by Oswald Chambers
To be an
Uncommon Believer….Let the “First Voice” You Hear in the Morning….Be
the Voice of the LORD. The Spirit of truth Who lives in me will reveal
that which is false, deceitful and counterfeit. The Spirit of God has
spoiled the sin of a great many, yet there is no emancipation, no
fullness in their lives. The kind of religious life we see abroad to-day
is entirely different from the robust holiness of the life of Jesus
Christ. "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but
that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil." We are to be in the world
but not of it; to be disconnected fundamentally, not externally.
{In the Gospels, it is often recorded that when His Disciples tried to find Him early in the morning, He was off in the distance, (in the wilderness), praying and fellowshipping with His Father. I couldn’t make it, if it wasn’t for the Cross and my Father’s early morning presence and voice. - Pastor Jim Menke}
"By whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." - Galatians 6:14
If
I brood on the Cross of Christ, I do not become a subjective pietist,
interested in my own whiteness; I become dominantly concentrated on
Jesus Christ's interests. Our Lord was not a recluse nor an ascetic, He
did not cut Himself off from society, but He was inwardly disconnected
all the time. He was not aloof, but He lived in an other world. He was
so much in the ordinary world that the religious people of His day
called Him a glutton and a wine-bibber. Our Lord never allowed anything
to interfere with His consecration of spiritual energy.
The
counterfeit of consecration is the conscious cutting off of things with
the idea of storing spiritual power for use later on, but that is a
hopeless mistake. "The Spirit of truth Who lives in me will reveal that which is false, deceitful and counterfeit."
The
Spirit of God has spoiled the sin of a great many, yet there is no
emancipation, no fullness in their lives. The kind of religious life we
see abroad to-day is entirely different from the robust holiness of the
life of Jesus Christ. "I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil." We are to be in the world but not of it; to be disconnected fundamentally, not externally.
We
must never allow anything to interfere with the consecration of our
spiritual energy. Consecration is our part, sanctification is God's
part; and we have deliberately to determine to be interested only in
that in which God is interested. The way to solve perplexing problems is
to ask 'Is this the kind of thing in which Jesus Christ is
interested'or the kind of thing in which the spirit that is the
antipodes of Jesus is interested?
The springs of love are in God,
not in us. It is absurd to look for the love of God in our hearts
naturally, it is only there when it has been shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit.
If religious books are not
widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what
is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused,
error will be; If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil
and his works will gain the ascendancy; If the evangelical volume does
not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature
will; If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and
breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery,
corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end. " - Daniel Webster
Republished from the old Eponymn site. The message applies equally to today's America just as it did in Oswald's era in Britain.