I was reading some thoughts from Oswald Chambers the other day that are actually related to my last post. He's being a little disjointed and mystical, but I like some of his ideas about how we view things. (Read the full texts here and here) He says:
Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see yourself as separate from Him. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very simple one— “Come to Me . . . .” The intellectual, moral, and spiritual depth of our reality as a person is tested and measured by these words.
And again:
Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.
I appreciate Chambers' directness, and I like the way he characterizes closeness to Christ as "rest." I'm still chewing on the Christ-awareness-replacing-self-awareness part, but it seems to speak to the subject of self-definition that I raised in the previous post. If any of you have thoughts on this, I would love to hear them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Ok, I yam confused. What happened to my latest post? And how did this one get moved to the top?
Did you see the recent Hope publication from Lahash? They are talking about rest. I read it and it was perfect timing for me. I realized God needed me to rest in him and I like how you said that Chambers makes rest and closeness with Christ one. I am feeling the effects of this in my life right now. I am not as close to Christ as I have been and I've been feeling tired. Like I'm using all my energy to do what I think is right. Instead I should be doing nothing but following and seeking Christ. If I do that I will have true rest.
hmmm...
I was talking with Kevin last week about how success and failure can mold us and we believe that we are our success and our failures. But like Karyn said in one of her recent blog posts, (http://girlofcardigan.blogspot.com/2010/08/love-letter.html) God does not see us that way. In God's eyes we are free from having success and failure define who we are. Instead we are a new creation. But what are we then? How do we define ourselves? How does God define us? --- I am God's daughter. That's it. That's it? Is it really that simple yet not simple all at the same time?
Okay. Now I'm just blabbing and thinking out loud.
Thanks for the post. It really made me think.
Post a Comment