When God gets us alone by affliction, heartbreak, or temptation, by disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted affection, by a broken friendship, or by a new friendship – when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are dumbfounded, and cannot ask one question, then He begins to expound.
Watch Jesus Christ’s training of the twelve.
It was the disciples, not the crowd outside, who were perplexed.
They constantly asked Him questions, and He constantly expounded things to them; but they only understood after they had received the Holy Spirit (see John 14:26).
If you are going on with God, the only thing that is clear to you, and the only thing God intends to be clear, is the way He deals with your own soul.
Your brother’s sorrows and perplexities are an absolute confusion to you.
We imagine we understand where the other person is until God gives us a dose of the plague of our own hearts.
There are whole tracts of stubbornness and ignorance to be revealed by the Holy Spirit in each one of us, and it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone.
Are we alone with Him now, or are we taken up with little fussy comradeships in God’s service, fussy ideas about our bodies?
Jesus can expound nothing until we get through all the noisy questions of the head and are alone with Him.”
Taken from Devotions for MORNING and EVENING with OSWALD CHAMBERS For Jan. 13 page 26
Page 27 for that evening:
"I have continually to convert the natural life into submission to the Spirit of God in me and not say - I will never do anything natural again; that is fanatical.
When by the providence of God my body is brought into new conditions, I have to see that my natural life is converted to the dictates of the Spirit of God in me.
Because it has been done once is not proof that it will be done again, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children..." is true for all the days of the saintly life, we have continually to turn to God.
The attitude of continuous conversion is the only right attitude towards the natural life, and it is the one thing we object to.
Either we say the natural is wrong and try to kill it, or else we say that the natural is all there is, and that everything natural and impulsive is right. Neither attitude is right.
The hindrance in spiritual life is that we will not be continuously converted, there are 'wadges' of obstinacy where our pride spits at the throne of God and says - 'I shan't; I am going to be boss.'
We cannot remain boss by the sheer power of will; sooner or later our wills must yield allegiance to some force greater than their own, either God or the devil."
“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Ps. 51:1-2
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Ps. 51:10 NKJV
“When He was alone the twelve…asked of Him…” Mark 4:10
Tomorrow’s post: God Didn’t Give Away Ownership of the Earth: Prayer Note # 6
Some future posts: Vision and Reality (by Oswald Chambers), The Me That You See is NOT What Will Be (by Hope Flinchbaugh), Hang On! (by Sharon Jaynes), A focus on Fairness (from Our Daily Bread), and Where the Battle is Lost and Won (Oswald Chambers).
No comments:
Post a Comment