Monday, September 08, 2008

Thoughts from My Utmost for His Highest.

I continue to read My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers most days. Recently there seemed to be a common theme and a good reminder coming through –being rightly related to God. Here are some of those thoughts:

Aug 4: The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to look after, and it is the one thing that is being continually assailed.

Aug 30: Don’t rejoice in successful service, but rejoice because you are rightly related to Me. The snare in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you. You never can measure what God will do through you if you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. Keep your relationship right with Him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, He is pouring rivers of living water through you and it is of His mercy that He does not let you know it. When once you are rightly related to God by salvation and sanctification, remember that wherever you are, you are put there by God; and by the reaction of your life on the circumstances around you, you will fulfill God’s purpose, as long as you keep in the light as God is in the light.

Aug 31: “That My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” John 15:11 The joy of Jesus was the absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice of Himself to His Father, the joy of doing that which the Father sent Him to do. “I delight to do Thy will.” . . . Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. Be a centre for Jesus Christ to pour living water through.

Sept 1: “You shall be holy; for I am holy.” I Peter 1:16 Continually restate to yourself what the purpose of your life is. The destined end of man/woman is not happiness, nor health, but holiness. Nowadays we have far too many affinities, we are dissipated with them; right, good, noble affinities which will yet have their fulfillment, but in the meantime God has to atrophy them. The one thing that matters is whether a man/woman will accept the God who will make him/her holy. At all costs a woman/man must be rightly related to God.