald+chambers+biography

I think what he’s trying to get at is that we’re called to serve out of the overflow of time spent with Jesus. It’s no good if all we do is soak up and receive and never share with anyone else. It’s also no good if all we do is serve with no time left over to receive from God.

PS I also recommend My Utmost for His Highest as one of the best devotionals you’ll find. It’s a classic.