Tuesday October 15th, 2013 “1st Voice” My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) “The key to the missionary message” “And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2. ________________________________________ My determination is to be my utmost for His Highest. ________________________________________ To be an Uncommon Believer….Let the “First Voice” You Hear in the Morning….Be the Voice of the LORD. ________________________________________ ISAIAH 50: 4 The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. 5 The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. ________________________________________ Run Today’s Race: ““Won’t you yield to Jesus? He has done so much for you”—to talk in that way is an insult to God and a crime against human nature. It is the presentation of an overplus of human sentiment smeared over with religious jargon.” … Oswald Chambers ________________________________________ My Utmost for His Highest: by Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) ________________________________________ “The key to the missionary message” “And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2. The key to the missionary message is the propitiation of Christ Jesus. Take any phase of Christ’s work—the healing phase, the saving and sanctifying phase; there is nothing limitless about those. “The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!”—that is limitless. The missionary message is the limitless significance of Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins, and a missionary is one who is soaked in that revelation. The key to the missionary message is the remissionary aspect of Christ’s life, not His kindness and His goodness, and His revealing of the Fatherhood of God; the great limitless significance is that He is the propitiation for our sins. The missionary message is not patriotic, it is irrespective of nations and of individuals, it is for the whole world. When the Holy Ghost comes in He does not consider my predilections, He brings me into union with the Lord Jesus. A missionary is one who is wedded to the charter of his Lord and Master; he has not to proclaim his own point of view, but to proclaim the Lamb of God. It is easier to belong to a coterie which tells what Jesus Christ has done for me, easier to become a devotee to Divine healing, or to a special type of sanctification, or to the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Paul did not say—“Woe is unto me, if I do not preach what Christ has done for me,” but—“Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” This is the Gospel—“The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” [2] ________________________________________ Prayer is not just an exercise routine God has us on; It’s our business, Our only business. Prayer is our holy occupation. Plain and simple: ________________________________________ OUR HOLY OCCUPATION REQUIRES SILENCE: ________________________________________ “What prayers did God answer in a better way than I expected by not giving me exactly what I prayed for?” “What things might God be withholding from me for my own good and for the good of His kingdom?” “GOD GRANT we may learn more and more of the profound joy of getting alone with God in the dark of the night and toward the early dawn.” “SOME PRAYERS are followed by silence because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than we can understand.” ________________________________________ Chronological Reading- Thru the Bible in One Year: Today’s Scriptures: Matthew 8:14-34;Mark 4-5. biblegateway/passage/?version=NKJV&search=matt+8:14-34,mark+4-5 ________________________________________ Prayers That Avail Much: October 15 “Father, although Mary didnt fully understand how she would conceive Your Son, Jesus Christ, because she had not known a man intimately, she believed the word of the angel. Her response was, Be it unto me according to thy word. Father, thank You for the destiny to which You have called me. Like Mary, I believe You, that there will be a performance of those things - all of them - which You have spoken to my heart personally and through Your Word, in the Name of Jesus. Amen.” Luke 1: 28-45. Daily Confession: “I will magnify the Lord, because nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible with Him!” ________________________________________ “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much!”