Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect… — Philippians 3:12

It’s a trap to imagine that God wants to make us perfect examples of what he can do. God isn’t producing specimens of holiness to put in his museum. His purpose is to make us one with him: “That they may be one as we are one” (John 17:22).

If becoming a model of personal holiness is your goal, your life won’t be devoted to God. Instead, it will be devoted to achieving whatever you see as the evidence of God in your life, whether it be perfect success or perfect discipline or perfect health. “But it can’t be God’s will for me to get sick,” you protest. It was God’s will to bruise his own Son; why shouldn’t he bruise you? What matters to God isn’t your consistency to an idea of what makes a perfect Christian. What matters is your real, vital relationship with Jesus Christ and your abandonment to him, whether you are sick or well.

Christian perfection is not, and never can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship to God, a relationship that shows itself in all the irrelevancies of human life. When you obey the call of Jesus Christ, the first thing that strikes you is the seeming irrelevancy of the things he asks you to do. The next is the fact that some people appear to be leading perfectly consistent lives. Such lives might give you the idea that God is unnecessary, that all we need to reach the standard he wants is human effort and devotion. In a fallen world, this can never be true.

I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my life will produce a longing for God in other lives, not so that others will admire me. Thoughts about myself will always hinder my usefulness to God. God isn’t perfecting me in order to put me on display; he’s getting me to the place where he can use me. I must let him have his way.

Ezekiel 42-44; 1 John 1

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.Our Brilliant Heritage

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Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. — James 2:10

The moral law doesn’t take into account the fact that we are weak human beings. It doesn’t consider our infirmities or our sinful heredity. It simply demands that we be absolutely moral. The moral law never changes, either for the noblest or for the weakest. It doesn’t adjust itself to our shortcomings or make itself weak for the weak. It remains absolute for all time and eternity. If we don’t realize this, it’s because we are less than fully alive. Once we are born again and become fully alive to God’s will for us, life becomes a tragedy. The Spirit of God convicts us, and we know: “Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died” (Romans 7:9). Until we get to this place of conviction and see that we have no hope on our own, the cross of Christ is a farce to us.

“The law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin”

(v. 14). Conviction of sin always brings a fearful, binding sense of the law. It makes me feel hopeless, because I know that a guilty sinner like me cannot keep the law on my own. There is only one way I can get right with God, and that is by the death of Jesus Christ. I must get rid of the idea that I can ever be right with God through obedience. Who among us could ever obey God with absolute perfection!

“If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture . . .” (James 2:8). The moral law comes with an if. God never coerces us. In certain moods, we wish he would; in others, we wish he’d leave us alone. But when his will is ascendant in our lives, any question of compulsion is gone. Obeying God has to be a deliberate choice. Once we have made it, God will tax the remotest star and the last grain of sand to help us obey.

Ezekiel 40-41; 2 Peter 3

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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All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. — Romans 3:24

The gospel of God’s grace awakens an intense longing in the human soul, but also an equally intense resentment. We resent the revelation that we are justified freely by God’s grace, that there’s nothing we have to do to receive it. Human beings take a certain pride in giving, but receiving is a different matter. To come and accept something freely offered to us offends our pride. I’ll gladly give my life to martyrdom; I’ll gladly give myself in consecration. But don’t humiliate me by placing me on the same level as the most hell-deserving sinner and tell me that all I have to do for my salvation is to accept it as a gift through Jesus Christ.

We have to realize that we can’t earn or win anything from God. We must either receive his grace as a gift or go without. The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute. Until we arrive at this knowledge, our Lord is powerless to help us. He can do nothing for us if we think we’re sufficient without him. As long as we believe ourselves to be rich, as long as we possess anything resembling pride or independence, we won’t be able to enter his kingdom. We have to enter it by the door of destitution.

Are you knocking at the door of destitution now? Are you spiritually hungry? Only when we get spiritually hungry do we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes effectual in us the very nature of God. By the Spirit, God imparts to us the quickening life of Jesus, the life that puts the “beyond” within us. The instant the “beyond” is inside us, it rises to the “above,” lifting us into the domain where Jesus lives.

