Thoughts on Forgivness

From Oswlad Chambers:

“Forgiveness means not merely that I am saved from hell and made right for heaven (no man would accept forgiveness on such a level); forgiveness means that I am forgiven into a recreated relationship, into identification with God in Christ. The miracle of Redemption is that God turns me, the unholy one, into the standard of Himself, the Holy One, by putting into me a new disposition, the disposition of Jesus Christ.”

So much of Christianity is about what God does for man and it is crazy because we men want to do something in return but it is not about us. It is so not about us, it is about Him. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord! For there is nothing I can do. Lord take me and change me.
Amen.

Oswald Chambers on Sanctification

Sanctification is not something Jesus Christ puts into me: it is Himself in me.

SANCTIFICATION
“This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” 1 Thessalonians 4:3 The Death Side. In sanctification God has to deal with us on the death side as well as on the life side. Many of us spend so much time in the place of death that we get sepulchral. There is always a battle royal before sanctification, always something that tugs with resentment against the demands of Jesus Christ. Immediately the Spirit of God begins to show us what sanctification means, the struggle begins. “If any man come to Me and hate not . . his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” The Spirit of God in the process of sanctification will strip me until I am nothing but “myself,” that is the place of death. Am I willing to be “myself,” and nothing more – no friends, no father, no brother, no self-interest – simply ready for death? That is the condition of sanctification. No wonder Jesus said: “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” This is where the battle comes, and where so many of us faint. We refuse to be identified with the death of Jesus on this point. “But it is so stern,” we say; “He cannot wish me to do that.” Our Lord is stern; and He does wish us to do that. Am I willing to reduce myself simply to “me,” determinedly to strip myself of all my friends think of me, of all I think of myself, and to hand that simple naked self over to God? Immediately I am, He will sanctify me wholly, and my life will be free from earnestness in connection with every thing but God. When I pray – “Lord, show me what sanctification means for me,” He will show me. It means being made one with Jesus. Sanctification is not something Jesus Christ puts into me: it is Himself in me. (1 Cor. 1:30.)

Complete Rest in God’s Will?

I was reading “My Utmost for His Highest” as I do daily today…and got me thinking:

Here is an excerpt (read the full devo by clicking link above:)

“The child of God is not conscious of the will of God because he is the will of God. When there has been the slightest deviation from the will of God, we begin to ask – What is Thy will? A child of God never prays to be conscious that God answers prayer, he is so restfully certain that God always does answer prayer.”

Oswald Chambers makes a good point here…that in God’s will we do find rest. We should rest in God and be assured that he answers prayer…..

My thoughts though are this:
Is it so bad to be asking God, ‘What is Thy Will?’
Is that really bad when we are conscious of God’s will…
aren’t we suppose to be on our feet and looking out for God’s will everyday?

I think there is an extreme that could take place if you are too “rested” in God’s will that you miss the obvious callings of God. What I mean is that there is a certain level of consciousness that we need to have. An active faith.

We need to avoid a lazy faith. And like I said a lazy faith is an EXTREME. You really are not finding rest IN GOD if you are being lazy….(but I am on a rant here.)

My Utmost For His Highest Devotion: Really touched me

THE OVERSHADOWING PERSONAL DELIVERANCE
“I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.” Jeremiah 1:8 God promised Jeremiah that He would deliver him personally – “Thy life will I give unto thee for a prey.” That is all God promises His children. Wherever God sends us, He will guard our lives. Our personal property and possessions are a matter of indifference, we have to sit loosely to all those things; if we do not, there will be panic and heartbreak and distress. That is the inwardness of the overshadowing of personal deliverance. The Sermon on the Mount indicates that when we are on Jesus Christ’s errands, there is no time to stand up for ourselves. Jesus says, in effect, Do not be bothered with whether you are being justly dealt with or not. To look for justice is a sign of deflection from devotion to Him. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. If we look for justice, we will begin to grouse and to indulge in the discontent of self-pity – Why should I be treated like this? If we are devoted to Jesus Christ we have nothing to do with what we meet, whether it is just or unjust. Jesus says – Go steadily on with what I have told you to do and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you remove yourself from My deliverance. The most devout among us become atheistic in this connection; we do not believe God, we enthrone common sense and tack the name of God on to it. We do lean to our own understanding, instead of trusting God with all our hearts.

