But you will not leave in haste or go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard. — Isaiah 52:12

Security from yesterday. “God requireth that which is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15 kjv). At the end of the year, we turn with eagerness to all that God has planned for our future. And yet anxiety is likely to arise from remembering our past. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace is likely to be tempered by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays. He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry for the future. He reminds us of the past so that we won’t put our trust in the shallow security of the present.

Security for tomorrow. “For the Lord will go before you.” It’s a gracious revelation that God will go where we have failed to go. He will watch out for us, so that the things that tripped us up before won’t trip us up again. If he weren’t our rear guard, this is surely what would happen. God’s hand reaches back to the past and makes way for conscience.

Security for today. “You will not leave in haste.” As we set out into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor in impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return. But God can transform destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep in Christ. Leave the irreparable past in his hands and step into the irresistible future with him.

Malachi 1-4; Revelation 22

Wisdom from Oswald

Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth.
The Place of Help

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All my fountains are in you. — Psalm 87:7

When God remakes us in spiritual rebirth, he doesn’t simply patch up our natural virtues. He remakes the whole person on the inside: “Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). See that your natural human life puts on the clothing that is in keeping with the new life God has planted in you.

The life God plants in us develops its own virtues—not the virtues of Adam but the virtues of Jesus Christ. Watch how, after sanctification, God will wither up your confidence in your natural virtues, in any power you have, until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus. If you are going through a drying–up experience just now, give thanks to God.

The sign that God is at work in us is that he corrupts our confidence in our natural virtues, showing us that they are merely remnants, leftovers of what he originally created humans to be. They aren’t promises of what we are going to be. Still, we cling to the natural virtues, even as God is trying all the time to get us into contact with a life that can never be described in terms of natural virtues—the life of Jesus Christ. It’s the saddest thing to see people who, though they are in the service of God, are still depending on that which his grace never gave them, on virtues they possess merely by the accident of heredity.

God doesn’t build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, because our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to his demands. But as we bring every part of our bodily life into harmony with the new life God has put into us, he will exhibit through us the virtues that are characteristic of Jesus.

“All my fountains are in you”: every virtue we possess is his alone.

Zechariah 13-14; Revelation 21

Wisdom from Oswald

Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth.
The Place of Help

https://utmost.org/

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. — John 6:66

When God gives you a vision of what he wants, speaking to you by his Spirit through his word, and your mind and soul thrill to that vision, you must walk in the light of what you’ve seen. If you don’t, you will sink into servitude to a point of view our Lord never had. Disobedience to a heavenly vision will make you a slave to points of view that are alien to Jesus Christ. Don’t look at someone else and say, “If they can have those views and prosper, why can’t I?” You have to walk in the light of the vision that has been given to you, not compare yourself to others or judge them. How others think and behave is between them and God.

When you find that a point of view in which you’ve been delighting clashes with a heavenly vision, put it away at once. Debating with God will only develop certain mindsets in you: a sense of property, a sense of personal rights—things in which Jesus Christ put absolutely no stock. He was always against any sense of personal entitlement, considering it the root of everything alien to himself. “Watch out!” he told his disciples. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). If we don’t recognize this, we’re ignoring the undercurrent of our Lord’s teaching.

We have the tendency to lie back and bask in the memory of the wonderful experiences we’ve had. If there’s any standard in the New Testament revealed by the light of God that you don’t meet—that you don’t even feel inclined to meet—that is the beginning of backsliding, because it means your conscience isn’t answering to the truth. You can never be the same after God unveils a truth to you. That moment marks a turning point: either you go on as an ever truer disciple of Jesus Christ, or you turn back as a deserter.

Zechariah 9-12; Revelation 20

Wisdom from Oswald

There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus.
We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed.