Ezekiel 33-34; 1 Peter 5

Wisdom from Oswald

The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him.… We have to pitch our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be.My Utmost for His Highest, January 6, 736 R

https://utmost.org/

. . . the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me. — Galatians 6:14

If you want to know the energy of God—the energy of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ—in your physical body, you must do more than simply think on the tragedy of God on the cross; you must brood upon it. Cut yourself off from distractions, stop taking an obsessive interest in your personal spiritual development, and consider, bare-spirited, the tragedy of God. The instant you do, his energy will be in you.

“Turn to me,” says God (Isaiah 45:22). God must become the dominating object of your attention. Pay attention to the objective Source and the subjective energy will follow. We lose power when we fail to concentrate on the right thing. The right thing is the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is the only thing we are called to preach—not salvation or sanctification or healing. In much preaching today, the focus is placed not on the cross but on its effects. Churches are criticized as feeble, and the criticism is justified because there has been no concentration of spiritual energy, no brooding on the tragedy of Calvary or on the meaning of redemption.

Concentrate on the cross in your preaching, and though the members of your audience might not seem to pay attention, they’ll never be the same again. If I talk my own talk, it’s of no more importance to you than your talk is to me. But if I talk the truth of God, you will meet it again, and so will I. When you concentrate on the great point of spiritual energy—the cross—keeping in contact with this center where all the power lies, its energy will be let loose. The proclaiming of the cross of Jesus Christ does its own work.

Ezekiel 27-29; 1 Peter 3

Wisdom from Oswald

The fiery furnaces are there by God’s direct permission. It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances; we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them.The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 674 R

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

When people are first born again, they become incoherent. They display a certain amount of unregulated emotion; their actions seem not to make sense. Yet this incoherence is only on the surface. The external life of the apostle Paul appeared haphazard, but underlying everything he did was a strong, steady coherence. Paul was rooted and grounded in God, and because of this he was able to let his external life change without it causing him distress.

Most of us aren’t spiritually coherent for the simple reason that we care more about external coherence than internal coherence. Paul lived in the basement; his consistency was down in the fundamentals, where the order of God’s purpose reigns. Most of us live in the upper stories, among the coherent critics, where external consistency is all that matters. The two spaces do not begin to touch each other. The great basis of Paul’s coherence was the agony of God in the redemption of the world—the cross of Jesus Christ.

Restate to yourself what you believe, then do away with as much of it as possible. Get back to the bedrock of the cross of Christ. Viewed as a single event in history, the cross is an infinitesimal thing; from the point of view of the Bible, it’s more important than all the empires of the world. If, when we preach, we drift away from brooding on the tragedy of God upon the cross, our preaching will produce nothing. It won’t convey the energy of God, and though it may be interesting, it will have no power. But if we preach the cross, the energy of God will be set loose. “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. . . . We preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:21, 23).

Ezekiel 24-26; 1 Peter 2

Wisdom from Oswald

There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1465 R

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Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters…so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God. — Psalm 123:2 kjv

This verse is a description of what it means to rely entirely on God. Just as the eyes of servants are riveted on their masters, so our eyes are fixed on God. Spiritual drift begins when we cease to lift our eyes to him. This loss of focus comes not so much through trouble on the outside as trouble on the inside, from questioning and doubting our own devotion and effort. “I guess I’ve been stretching myself a bit too much,” we think. “I’ve been standing on tiptoe and trying to look like God instead of being an ordinary, humble person.” We have to realize that no effort can be too high.

Think back to your own spiritual crisis. What happened after you made a stand for God and had the witness of the Spirit? At first you were full of inspiration and energy. But the weeks went by, then maybe the years, and you began to think, “Well, after all, I was being pretentious. Wasn’t I aiming a bit too high?” Your rational friends agreed with you. “Don’t be a fool,” they said. “We knew when you talked about this spiritual awakening that it was a fleeting impulse. You can’t keep up the strain, and God doesn’t expect you to.” Now you say, “I guess I was expecting too much.” It sounds humble to say this, but it means that your reliance on God is gone and reliance on worldly opinion has come in. The danger is that, because you no longer rely on God, you no longer lift your eyes to him. Only when God brings you to a sudden stop will you realize how terribly you’ve been missing out.

Whenever you begin to lose your focus on God, remedy the situation immediately. Recognize that something has been coming between you and him and make a readjustment at once.