…James 5:16. ________________________________________ 2Timothy 2: 1-8; 2 Chronicles 7:14 ________________________________________ To submit prayer requests: E-Prayer’ (NHCC office: [email protected]) ________________________________________ Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God The Life Story of the Author of My Utmost For His Highest [3] David McCasland PART 2 “It takes me a long while to realize that God has no respect for anything I bring Him. All He wants from me is unconditional surrender.” —My Utmost For His Highest 5 EDINBURGH (1895–1897) Con’t….. The matter was far from settled, however. In a letter to Chrissie, he related an unnerving event during an October visit with Franklin in Perth: I went to see John MacDonald’s father, he is a colporteur and a singular man of deep religious experience, the Holy Spirit being his constant theme of meditation and conversation. He astounded me by telling me that I was to be a minister. He said as soon as I came in with my brother he felt it impressed on him that I was destined to be a minister, and on leaving he prayed for me most earnestly that God would open my way. The tug-of-war in Oswald’s heart intensified as the days grew shorter and the leaves of autumn released their grip on the branches to which they had held so tightly. Was that what Oswald needed to do? Was he holding on to a vision that he must now release? One evening in late autumn, unable to concentrate, Oswald left his room and walked eastward toward Queen’s Park, the Sanctuary of Holyrood House. Having decided to spend the entire night in prayer, he could think of no better place to be alone than on Arthur’s Seat, the highest hill overlooking Edinburgh. It took the long-legged, athletic young man less than half an hour to reach the top of the extinct volcano, which rose some eight hundred feet above the city. It was a familiar pathway, one Oswald had followed many times along the Pipers Walk, past the clumps of ling heather, ascending to the top of the Dry Dam and then to the rocky summit. With every step, the world fell farther behind, both in sound and feeling. Chambers often sought the high places for solitude and communion with God. In the fading light he could see the sails of ships on the wind-shipped Firth of Forth to the north. The university buildings and the surrounding Old Town lay at his feet. Wrapping a plaid around his shoulders to ward off the evening chill, Oswald walked down a few yards from the summit to a small indentation in the rock. There, shielded from the wind, he surveyed the twinkling lights of the city and poured his heart out to God. While he prayed, the sounds below changed as evening drifted into night. The rumble of heavy wagons and trams gave way to the staccato hoofbeats of horses pulling carriages and cabs. The bells from half a dozen churches chimed eleven, accompanied by the drunken singing of some undergraduates reeling from a public house to their digs. By the stroke of midnight, quiet reigned as a fog rolled in from the firth and obscured the city. Chambers prayed aloud, alternately thanking God and pleading with Him to make His way plain. He wanted to serve Him in art, to go where others could not or would not take the gospel of Jesus Christ. But the way seemed blocked and now, perhaps forbidden. “Oh God,” he pleaded, “make Thy way plain to me.” As the hours wore on, his soul cried out in anguished silence. Sometime during the night, according to Chambers’ account, he heard a voice that actually spoke these words, “I want you in My service—but I can do without you.” Was that the guidance he sought? Was this the answer to his struggle? Suddenly the call to the ministry seemed so clear. He was ready to obey, but how? What should he do? It was a call with no more guidance than he possessed before. Returning to his lodgings the next morning, he found that his mail contained the annual report from Dunoon College, a small theological training school near Glasgow. He had no idea who sent it to him or why. Yet he felt it must be part of God’s plan, having come totally unsolicited at this very time. He wrote the principal, the Rev. Duncan MacGregor, introducing himself and asking for more information. Near the end of November, with the way still uncertain, God’s call was becoming progressively more sure. He wrote to Chrissie: It seems tonight that the great Spirit of God is near and all the lower common-sense things have dwindled away down into their proper proportions, and the thought that is strongest in me is that of entering the ministry. How often have I hinted at it, how often have I stifled it back and down; but I cannot keep it hid any longer for it is perplexing me tremendously. It would be playing with the sacred touch of God to neglect or stifle again this strange yet deep conviction that some time I must be a minister. This inward conviction, the decided thwarting all along the art line, nay, the repeated and pointed shutting of doors that seemed just opening, as well as the confident opinion of many friends—all leads me to consider most earnestly before God what is his will. I am going to leave the opening of the way in his hands, nor am I going to try and enter the ministry until it is so startling clear that not to go would be to disobey, and this startling clearness has not come yet, but I feel it is coming. Let us not turn our eyes from Jesus Christ The same letters continued: On Sunday I met Mr. George Stooke of the China Inland Mission and he wants me to go to China with him, he himself introduced the subject. He says he is certain that the ministry is my ultimate goal and he has promised to pray for guidance. Brighter, clearer and more exquisite is the spiritual within becoming, and my whole being is ablaze and passionately on fire to preach Christ All my art aims are swallowed up in this now. It is the almighty love of God that constrains me, and in the midst of a keen consciousness of complete