INSTANT IN SEASON

Instant in Season – My Utmost for His Highest, April 25th

Be instant in season, out of season.” 2 Timothy 4:2

Many of us suffer from the morbid tendency to be instant “out of season.” The season does not refer to time, but to us – ‘Be instant in season, out of season,” whether we feel like it or not. If we do only what we feel inclined to do, some of us would do nothing for ever and ever. There are unemployables in the spiritual domain, spiritually decrepit people, who refuse to do anything unless they are supernaturally inspired. The proof that we are rightly related to God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.

One of the great snares of the Christian worker is to make a fetish of his rare moments. When the Spirit of God gives you a time of inspiration and insight, you say – “Now I will always be like this for God.” No, you will not, God will take care you are not. Those times are the gift of God entirely. You cannot give them to yourself when you choose. If you say you will only be at your best, you become an intolerable drag on God; you will never do anything unless God keeps you consciously inspired. If you make a god of your best moments, you will find that God will fade out of your life and never come back until you do the duty that lies nearest, and have learned not to make a fetish of your rare moments.

Co-Resurrection – My Utmost For His Highest, Oswald Chambers

Here is a devotional from My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers
My take on the issues are in italics.

Co-Resurrection –
The proof that I have been through crucifixion with Jesus is that I have a decided likeness to Him. The incoming of the Spirit of Jesus into me readjusts my personal life to God. The resurrection of Jesus has given Him authority to impart the life of God to me, and my experimental life must be constructed on the basis of His life. I can have the resurrection life of Jesus now, and it will show itself in holiness.

I have been reading Chamber’s Utmost for His Highest, as part of my devotional this year. There is some mind-blowing stuff in here. Some days I get absolutely nothing out of them, because I simply just do not understand what Oswald is trying to say. Some of this devotional is difficult reading, but I think that this is beautiful and challenging. We are so dependent upon Him! You see the beauty of Christianity is that God reached down to us, to save us, to heal us, forgive us. Without Him we cannot experience forgiveness, holiness, or grace. The resurrection, that we had nothing to do with, we get to claim and experience with Him. He saved us! How humbling it is to think about it as a co-resurrection!

The idea all through the apostle Paul’s writings is that after the moral decision to be identified with Jesus in His death has been made, the resurrection life of Jesus invades every bit of my human nature. It takes omnipotence to live the life of the Son of God in mortal flesh. The Holy Spirit cannot be located as a Guest in a house, He invades everything. When once I decide that my “old man” (i.e., the heredity of sin) should be identified with the death of Jesus, then the Holy Spirit invades me. He takes charge of everything, my part is to walk in the light and to obey all that He reveals. When I have made the moral decision about sin, it is easy to reckon actually that I am dead unto sin, because I find the life of Jesus there all the time. Just as there is only one stamp of humanity, so there is only one stamp of holiness, the holiness of Jesus, and it is His holiness that is gifted to me. God puts the holiness of His Son into me, and I belong to a new order spiritually.

This is so good and so true! This so awesome, yet again- challenging. The Old is Gone and the New has Come. We are alive to Christ and dead to Sin. We are new creations. We have redemption through Christ’s blood. It is a fresh start! But it is through the Holy Spirit. And we must let go of our pride and remove stumbling blocks that get in the way of letting the Spirit take over. Not everyone is willing to let go of their self and their pride and simply let God take control. The Holy Spirit will work and it will invade…how sad it is when my lost friends know the truth and they close their heart off from the truth. They are not set free by it. they harden their hearts and they run from reality.