Ezekiel 22-23; 1 Peter 1

Wisdom from Oswald

The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word.Disciples Indeed, 386 R

https://utmost.org/

I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. — John 17:4

The death of Jesus Christ was the performance in history of the mind of God. Jesus’s death wasn’t martyrdom; it wasn’t something that happened to Jesus or that might have been prevented. The death of Jesus Christ was on purpose. It was the very reason he came.

When you preach, take care not to belittle Jesus’s death or make his cross unnecessary. We do this when we preach that our heavenly Father forgives us because he loves us. Our Father does love us, but this isn’t the reason he forgives us. The reason is the death of Christ. To preach otherwise makes the redemption “much ado about nothing.” God could forgive humanity in no other way than by the death of his Son, and Jesus is exalted as Savior because of his death. “We do see Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death” (Hebrews 2:9). The greatest note of triumph that ever sounded in the ears of a startled universe was the note sounded on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30). This is the last word in the redemption of humankind.

Anything that belittles or seeks to obliterate the holiness of God by a false view of his love is untrue to the revelation of God given by Jesus Christ. Never allow the thought that Jesus Christ stands with us against God out of pity or compassion. Jesus Christ became a curse for us, not out of sympathy but by divine decree. Through the conviction of sin we are able to realize the overwhelming significance of this curse. Shame and penitence are gifts, given to us by the great mercy of God, which enable us to grasp the meaning of Calvary. Jesus Christ hates the wrong in humankind, and Calvary is the estimate of his hatred.

Ezekiel 16-17; James 3

Wisdom from Oswald

The life of Abraham is an illustration of two things: of unreserved surrender to God, and of God’s complete possession of a child of His for His own highest end.
Not Knowing Whither

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In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace. — Ephesians 1:7

Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God, the view that says the reason God forgives us is that he is so kind and loving. This idea has no place in the New Testament. The only ground on which God can forgive us and reinstate us in his favor is the tremendous tragedy of the cross of Christ. It is “through his blood” that our sins are forgiven. To put forgiveness on any other ground is blasphemy.

Forgiveness is easy for us to accept, but it wasn’t easily won. Forgiveness cost God the agony of Calvary. It’s possible for us to forget this and to take everything God gives us with the simplicity of faith—to take forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit and our sanctification without recalling the enormous price he paid to make them ours. Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace, a miracle wrought in the atonement. Never accept a view of the fatherhood of God that erases the atonement. The revelation of God is that he cannot forgive without the cross of Jesus Christ. If he did, he would compromise his holiness and contradict his nature. God’s forgiveness is natural only in the supernatural domain.

Compared with the miracle of the forgiveness of sin, the experience of sanctification is slight. Sanctification is simply the expression of the forgiveness of sins in a human life. The thing that awakens the deepest well of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven sin. The apostle Paul had this well awakened in him, and he never got away from it. When you, like Paul, realize what it cost to forgive you, you will be held as he was: in an iron grip, constrained by the love of God.

Ezekiel 14-15; James 2

Wisdom from Oswald

The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word.Disciples Indeed, 386 R

https://utmost.org/

When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin. —John 16:8

Very few of us know anything about the conviction of sin. We know what it feels like to be disturbed at having done something wrong, but we don’t know conviction. To be convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit is to have every earthly relationship blotted out and to stand alone with the heavenly Father, knowing fully whom we have wronged: “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4).

When we are convicted of sin in this way, we know with every power of our conscience that God dare not forgive us—not without a price being paid. If he did, it would mean that we have a stronger sense of justice than God. God’s forgiveness is the great miracle of his grace, but it cost him the breaking of his heart in the death of Christ. Only through this death is the divine nature able to forgive while remaining true to itself. It’s shallow nonsense to say that the reason God forgives us is that God is love. Once we’ve been convicted of sin, we’ll never say this again. The love of God means Calvary and nothing less. The love of God is written on the cross and nowhere else. Only on the cross is God’s conscience satisfied.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean only that I am saved from hell and made right for heaven. It means that I am forgiven into a new relationship; I am re-created and identified with God in Christ. The miracle of redemption is that God turns me, an unholy being, into the standard of himself, the Holy One. He does this by giving me a new disposition, the disposition of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Ezekiel 11-13; James 1

Wisdom from Oswald

We all have the trick of saying—If only I were not where I am!—If only I had not got the kind of people I have to live with! If our faith or our religion does not help us in the conditions we are in, we have either a further struggle to go through, or we had better abandon that faith and religion. The Shadow of an Agony, 1178 L

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If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. —John 8:36

After we are born again, any selfish individuality remaining inside us will always say “I can’t” when God calls. We have to leave off our individuality and develop our personality instead. The full meaning of the word personality is a being, created by God, who has lived on this earth and formed a godly character. The majority of us are not personalities yet. We are beginning to be, but we haven’t yet rid ourselves of our individuality.