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 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).— Matthew 1:23

His birth in history. “The holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He didn’t evolve out of history; he came into history from the outside. Jesus Christ isn’t the best human being; he is a Being who can’t be accounted for by humanity at all. He isn’t man becoming God; he is God incarnate, God coming into human flesh from the outside. His life is the highest and the holiest, entering through the lowliest door. Our Lord’s birth was an advent, an arrival with no precedent.

His birth in me. “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you . . .” (Galatians 4:19). Just as our Lord came into human history from the outside, so he must come into me from the outside. Have I allowed my personal life to become a Bethlehem for the Son of God? I can’t enter into the realm of the kingdom of God unless I’m born again from above in a birth totally unlike natural birth.

Jesus said, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). This isn’t a command; it’s a statement of fact, the fact upon which our entrance into the kingdom depends. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. The instant he is formed in me, his nature begins to work through me. God manifest in my flesh: this is what is made possible for you and for me by the redemption.

Zephaniah 1-3; Revelation 16

Wisdom from Oswald

The vital relationship which the Christian has to the Bible is not that he worships the letter, but that the Holy Spirit makes the words of the Bible spirit and life to him. The Psychology of Redemption, 1066 L

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For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. — Colossians 3:3

The Spirit of God witnesses to the simple, almighty security of the life that is hidden with Christ in God. This is continually brought out in the Epistles. We talk as if living the sanctified life were the most precarious thing, when actually it’s the most secure thing. The sanctified life has God in and behind it. Trying to live without God is what is precarious. If we’re born again, it is the easiest thing to live in right relationship to God and the most difficult thing to go wrong. All we have to do is heed his warnings and walk in the light (1 John 1:7).

When we think of being delivered from sin, of being filled with the Spirit and walking in the light, we picture the peak of a great mountain, very high and wonderful—a peak so removed from everyday life that we think, “I could never live up there!” But when, by God’s grace, we do get up there, we find that it isn’t a peak at all but a great plateau with ample room to live and grow: “You provide a broad path for my feet, so that my ankles do not give way” (Psalm 18:36).

When you really do see Jesus, I defy you to doubt him. When he appears to you and says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1), I defy you to trouble your mind. It’s a moral impossibility to doubt when he is there. Every time you get into personal contact with Jesus, his words are real.

“My peace I give you” (v. 27). It’s a peace all over—from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, an irrepressible confidence. “Your life is now hidden with Christ in God,” and the unshakable peace of Jesus Christ is imparted to you.

Habakkuk 1-3; Revelation 15

Wisdom from Oswald

Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging; therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried.He Shall Glorify Me, 494 R

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May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. — Galatians 6:14

The gospel of Jesus Christ always forces an issue of will. Will I accept the verdict God passed on sin in the cross of Christ? Do I want to be identified with the death of Jesus? To be killed to all my former interest in sin, worldliness, and self? To be so identified with Jesus that I’m spoiled for everything else but him? The great privilege of discipleship is that I can sign on under his cross, and this means death to sin.

Get alone with Jesus and tell him either that you don’t want sin to die out in you or that, at all costs, you want to be identified with his death. The instant you act in confident faith on what our Lord did on the cross, a supernatural identification with his death takes place, and you will know with a knowledge that passes knowledge that your old self is crucified with Christ. The proof that your old self has been crucified with Christ is the amazing ease with which the life of God in you enables you to obey the voice of Jesus Christ.

Every now and again, our Lord lets us see what life would be like if it weren’t for him. It’s a justification of what he said in John 15:5: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” That’s why the bedrock of Christianity is personal, passionate devotion to him. We mistake the ecstasy of our first introduction into the kingdom of God for God’s purpose in getting us there. His purpose in getting us there is that we realize all that personal identification with Jesus Christ means.

Nahum 1-3; Revelation 14

Wisdom from Oswald

We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us, our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”My Utmost for His Highest, April 23, 773 L

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No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them. — John 6:44

When God draws me, the issue of my will comes in at once. Will I react to the revelation he has given me? Will I come to him? It’s a question of obeying, not of ruminating and discussing.

