wisdom

I was blessed to go to my church's spring break mission trip to Philadelphia last week and was hit by the immense need that is present even in our own country. Gangs, drugs, irrational violence, darkness like I've never seen before. And I'm sure it exists in Columbia too but so often do I believe that where I live and the people I interact with are the "norm." They're not. People in my own city are homeless, starving, living in poverty. So God wrecked me by showing me the need for service here and that His love is the only love that people need. God doesn't want more Christians, He wants more lovers of Himself. He wants people to abandon all and live the most fulfilled life through what Christ has already done- wiped away every sin from our record. Incredible truth. And something to be reminded of everyday.

I've been going through "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers but was a bitttt too busy to sit down and read it during the trip. So I sat down one afternoon and read back through the days I missed and came across some heart-awakening quotes. They encouraged and challenged me so I figured I'd share. It looks like a lot but it's all great stuff so stick with it.

God LOVES you.


March 7:
The bedrock of our Christian faith is the unmerited, fathomless marvel of the love of God exhibited on the Cross of Calvary, a love we can and never shall merit. Paul says this is the reason we are more than conquerors in all these things, super-victors, with a joy we would not have but for the very things which look like they are going to overwhelm us. The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super-joy of going clean through it. Apply that to our own circumstance, these very things- tribulation, distress, persecution, produce in us the super-joy; they are not things to fight. We are more than conquerors through Him in all these things, not in spite of them but in the midst of them.

Undaunted radiance is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can alter. The experiences of life, terrible or monotonous, are impotent to touch the love of God, which is Christ Jesus our Lord.


March 8:
Am I willing to relinquish my hold on all I possess, my hold on my affections, and on everything, and to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ?

If you are up against the question of relinquishing, go through the crisis, relinquishing all, and God will make you fit for all that He requires of you.


March 9:
If God gives a clear and emphatic realization to your soul of what He wants, do not try to keep yourself in that relationship by any particular method, but live a natural life of absolute dependence on Jesus Christ.


March 10:
The natural heart will do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin, and baptized by the Holy Spirit, and crumpled into the purpose of God before the life becomes the sacrament of its message.


March 11:
“Though it tarry, wait for it.” We cannot attain to a vision; we must live in the inspiration of it until it accomplishes itself. We get so practical that we forget the vision. At the beginning we saw it but did not wait for it; we rushed off into practical work, and when the vision was fulfilled, we did not see it. Waiting for the vision that tarries is the test of our loyalty to God. It is at the peril of our soul’s welfare that we get caught up in the practical work and miss the fulfillment of the vision.


March 12:
If we only give up something to God because we want more back, there is nothing of the Holy Spirit in our abandonment; it is miserable commercial self-interest. That we gain heaven, that we are delivered from sin, that we are made useful to God- these things never enter as considerations into real abandonment, which is a personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ Himself.


March 13:
My experimental knowledge of salvation will be along the line of deliverance from sin and of personal holiness; but salvation means that the Spirit of God has brought me into touch with God’s personality, and I am thrilled with something infinitely greater than myself; I am caught up into the abandonment of God.

Abandonment never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the One to Whom we abandon.