Tag: Oswald Chambers

Standing in the Darkness, Waiting for the Light

The following is  Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest for February 14.

Sometimes God puts us through the experience and discipline of darkness to teach us to hear and obey Him.

At the pond

Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and God puts us into “the shadow of His hand” until we learn to hear Him (Isaiah 49:2 ). “Whatever I tell you in the dark. . .”— pay attention when God puts you into darkness, and keep your mouth closed while you are there. Are you in the dark right now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? If so, then remain quiet.
Snow at Night
If you open your mouth in the dark, you will speak while in the wrong mood— darkness is the time to listen. Don’t talk to other people about it; don’t read books to find out the reason for the darkness; just listen and obey. If you talk to other people, you cannot hear what God is saying. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else once you are back in the light.
Snow! Issac building snow fort
After every time of darkness, we should experience a mixture of delight and humiliation. If there is only delight, I question whether we have really heard God at all. We should experience delight for having heard God speak, but mostly humiliation for having taken so long to hear Him! Then we will exclaim, “How slow I have been to listen and understand what God has been telling me!” And yet God has been saying it for days and even weeks. But once you hear Him, He gives you the gift of humiliation, which brings a softness of heart— a gift that will always cause you to listen to God now.Snow

Fall leaves and Oswald Chambers

The following is something I have been chewing on for the last few days: My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers for November 10.  I have something to say about it but I will wait till I think on it some more I think.

“Fellow labourer in the gospel of Christ.” 1 Thessalonians 3:2

After sanctification it is difficult to state what your aim in life is, because God has taken you up into His purpose by the Holy Ghost; He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation.

If you seek great things for yourself – God has called me for this and that; you are putting a barrier to God’s use of you.

As long as you have a personal interest in your own character, or any set ambition, you cannot get through into identification with God’s interests.

You can only get there by losing for ever any idea of yourself and by letting God take you right out into His purpose for the world, and because your goings are of the Lord, you can never understand your ways.

I have to learn that the aim in life is God’s, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him, and never say – Lord, this gives me such heart-ache.

To talk in that way makes me a clog. When I stop telling God what I want, He can catch me up for what He wants without let or hindrance.

He can crumple me up or exalt me, He can do anything He chooses. He simply asks me to have implicit faith in Himself and in His goodness.

Self pity is of the devil, if I go off on that line I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. I have “a world within the world” in which I live, and God will never be able to get me outside it because I am afraid of being frost-bitten.