Never discuss with anyone when God speaks; discussion on spiritual matters is an impertinence. Belief isn’t an intellectual act; it’s a moral act in which I deliberately commit myself to him. Will I hand myself over entirely to God and act on what he says? If I will, I’ll find that I am based on a reality that is as sure as his throne.

When you preach the gospel, always push the issue of will. Make it clear to your listeners that belief must be the will to believe, that there must be a surrender of the will. Each of us must deliberately launch forth on God and on what he says until we’re no longer confident in what we’ve done, only in him. What holds most of us back is that we won’t trust God, only our own understanding.

As far as feelings go, I must put them to the side, staking everything blindly on what God says. I must will myself to believe, and this can never be done without a violent effort on my part to break with all my old ways of looking at things and then to hand myself over to him.

Each one of us is made to reach out beyond our grasp. It is God who draws me, and my relationship with him is first and foremost a personal one, not an intellectual one. I’m introduced into this relationship by the miracle of God and by my own will to believe. Only later do I begin to get an intelligent appreciation and understanding of the wonder of our transaction.

Micah 6-7; Revelation 13

Wisdom from Oswald

To live a life alone with God does not mean that we live it apart from everyone else. The connection between godly men and women and those associated with them is continually revealed in the Bible, e.g., 1 Timothy 4:10. Not Knowing Whither, 867 L

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I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. — Matthew 10:34

Never be sympathetic with the soul whose situation makes you conclude that God is hard. God is more tender than we can imagine. Occasionally, he asks us to be the hard ones so that he can be the tender one. Sometimes toughness is what’s needed, especially when you’re deal–ing with souls who can’t get through to God because they have some secret thing they’re refusing to give up. They might admit it’s wrong, but secretly they think, “I no more intend to give that up than to fly.” It’s impossible to deal sympathetically with someone like this. We have to dig down to the source of their resistance, until they respond with antagonism and resentment to our message. People want God’s blessing, but they can’t stand anything that cuts straight to the quick.

If God has had his way with you, the message you’ll deliver as his servant will be one of merciless insistence on a single point that gets right at the root of the problem. Otherwise, there will be no healing. You have to drive home the message until the person has no choice but to apply it individually. Try to get at people where they are, until they realize what they lack. Then erect the standard of Jesus Christ for their lives. If they reply, “We can never live like that!” tell them, “Jesus Christ says you must.” They will wonder how it’s possible. The only way is with a new Spirit, which Jesus promised to all who ask. Guide them to Luke 11:13: “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

There must be a sense of need in your listener before your message will be of use. Millions of people are happy without God. If people were happy and moral before Jesus came, why did he come? Because that kind of happiness and peace is on a wrong level. Jesus Christ came to send a sword through every kind of peace that isn’t based on a personal relationship with him.

Jonah 1-4; Revelation 10

Wisdom from Oswald

Is He going to help Himself to your life, or are you taken up with your conception of what you are going to do? God is responsible for our lives, and the one great keynote is reckless reliance upon Him.Approved Unto God, 10 R

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Only the loyal soul believes that God engineers circumstances. We take enormous liberties with our circumstances, treating the things that happen as if they’d been engineered by human beings. We say we believe God is in control, but we don’t really. If we did, we’d be faithful to him in every circumstance; we’d have just one loyalty, and that would be to our Lord.

Most of us tend to go about our lives thinking we’re in control. Then, suddenly, God comes in and breaks up our circumstances, and we have the shocking realization that he was in control all along and that we’ve been disloyal to him by not recognizing it. We didn’t see the special thing he was trying to create with our circumstances, and now the thing is gone, never to be repeated all the days of our life; the test of loyalty always comes in this way. We have to learn that if we will worship God in difficult times, he will show us that he can alter our circumstances in two seconds flat, whenever he chooses.