unworthiness, my soul cries out within me—Here am I, send me. By the grace of God, when the way is clear, I will go, obstruct who may, laugh who will, scoff who can. It is Christ Who was crucified and Who rose again and it is God who suffered so inconceivably to redeem man, Who bids me go. Oswald’s family and friends frequently urged him to deal less with abstract ideas and more with the practical matters of life. Again, only Chrissie knew his struggle over how to face his financial realities without compromising his faith: For three weeks now I have had no work—art, portrait painting—all my commissions are finished and I have no new ones. I have not been able to pay my landlady for sometime now and I have, as my sole money possession in this world, 1 shilling, 8 pence. This is certainly not an abstract matter, but one of immediate concern, everything I have tried has been hopelessly unsuccessful. This coming week brings no shadow of a prospect. I look at home and see a great need for money there, and yet I have tried and prayed to gain money sufficient to help them, and yet I am not afraid I am not downcast, I am serious, fervently serious that I can face the whole unflinchingly because my faith and consolation is in the Lord my God. This is not the first time I have been in such straits. I have been through much worse times, with 6 pence as my sole possession, and all has been well because God is here. It will be alright, and never let my home folks know anything of this, they think I do well and so I do. I have stated all this because I know that ‘a mind stayed upon God’ is the only way to ennoble human life. You cannot live a noble life in this world without the assurance that God is there. I am not in the least disturbed about these hard times, night and day my soul is yearning and crying and my spirit waiting for a great absorbing work to come for me to engage in for His sake and it will come, and we will look up and be strong and of a good courage. God is not very far off. A November gathering of the Christian Union brought Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, to the University of Edinburgh. After attending the meeting Chambers wrote: “Hudson Taylor said last night that Our Lord’s words ‘Have faith in God’ really mean ‘Have faith in the faithfulness of God,’ not in your own faithfulness.” “I am completely at rest now,” he wrote to Chrissie. “I feel God nearer to me than ever. I will wait on Him and He will open the way.” Letting go was an expression of trust, but not the end of the struggle. Letters and diaries reveal his continuing distress: How can I dabble in art, pleasing my own artistic sense when that burdening cry of the human is ever rising. ‘What must we do to be saved?’ ‘Who will show us any good?’ How can I think of artistic comfort and high self-culture when the Voice of Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus constrains me to go and preach the gospel? Oh it is not my worth, my ability, my talents, it is God that impels me. I hear a voice you cannot hear That says I must not say I see a hand they cannot see Which beckons me away. But I do not know where to go, the blackness of darkness is before me and there is no way, but still the great passion grows within me to preach Christ and will soon be an agony and I must soon cry ‘Woe is me if I preach not the gospel of Christ ‘ Every prospect of work has now been withdrawn and I have not one thing to look to—but God. And is that not enough? If this is indeed the Spirit of Almighty God striving within me, He will speedily open the door, I will not fear. By early December Chambers had talked to a local Baptist minister, a former student at Dunoon, who spoke enthusiastically of the college and described Principal MacGregor as “a man of great personality who infuses his enthusiasm into his students.”[4] Tomorrow: Con’t: A letter from MacGregor to Chambers brought an invitation to join the student body of thirty at Dunoon. And, it offered the possibility of teaching fine art at the college or in the town. The long-hidden way was becoming clear. “So this looks like the beginning of something,” Chambers wrote to Chrissie. “This may after all be more conducive to gaining the ultimate end of being an ambassador for Christ in the art world than if I were merely a lecturer. God moves in mysterious ways.” Before going to Dunoon, Oswald hoped to organize a series of lectures in the Potteries near Stoke-on-Trent, then journey back to London. Neither materialized and he was keenly disappointed not to be home for Christmas. [5] -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ Isaiah 40: 28: Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. 29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” James 4: 8 -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ En Agape, Pastor Jim Menke [email protected] New Hope Christian Center 2240 Baty Road Lima, Ohio 45807 [1]Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI : Discovery House Publishers, 1993, c1935, S. 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Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:23:13 +0000
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