Personality never says, “I can’t.” When it comes into contact with God, it absorbs and absorbs and always wants more. This is the way we are built. We are designed with a great capacity for God, but sin and individuality keep us from him. God delivers us from sin, but we have to deliver ourselves from individuality. We do this by offering our natural life to him and by sacrificing that life, through obedience, until it’s transformed into a spiritual life.

God doesn’t pay attention to our natural individuality in the development of our spiritual lives, but he does expect us to pay attention to it. His order is present in every facet of our natural lives, and we have to make sure that we help that order along, not stand against it, saying, “I can’t.” God won’t discipline us; he won’t bring our thoughts into captivity. We have to do it.

Don’t go to God and say, “Oh, Lord, I suffer from wandering thoughts.” Don’t suffer from wandering thoughts. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individuality and get emancipated into personality.

“If the Son sets you free . . .” Don’t substitute “Savior” for “Son.” The Savior sets us free from sin; the Son sets us free from individuality. It is what Paul means in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Paul’s individuality has been broken, and his personality is united with his Lord’s. He is “free indeed”—free from the inside out, free in the very essence of his being.

Ezekiel 8-10; Hebrews 13

Wisdom from Oswald

For the past three hundred years men have been pointing out how similar Jesus Christ’s teachings are to other good teachings. We have to remember that Christianity, if it is not a supernatural miracle, is a sham. The Highest Good, 548 L

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I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son . . . I will surely bless you. —Genesis 22:16-17

Because you have done this . . .” Abraham had reached the place where he was in touch with the very nature of God. He understood the reality of God and obeyed instantly when God demanded his son.

If I want to reach the place Abraham reached—if I want to see who God is—I can only do it through obedience. Obedience is the key to developing my character.

It is my character, not God’s, which determines God’s revelation of himself to me.

’Tis because I am mean,
Thy ways so oft look mean to me.
—George MacDonald

Prompt obedience is the evidence that God’s nature is inside me. If God, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, is inside me, there’s no possibility of my questioning or refusing when he speaks, because he speaks to his own nature. When Jesus says, “Come,” I come. When he says, “Let go,” I let go. When he says, “Trust God in this matter,” I trust.

God’s promises are of no value to us until by obedience we understand his nature. We can read a certain passage of the Bible three hundred and sixty-five times without understanding it. Then all of a sudden, because we have obeyed God in some particular thing, the passage becomes clear. Our obedience has opened God’s nature to us, and we see what he means.

“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God”(2 Corinthians 1:20). The “yes” must be born of obedience. When, by obedience, we say “amen” to a promise, the promise becomes ours. I never have a real God until I come face-to-face with him in Jesus Christ. Then I know that “earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25).

Ezekiel 5-7; Hebrews 12

Wisdom from Oswald

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L

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As for me, the Lord has led me on the journey. —Genesis 24:27

We have to be so one with God that we do not need to continually ask for his guidance. Sanctification means that we have been made God’s children, and the natural life of a child is obedience—until the child wishes to be disobedient. The instant we are disobedient, we get a warning; a kind of intuitive jolt alerts us. In the spiritual domain, this jolt comes from the Spirit of God. When he checks us, we have to stop at once and be renewed in the spirit of our mind so that we may discern God’s will.

If we have been born again of the Spirit, we do not dictate to God where he should guide us. We simply know that “the Lord has led” us on our journey. When we look back, we see the presence of an amazing design, a design which, because we’ve been born of God, we credit entirely to him.

Anyone can see God in exceptional things, but it requires spiritual discipline to see him in every detail. If we have this discipline, we’re ready to discover divine designs everywhere. What appears random and haphazard to most people is to us nothing less than God’s appointed order.