Loyalty to Jesus Christ is what we stumble over today. We will be loyal to work, to service, to anything else; just don’t ask us to be loyal to Jesus Christ. Many Christians are intensely impatient of talk about loyalty to Jesus. Our Lord is dethroned more emphatically by Christian workers than by the world. God is turned into a machine for generating blessings, and Jesus into a worker among workers.

The idea we should have isn’t that we work for God but that we are so loyal to him that he can work through us. God wants to use us as he used his own Son. When Jesus said, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8), he meant “witnesses who satisfy me in any circumstance I put you in, witnesses I am counting on for extreme service, with no complaining on your part and no explanation on mine.”

Obadiah; Revelation 9

Wisdom from Oswald

It is impossible to read too much, but always keep before you why you read. Remember that “the need to receive, recognize, and rely on the Holy Spirit” is before all else.Approved Unto God, 11 L

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The gospel of God creates a sense of needing the gospel. Paul says, “If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled”—to whom? To those who behave immorally? No—“to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel” (2 Corinthians 4:3–4). By “unbelievers,” Paul means those who haven’t had the life of God created in them through personal redemption. As redemption creates the life of God in a human soul, it also creates the things belonging to that life, including a sense of needing the Lord. It is God who creates the need of which no human being is conscious until God manifests himself; nothing can satisfy the need but that which created the need. This is the meaning of redemption: it both creates and satisfies.

The majority of people have no sense of needing the gospel because they have morality and self–sufficiency well within their grasp. Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7). This is true, but God can’t give until we ask, and we won’t ask if we don’t feel a need. It isn’t that God withholds; this is simply how he has constituted things on the basis of the redemption. Through our asking, God sets a process in motion by which he creates what doesn’t exist until we ask. The inner reality of redemption is that it creates all the time.

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). We preach our own experiences, and people are interested, but no sense of need is awakened. But when Jesus Christ is lifted up, the Spirit of God will create a conscious need of him. Behind the preaching of the gospel is the creative redemption of God at work in people’s souls. Personal testimony is never what saves: “The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life” (John 6:63).

Amos 7-9; Revelation 8

Wisdom from Oswald

Civilization is based on principles which imply that the passing moment is permanent. The only permanent thing is God, and if I put anything else as permanent, I become atheistic. I must build only on God (John 14:6).The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 565 L

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Put on the full armor of God. . . And always keep on praying. — Ephesians 6:13,18

You have to wrestle against the things that prevent you from getting to God, and you have to wrestle in prayer for other souls. But never say that you wrestle with God in prayer; this idea is scripturally unfounded. Attempt to wrestle with God, and you will be crippled for the rest of your life.

“He touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched”

(Genesis 32:25). If God comes into your life in some way you don’t like, and you try, as Jacob did, to wrestle with him, you compel God to put your hip out of joint. You should wrestle; God doesn’t want you to hobble along weakly in his ways. Just make sure you’re wrestling the right things. Be someone who wrestles before God for other souls and against those things that would keep you from him, and you will be more than a conqueror through him (Romans 8:37).

Wrestling before God in prayer prevails in his kingdom, so long as the one praying is complete in Christ. If you ask me to pray for you and I’m not complete, my prayer counts for nothing. But if I’m complete in him, my prayer always prevails. I have to put on the full armor of God before I pray; prayer is effective only when there is completeness.

Always distinguish between God’s order and his permissive will. God’s order is unchangeable; the things he allows by his permissive will are what we have to wrestle against. God uses his permissive will providentially to turn us into his sons and daughters. Our reaction to the things he permits is what enables us to get at his order. He asks us to meet these things head–on, not to be like jellyfish, floating along and saying, “Oh, well, it’s the Lord’s will.” Beware of drifting lazily before God instead of putting up a glorious fight so that you may lay hold of his strength.

