HAPPY NEW YEAR and may your love walk with Jesus grow deeper as you follow hard after Him!
I was reading my devotional journal, My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. The first entry for the new year really struck a chord (again) so I wanted to share with others the thoughts and, more appropriately, the challenge of actually living a life of my utmost for His highest. Here is the entry:
January 1, 2009 LET US KEEP TO THE POINT "My eager desire and hope being that I may never feel ashamed, but that now as ever I may do honour to Christ in my own person by fearless courage. "Philippians 1:20 My Utmost for His Highest. "My eager desire and hope being that I may never feel ashamed." We shall all feel very much ashamed if we do not yield to Jesus on the point He has asked us to yield to Him. Paul says - "My determination is to be my utmost for His Highest." To get there is a question of will, not of debate nor of reasoning, but a surrender of will, an absolute and irrevocable surrender on that point. An overweening consideration for ourselves is the thing that keeps us from that decision, though we put it that we are considering others. When we consider what it will cost others if we obey the call of Jesus, we tell God He does not know what our obedience will mean.Keep to the point; He does know. Shut out every other consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only - My Utmost for His Highest. I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone. My undeterredness for His Holiness. "Whether that means life or death, no matter!" (v.21.) Paul is determined that nothing shall deter him from doing exactly what God wants. God's order has to workup to a crisis in our lives because we will not heed the gentler way. He brings us to the place where He asks us to be our utmost for Him,and we begin to debate; then He produces a providential crisis where we have to decide - for or against, and from that point the "Great Divide" begins. If the crisis has come to you on any line, surrender your will to Him absolutely and irrevocably.
I've never been the type of person who makes the proverbial "New Year's Resolutions". To me, they are simply empty promises we make either to ourselves or to others that we alone cannot keep. We tend to pursue these promises in our own feeble ability so, is it any wonder that we fail? We end up frustrated over falling short in our attempts to make good on promises to do better or be better and our flesh just will not allow it. It is imperative to allow Jesus to shape our every thought, action, reaction, plan and pursuit. When we do not, we are positioned to fail every time. Leaning on His word, His ability and trusting Him to bring His will to pass within our lives is the only way to true, everlasting victory.
Surrender of will is the utmost challenge of the flesh but it must be done in order to be His disciple. We cannot walk our own way and His as well. The Bible tells us we cannot serve two masters for we will love one and hate the other. This is true for pursuing our own plans verses those of the Lord. We will come to love one and despise the other. Sadly, we often covet our own life more so than the will of the Father. And scripture also reminds is that if we try to save our life here on earth, we will lose our eternal one. I can think of no better realization than that - choosing eternal life with Christ or keeping this temporal one, that is but a vapor.
Oh, help me Jesus to remain in hot pursuit of You. Help me to keep my eyes on the prize! Keep me undeterred in my love walk with You, Lord! Help me surrender my will daily to be my utmost for Your highest, to pursue Your will and not my own. Thank you, Lord, for being so patient with me and so faithful with Your forgiveness, mercy and grace. I love you, Jesus!
2 comments:
I used to have that devotional. It really is a good one.
Hi Cheryl,
I always mean to post a comment on your blog but never make it, so today is the day. Hope it's not too long.
Yesterday I took my daughter to the airport as she was returning to school. It seems to get more difficult each time to watch her walk away. Perhaps because I was sick over Christmas and feeling more vulnerable than usual, I found myself standing at the security gate, watching until I could no longer see her, hoping to catch one last glimpse of her. As I looked around me, there were others standing near who were also desperate for one last look, a nod, a slight wave, a few tears shed and gone.
I was reminded of what finite parameters we use to measure our lives with. How do we measure time, love, grace...How do we grasp how infinite and eternal God is and yet He lives in our hearts? C.S. Lewis suggests "God is not in time. His life does not consist of moments following moments." But He has infinite attention to spare for us in each detail of our lives. "He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames." He is a God of the individual. He died for your sins; yet He knows the whole world.
With respect to history, Lewis suggests, He has no history. He is too real to have one because to have a history means that it has already slipped away in the past and similarly we might say the same of the future, which would leave a tiny bit of present which we know is not God.
Our past experiences can limit God
as He attempts to so something new with us. As we pray,"let us believe that the very promises of God we plead, have a divine meaning infinitely beyond our thoughts of them. Let us believe that His fulfillment of them can be, in their power and abundance of grace, beyond our greatest imagination." (Andrew Murray)
The call of Jesus resonates deep inside me. Let's keep encouraging each other as it is not easy to surrender what we love about ourselves. It is not easy for me to stretch my mind to see things as God does and to stay there. In my poverty of thoughts, I pray He will impart his goodness and wisdom into me.
Love in Christ,
Post a Comment