Beware of making a fetish of consistency to your own convictions instead of being devoted to God. If you are following Jesus Christ, you’ll probably find yourself doing things you swore you’d never do, because there was never a more inconsistent being on this earth than our Lord. But he was never inconsistent to his Father. The one consistency of the disciple is loyalty not to a conviction or a principle but to the divine life. It is the divine life which continually makes more and more discoveries about the divine mind. It’s easier to be a fanatic than a faithful soul, because there is something amazingly humbling—particularly to our religious conceit—about being loyal to God.

Lamentations 3-5; Hebrews 10:19-39

Wisdom from Oswald

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L

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I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. — Galatians 2:20

We have to battle through our moods into absolute devotion to Jesus Christ, to get out of the hole of our own experience into abandoned devotion to him. Think about what the New Testament says about Jesus Christ, and then think about the trifling, inadequate faith many of us have. The New Testament says that Jesus Christ can present us faultless before the throne of God, unutterably pure, absolutely rectified, and profoundly justified. It says that he has “become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Yet we base our faith not in him but in our experiences. We complain that this or that hasn’t happened to us, and we talk about all the difficult things we’ve done on his behalf. How can we talk of making sacrifices for the Son of God? He has saved us from hell and perdition, and we talk about making sacrifices!

We have to continually move beyond our experiences into faith in Jesus Christ. We have to seek the New Testament Jesus Christ—not a prayer meeting Jesus Christ or a book Jesus Christ, but the Jesus Christ who is God incarnate, the Christ whose majesty so overwhelms us that we fall at his feet as if dead (Revelation 1:17). Our faith must be not in our experience but in the One from whom our experience springs. We can never directly experience Jesus Christ nor even hold him within the compass of our hearts, but we can build our faith in strong, emphatic confidence in him.

No wonder the Holy Spirit has such a rugged impatience with unbelief. He knows that all our fears are wicked, and that we fear because we won’t nourish ourselves in our faith. How can anyone who is identified with Jesus Christ suffer from doubt or fear! Our lives in him should be psalms of irrepressible, triumphant belief.

Lamentations 1-2; Hebrews 10:1-18

Wisdom from Oswald

Defenders of the faith are inclined to be bitter until they learn to walk in the light of the Lord. When you have learned to walk in the light of the Lord, bitterness and contention are impossible.
Biblical Psychology

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If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. — 2 Corinthians 5:17

What is your idea of salvation? The experience of salvation means that in your life things have actually been changed. When you are saved, you no longer look at things as you used to. Your desires are new. The things which used to rule you have lost their power.

A key question in this experience is, Has God changed the things that matter? If you still long for old things, it’s absurd to talk about being born from above. When you are born again, the Spirit of God manifests a change in your mind and life. Afterward, when a crisis arises, you are the most amazed person on earth at the wonderful difference in you. There is no possibility of imagining that you caused this difference; you know beyond a doubt that it was the Spirit of God. This complete and amazing change is the evidence that you are a saved soul.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” (1 Corinthians 13:4). What difference has salvation and sanctification made in me? Can I walk tall in the light of 1 Corinthians 13, or do I have to shuffle? The salvation that is worked out in me by the Holy Spirit emancipates me entirely. As long as I walk in the light as God is in the light, he sees nothing to censure, because his life is working through every aspect of my own—not only those aspects I am conscious of but also those that lie deeper than my consciousness.

Jeremiah 51-52; Hebrews 9

Wisdom from Oswald

The Christian Church should not be a secret society of specialists, but a public manifestation of believers in Jesus. Facing Reality, 34 R

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Take your son . . . — Genesis 22:2

When God commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac to the mountain and “sacrifice him there as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2), he meant that Abraham should take Isaac now. God’s commands to us are always meant for right now. Climbing to the height God shows us can never be done later.

It’s extraordinary how we debate and procrastinate. We know that what God wants us to do is right, but we find excuses for not doing it. Where we should be resolved, we have a failure of will. The sacrifice must be made in our will before we do it in actuality.

“Early the next morning Abraham got up and . . . set out for the place God had told him about” (v. 3). The wonderful simplicity of Abraham! When God spoke, Abraham didn’t debate or “consult any human being” (Galatians 1:16). Beware if, when God tells you to do something, you find yourself consulting another person—especially if that person is yourself. Your own sympathies and insight will compete with your obedience to God, as will anything that isn’t based in your personal relationship with him.