Amos 4-6; Revelation 7

Wisdom from Oswald

The emphasis to-day is placed on the furtherance of an organization; the note is, “We must keep this thing going.” If we are in God’s order the thing will go; if we are not in His order, it won’t. Conformed to His Image, 357 R

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Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. — 2 Timothy 2:15

What we need today isn’t a new gospel; it’s men and women who can restate the gospel of the Son of God in terms that will reach the very heart of people’s problems. There’s nothing easy or automatic about becoming such a man or woman. If you wish to become a worker who, as Paul puts it, “correctly handles the word of truth,” you must “do your best”—that is, make a serious effort.

If you can’t clearly express your thoughts on a truth God has given you, struggle until you can. Otherwise, you’ll be unable to pass it on, and someone will be poorer for it all the days of his life. But when you put serious effort into reexpressing some truth of God for yourself, God will use that expression for someone else. Go through the winepress where God’s grapes are crushed, struggle to get at the expression you need, and a time will come when that expression will be the very wine of strength to another. If instead you say, “I’m not going to struggle to express this truth for myself; I’ll borrow what I say,” the expression will be not only of no use to you but of no use to anyone. Try to restate to yourself what you implicitly feel to be God’s truth, and you will give God a chance to pass it on to someone else through you.

Always make a practice of challenging your mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not truly ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you isn’t the one who tells you something you didn’t know before; it’s the one who gives expression to the truth that has been struggling for utterance inside you.

Amos 1-3; Revelation 6

Wisdom from Oswald

God does not further our spiritual life in spite of our circumstances, but in and by our circumstances. Not Knowing Whither, 900 L

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. . . that they may be one as we are one. — John 17:22

Personality is that unique, incalculable thing we mean when we speak of ourselves as distinct from everyone else. Our personality is always too big for us to grasp. An island in the sea may be easily explored, but think how amazed we are when we realize that it’s only the top of a great mountain, most of which lies hidden beneath the waves. The tip of the island represents our conscious personality; we know nothing about the larger part underneath; consequently, there are upheavals from below that we can’t account for. We can’t comprehend ourselves at all. We begin by thinking we can, but eventually we realize that the only one who understands us is our creator.

Personality is the characteristic of the spiritual man or woman; individuality is the characteristic of the natural man or woman. Our Lord can never be defined in terms of individuality and independence but only in terms of personality: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Personality merges, and you only reach your real identity when you are merged with another person. When love, or the Spirit of God, strikes you, you are transformed. You no longer insist on your separate individuality. Our Lord never mentioned a person’s separate, isolated identity. He spoke of all people in terms of their ability to be merged: “… that they may be one as we are one.”

If you relinquish your right to yourself to God, the real, true nature of your personality will immediately answer to him. Jesus Christ sets the personality free, and individuality is transfigured. The transfiguring element is love—personal devotion to Jesus. Love is the outpouring of one personality in fellowship with another.

Hosea 9-11; Revelation 3

Wisdom from Oswald

We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.Shade of His Hand, 1216 L

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Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves. — Matthew 16:24

There’s a difference between individuality and personality. Individuality is the husk of the personal life; it separates and isolates and must stand alone. Personality is something that can be merged and blended. Individuality is God’s natural covering for the personal life, but individuality must go so that the personal life can emerge and be brought into fellowship with God. Individuality is the characteristic of the child, and rightly so. But as we age, if we mistake individuality for personality, we will remain isolated. Individuality counterfeits personality in the same way that lust counterfeits love. God designed human nature for himself; individuality debases human nature for itself.

The hallmarks of individuality are independence and selfassertiveness. Continually asserting our individuality is what hinders our spiritual life more than anything else. If you say, “I can’t believe,” it’s because individuality is incapable of believing. Personality can’t help but believe. The Holy Spirit makes the difference clear. When the Holy Spirit is at work inside you, he pushes you to the margins of your individuality, forcing you to a crisis. Either you say “I won’t” or you surrender, breaking the shell of your individuality and letting your personal life emerge

When the Holy Spirit brings this crisis, he always narrows it down to one issue: “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you,… first go and be reconciled” (Matthew 5:23–24). The thing inside you that refuses to be reconciled is your individuality. God wants to bring you into union with him, but he can’t if you’re unwilling to give up your right to yourself. When Jesus says that those who want to be his disciples “must deny themselves,” he means that they must give up their independent right to themselves. Only then will the real life have a chance to grow.

