Clinging to Life

^{Romans 10:20}

And Isaiah boldly says,

“I was found by those who did not seek me;

I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.”^l

²¹ But concerning Israel he says,

“All day long I have held out my hands

to a disobedient and obstinate people.”^m

 

We need to stop acting like we deserve a relationship with God, taking advantage of His grace towards us, and begin realizing that He is like a precious gemstone found in a field.  A stone so precious we would sell all we own to purchase the field it is in. 

Lord help us be less disobedient and obstinate, more contrite and broken, and may we cling to the hand you extend to us as if all life depended on it.

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^l Isaiah 65:1

^m Isaiah 65:2

In Pursuit

Are you spoiled for every other interest in life except Jesus Christ?  Are there things that are crowding out your love for Him?  Do you remember a time when you were closer to Him than you are now, and it is not because He is currently quiet, but because there is so much other noise in your life?

Are we taking time to listen to Him? Are we finding a quiet place on the mountain side to hear the still quiet voice?  Are we rushing through our time with Him to get on to the long list of “To Do’s” that need doing? Are we relishing our time alone with God as much as He does His time alone with us? The work can wait, it is not what wins His favor anyway.  The God of the universe wants to share himself with us in relationship and we are too busy running around in the “doing,” or the pursuit of the American Dream, or clamoring after righteousness as we perceive it…

^{Romans 9:30} What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; ³¹ but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. ³² Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.”

Possessions

The Rich Young Man (Matthew 19:16-22)

¹⁶ Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

¹⁷ “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”

¹⁸ “Which ones?” the man inquired.

Jesus replied, “ ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, ¹⁹ honor your father and mother,’^a and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’^b”

²⁰ “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

²¹ Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

²² When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

 

Our Lord told the rich young ruler to fling away all he had, to think of himself as possessing nothing. – O. Chambers

           

            The house you live in

            The car you drive

            The clothes you wear

            The job you do

            The kids you raise

            The food you eat

            The air you breathe

            The heart in your chest

            The life you live

 

Think of yourself as possessing nothing… 

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Developing Disciples

Our Lord never pressed anyone to follow Him unconditionally; nor did He wish to be followed merely out of an impulse of enthusiasm. He never pleaded, He never entrapped; He made discipleship intensely narrow, and pointed out certain things which could never be in those who followed Him. To-day there is a tendency to take the harshness out of Our Lord’s statements. What Jesus says is hard; it is only easy when it comes to those who are His disciples. Whenever Our Lord talked about discipleship He prefaced it with an “IF,” never with an emphatic assertion, “You must.” Discipleship carries an option with it.

-Oswald Chambers

 

As church leaders maybe we place too much emphasis on guilting people into discipleship.  Christ didn’t.  He gave people the option to become disciples, they got to choose, and He even set discipleship up to be a difficult thing; facing opposition, leaving family behind, being persecuted.  It isn’t easy following Christ, but it is incredibly rewarding…  “pick up your cross and follow me.”

Am I Capable

After posting a complaining blog earlier on another site I was hit smack in the face with these things.  Why is it that I can get so caught up in me that I miss out on God?  

 

May 20; O Lord, how complete is my need of Thee! To Thee I come, give me a gracious renewing of Thy life till my reasoning powers, my imagination, and my speaking are all of Thee. I seek Thy touch and thrilling grace today. (knocking on heaven’s door)

A mood nearly always has its seat in the physical condition, not in the moral: It is a continual effort not to listen to the moods which arise from a physical condition; never submit to them for a second. We have to take ourselves by the scruff of the neck and shake ourselves, and we will find that we can do what we said we could not. The curse with most of-us is that we won’t. The Christian life is one of incarnate spiritual pluck.

-Oswald Chambers

 

 

Lord God… I am nothing without you and right now I need to pick myself up by the scruff of the neck and shake myself off… Lord help me shake loose of this despairing spirit within me.  I am not capable of doing this, only you are.  I was complaining and frustrated and you have shown me how petty it all is.  Heal my heart Lord and create your Spirit within me renewed and regenerated.  Let me be all you have hoped me to be.

uNCHaNGeD

If you are still the same miserable crosspatch, set on your own way, then it is a lie to say that God has saved and sanctified you.

- Oswald Chambers

Tough Conditions

Our Lord implies that the only men and women He will use in His building enterprises are those who love Him personally, passionately and devotedly beyond any of the closest ties on earth. The conditions are stern, but they are glorious.

- Oswald Chambers

May I love Him personally, passionately and be devoted beyond the closest of ties.

 

 

Does God Exist?

“For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the starts there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get the messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.”
-Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat.

What if God is in the kitchen right now preparing your favorite drink, making your favorite meal, and providing refreshment for you from today’s difficulties?

Psalm 104:15

(God makes) wine that gladdens the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine,
and bread that sustains his heart.

I Don’t Know - I Just Don’t Know…

“We need to realize that when leading there will be many times when we will not know all the answers. It is in those times when our team looks to us to lead them that we take our focus off what we don’t know and move on what we do know. Keep in mind, Jesus’ example was not one of a cavalier spirit, it was one of prayer and one focused on his father and one where he did not try to hide the fact that he did not know all the answers. So we should never go willy nilly into any decision or try to act like we know all the answers when we don’t. Every decision needs to be made via prayer and prior, God given, wisdom.” – Shane Duffey

 

I thought this incredibly appropriate as I struggle through some of the demands of being a church plant pastor in the middle of a 2.5 million dollar building project, with a church of 40 people, time and budget over runs, and doubts that creep in…  What is God doing here?  Would He put us through all of this just to have it fall apart in the end?  Or is He just positioning us so that He can do something God sized and miraculous?  I hope and pray that is the case!

 

^{Psalm 66:5}     Come and see what God has done,

how awesome his works in man’s behalf!

⁶     He turned the sea into dry land,

they passed through the waters on foot—

come, let us rejoice in him.

¹⁶     Come and listen, all you who fear God;

let me tell you what he has done for me.

¹⁷     I cried out to him with my mouth;

his praise was on my tongue.

 

This will be our prayer through the next few weeks and months, as He has to be the one to bring all of this together… 

Choosing a Text

Never choose a text, let the text choose you. Cleverness is the ability to do things better than anyone else. Always hide that light under a bushel. The Holy Ghost is never clever. In a child of God the Holy Spirit works as naturally as breathing, and the most unostentatious choices are His choices. Unless your personal life is hid with Christ in Go, natural ability will continually lead you into chastisement from God. When a text has chosen you, the Holy Spirit will impress you with its inner meaning and cause you to labour to lead out that meaning for your congregation.

-Oswald Chambers

 

find the Spirit in your study, and let the message flow from the wrestling out of that what He has placed on your heart.  Great reminder…