Always guard against self-chosen service for God. Self-sacrifice may be a disease. If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; if he has made it bitter, drink it in communion with him. When the providential order of God for you is a time of hardship, go through it. But never choose the scene of your martyrdom. Abraham didn’t choose the sacrifice he would make; God chose for him. And Abraham did not protest. He simply went through it.

If you aren’t living in touch with God, it’s easy to pass a rash verdict on him. You must go through the crucible before you have any right to issue a verdict, because in the crucible you learn to know God better. Once you do know God, you recognize that he is working toward his highest ends and will continue to do so until his purpose and humanity’s purpose become one.

Jeremiah 50; Hebrews 8

Wisdom from Oswald

When we no longer seek God for His blessings, we have time to seek Him for Himself. The Moral Foundations of Life, 728 L

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We sent Timothy, who is our brother and co-worker in God’s service in spreading the gospel of Christ. — 1 Thessalonians 3:2

After I am sanctified and become a “co-worker in God’s service,” I will probably find it difficult to state what my aim in life is. This is because the Lord has taken me up into a purpose which he alone knows. All my goings are organized by him, which means I can never understand them. What I do know is that he is using me for his purposes throughout the world, just as he used his Son for the purpose of our salvation.

If I seek great things for myself—“God has called me for this and that”—and cling to purposes of my own, I put a barrier between myself and God and make it impossible for him to use me. As long as I have an interest in my own character or in any set ambition, I won’t be able to fully identify myself with God’s interests. I can only get through to total identification by losing forever any idea of myself and by letting God take me out into his purpose for the world.

I have to learn that the aim of life is God’s, not mine. God is using me from his great personal standpoint. All he asks of me is that I have implicit faith in him and in his goodness, such faith that I never say, “Lord, this gives me such heartache.” To talk in that way makes me an impediment to him. When I stop telling God what I want, he can take me up for what he wants without hindrance. He can crumple me or exalt me. He can do anything he chooses.

Self-pity is of the devil. If I go down that road, I cannot be used by God for his purpose, because I live in my own private sphere, a little “world within the world.” God will never be able to get me to come out into his world, because I’m too afraid of what I’ll encounter. I have to set aside my selfishness and fear and become entirely identified with him.

Jeremiah 48-49; Hebrews 7

Wisdom from Oswald

Am I becoming more and more in love with God as a holy God, or with the conception of an amiable Being who says, “Oh well, sin doesn’t matter much”? Disciples Indeed, 389 L

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In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. —Romans 8:28

In the life of a saint, there is no such thing as chance. God, by his providence, brings you into circumstances that you can’t understand at all, and the only thing you know is that the Spirit of God understands. Never take your circumstances into your own hand and say, “I’m going to be my own providence here. I must watch this and guard that.” All your circumstances are in the hand of God; never think this strange concerning the circumstances you are in.

God is bringing you into certain places and among certain people for a reason: so that the Holy Spirit inside you can intercede along a particular line. The Holy Spirit’s part in intercessory prayer isn’t the human part. As a human being, you are not to engage in the agonies of intercession; the Holy Spirit takes those upon himself. “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26). Your part is to take the circumstances you’re in and the people you’re among and bring them before God’s throne. This is how you give the Spirit inside you a chance to intercede, and how God is going to sweep the whole world with his saints.

Ask yourself: Am I making the Holy Spirit’s work difficult by being noncommittal or by trying to do his work for him? You must leave the Spirit side of intercession alone and focus on your side—your specific circumstances and acquaintances.

My intercessions can never be your intercessions, and your intercessions can never be mine. But the Holy Spirit makes intercessions in each of our lives, intercessions without which someone else will be impoverished.

Jeremiah 40-42; Hebrews 4

Wisdom from Oswald

Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1449 L

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Whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this? —John 11:26

Martha believed in the power at the disposal of Jesus Christ. She believed that Jesus could have healed her brother, Lazarus, if only Jesus had been present when Lazarus was dying (John 11:21). She also believed that Jesus had a unique relationship with God and that whatever Jesus asked of God, God would do. But Martha needed a closer personal intimacy with Jesus; her program of belief was entirely focused on future fulfillment. When Jesus told her that Lazarus would rise again, she replied, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (v. 24). Jesus wanted her belief to be rooted in the present moment; he wanted her faith to be a personal possession, and he asked a question that led her to a new understanding: “Do you believe?”