Hosea 5-8; Revelation 2

Wisdom from Oswald

Crises reveal character. When we are put to the test the hidden resources of our character are revealed exactly. Disciples Indeed, 393 R

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Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. — Galatians 4:22

In this chapter of Galatians, Paul isn’t dealing with sin but rather with the relationship between the natural and the spiritual. The natural must be turned into the spiritual by sacrifice. Otherwise, a tremendous

In this chapter of Galatians, Paul isn’t dealing with sin but rather with the relationship between the natural and the spiritual. The natural must be turned into the spiritual by sacrifice. Otherwise, a tremendoussplit will occur in our lives. Why did God ordain that the natural part of us should be sacrificed? He didn’t. God’s order doesn’t require this sacrifice; his permissive will allows it. What God ordained was that the natural should be transformed into the spiritual by obedience, not by sacrifice. It is sin that made it necessary for the natural to be sacrificed.

Some of us are trying to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God before we’ve sacrificed the natural. Abraham had to offer up Ishmael—his natural son, “born according to the flesh”—before he could offer up Isaac—his spiritual son, “born as the result of a divine promise” (Galatians 4:23). We have to follow Abraham’s lead, sacrificing the natural part of ourselves so that then we can offer ourselves up to God for his spiritual purposes.

If the natural part of us isn’t sacrificed, it will mock the life of the Son of God in us and cause continual wavering. Confusion is always the result of an undisciplined spiritual nature. We go wrong because we stubbornly refuse to discipline ourselves—physically, morally, and mentally. “But I can’t help it,” you protest. “No one disciplined me when I was a child.” You must discipline yourself now. If you don’t, you will ruin the whole of your personal life for God.

God isn’t with our natural life when we pamper it. But if we will put it out in the desert and resolve to keep it there, he will be with it. He will open up wells and oases and fulfill all his promises for the natural.

Hosea 1-4; Revelation 1

Wisdom from Oswald

We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something.The Love of God—The Ministry of the Unnoticed, 664 L

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Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. — Galatians 5:24

The natural life isn’t sinful; the disposition that rules the natural life is sinful. Sin belongs to hell and the devil, while I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and God and the disposition he has put in me. I must have nothing to do with sin in any shape or form. This isn’t a question of giving up sin, per se, but rather of giving up my right to myself. I have to give up my natural independence and self–assertiveness; this is where the battle must be fought.

The natural life can be made spiritual only through sacrifice. If I fail to resolutely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural in me. There’s no royal road I can take to get there, no smooth and well–marked path. I must make my own way. Sacrifice is not a question of praying but of performing; I have to strive if I wish to attain the highest goal.

The things that keep me from striving for God’s best and highest are those which, from a natural standpoint, appear right and noble and good. When I understand that natural virtues are at odds with my surrender to God, I bring my soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us are drawn by the sordid and evil and wrong, but many of us are drawn by the good. It is the good that hates the best. The higher we climb on the ladder of natural virtue, the more intense the opposition to Jesus Christ.

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh.” If you want to belong to Christ, it’s going to cost the natural part of you everything, not just something. When Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves” (Matthew 16:24), he meant that those who want to be his must entirely give up their right to themselves. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your independence.

Daniel 11-12; Jude

Wisdom from Oswald

Both nations and individuals have tried Christianity and abandoned it, because it has been found too difficult; but no man has ever gone through the crisis of deliberately making Jesus Lord and found Him to be a failure.The Love of God—The Making of a Christian, 680 R

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For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. — Hebrews 10:14

We trample on the blood of the Son of God if we think the reason our sins are forgiven is that we are sorry for them. The only explanation for God’s forgiveness of our sins is the death of Jesus Christ. Our being sorry, our repenting, is merely an outcome, the effect of a personal realization of what Christ accomplished in the atonement: “Christ Jesus… has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). When we realize all that Christ has done for us, the boundless joy of God begins. Wherever the joy of God is absent, the death sentence is at work.