Is there something similar in the Lord’s current dealings with you? Is Jesus educating you into personal intimacy with him? Let him drive his questions home: “Do you believe? What is your ordeal of doubt?” Have you, like Martha, come to some overwhelming moment in your circumstances, a moment when your program of belief is about to become personal belief? This can never take place until a personal need arises out of a personal problem.

To believe is to commit. If I have a program of belief, I commit myself to a certain set of ideas or principles and abandon all that is not related to them. In personal belief, I commit myself morally to confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and refuse to compromise. I commit myself spiritually to the Lord, and determine that, in this particular thing, I will be dominated by him.

When I stand face-to-face with Jesus Christ and he says to me, “Do you believe?” I find that faith is as natural as breathing, and I am amazed that I didn’t trust him before.

Jeremiah 37-39; Hebrews 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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Rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ. —1 Peter 4:13

If you are going to be used by God, he will take you through a multitude of difficult experiences, asking you to participate in the sufferings of Christ. These experiences aren’t meant to enrich you or benefit you personally. They’re meant to make you useful in God’s hands and to enable you to understand what occurs in other people’s souls, so that you will never be surprised by what you encounter. If you don’t go willingly through these experiences, you might often find yourself saying, “I can’t deal with that person.” You should never feel this way about another soul. God has given you ample opportunity to come before him and soak up his wisdom about others.

It might seem pointless to spend time soaking before God in this way; you have to get to the place where you are able to understand how he deals with us, and this is only done by being rightly related to Jesus Christ and participating in his sufferings. The sufferings of Christ aren’t those of ordinary life. He suffered “according to God’s will” (1 Peter 4:19), not because his individual desires or pride were thwarted. It is part of Christian culture to know what God’s will is, yet in the history of the church, the tendency has been to avoid being identified with Christ’s sufferings. People have tried to carry out God’s will using shortcuts. God’s way is always the “long, long trail,” the way of suffering.

Are you participating in Christ’s sufferings? Are you prepared for God to entirely stamp out your personal ambitions and destroy your individual determination? It doesn’t mean you’ll know exactly why God is taking you a certain way. In the moment, it’s never clear; you go through more or less blindly. Then, suddenly, you come to a luminous place and say, “Why, God was there all along, and I didn’t know it!”

Jeremiah 34-36; Hebrews 2

Wisdom from Oswald

We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.So Send I You, 1330 L

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Come near to God and he will come near to you. —James 4:8

It’s essential for us, as ministers of the gospel, to give people a chance to act on the truth of God. We might wish we could act for them, but no individual can act for another. Our role is to share the evangelical message, a message which can and should lead to action. But the ultimate responsibility must be left with the individual. The paralysis of refusing to act leaves people exactly where they were before. Once they act, they are never the same again.

Acting on the truth of God can look like foolishness in the eyes of the world. Because of this, many who have been convicted by the Holy Spirit refuse to act. And yet the very second I act, I live; all the rest is mere existence. The moments when I truly live are the moments when I act with my whole will.

Never allow a truth of God that is brought home to your soul to pass without acting on it—not necessarily physically, but in your will. Record it with ink or with blood. The weakest saint is emancipated the instant she acts. In that instant, all the power of God Almighty is on her side.

We back down from acting on God’s truth all the time. We come up to the truth, confess we are wrong, then turn back. We do this over and over again, until we learn that we have no business going back. We have to transact business with our Lord on the truth he is showing us, whatever it may be. When he tells us, “Come,” he really means “transact with me.”

“Come near to God.” The last thing we’ll do is come to God, but all who do come know that the instant they come, the supernatural life of God invades them. The dominating power of the world and the flesh and the devil is paralyzed, not by their act of coming but because that act has linked them to God and his redemptive power.

Jeremiah 32-33; Hebrews 1

Wisdom from Oswald

To read the Bible according to God’s providential order in your circumstances is the only way to read it, viz., in the blood and passion of personal life.Disciples Indeed, 387 R

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