Who or what we are doesn’t matter; the only way we are reinstated into good standing with God is by the death of Jesus Christ. We can’t earn this reinstatement; we can only accept it. All the pleading we do with God amounts to a deliberate refusal to recognize the cross and is of no use. When we plead, it’s like we’re pounding on a door other than the one Jesus has opened. “I don’t want to go that way,” we say. “It’s too humiliating to be received as a sinner.” But there is only one way: “For there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). God may appear heartless in his refusal to receive us in any state other than as lowly sinners. But his apparent heartlessness is the expression of his real heart, for there is boundless entrance into the holiness of Christ by the way he has designated for us

“In him we have redemption through his blood” (Ephesians 1:7). Identification with the death of Jesus Christ means identification with him and the death of everything not of him. God is justified in saving bad men and women only as he makes them good. He doesn’t pretend we’re all right when we’re all wrong. The atonement is an act by which God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy person holy.

Daniel 8-10; 3 John

Wisdom from Oswald

Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging; therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried.He Shall Glorify Me, 494 R

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Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit? — 1 Corinthians 6:19

Do I realize that God holds me accountable for how I rule my body? Am I keeping my body under his rule, drawing on his grace in order to maintain righteousness? “I do not set aside the grace of God,” Paul writes, “for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21). To set aside the grace of God is to make it of no effect in my actual physical life.

“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). I have to work out in my physical life the salvation that God, through his grace, has worked in. The grace of God is absolute; the salvation of Jesus is perfect; it is done, forever. I am not being saved; I am saved. Salvation is as eternal as God’s throne. But I am responsible for working out that salvation. This means that I have to manifest in my physical body the life of Jesus—not mystically, but really.

All who have been born again are capable of keeping their bodies under absolute control for God. God gives us dominion over the temple of the Holy Spirit, over imagination and affection. I must never give way to inordinate affection. Most of us are much stricter with others than we are with ourselves. We make excuses for our own inclinations while condemning others for things to which we are not naturally inclined.

“Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God”(Romans 12:1). Do I agree with my Lord and Master that my body will be his temple? If I do, then the entirety of God’s law for my body is summed up in this revelation: my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Daniel 1-2; 1 John 4

Wisdom from Oswald

The great word of Jesus to His disciples is Abandon. When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on His word; trust entirely to Him and watch that when He brings us to the venture, we take it. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1459 R

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In this world you will have trouble. — John16:33

Life without war is impossible, either in nature or in grace. The basis of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual life is antagonism. This is the open fact of life.

The law of antagonism means that in order to stay healthy, I have to fight. Health is a kind of balance between things that would harm me and my ability to resist them. Physical health occurs when there is a balance between my body and those things in the external world that are designed to put me to death. If I have enough vitality, enough fighting power, I will produce a healthy balance.

The same is true both mentally and morally. If I want to maintain a vigorous mental life, I have to fight; this is how the mental balance called thought is produced. When it comes to morality, everything that doesn’t partake of the nature of virtue is the enemy of virtue in me, and whether I am able to overcome and produce virtue depends on my moral vitality. When I am tempted to immorality in some particular and I fight against it, I am instantly moral in that particular. No one is virtuous by accident; virtue is acquired.

Spiritually, too, it is the same. When Jesus said that we would have trouble in this world, he meant that everything that is not spiritual would seek my undoing. “But,” he added, “take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). I have to learn to face down the things that come against me, and in that way produce the balance of holiness; then it becomes a delight to meet opposition. Holiness is the balance between my disposition and the law of God as expressed in Jesus Christ.

Ezekiel 47-48; 1 John 3

Wisdom from Oswald

Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

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