On Your Knees...

I love this. It's easy to let pretty much anything morph into everything it isn't supposed to be. And in ministry we too commonly dismiss it on the grounds that we are "furthering the kingdom" and "doing the Lord's work" and blah, blah. Don't get me wrong, the work is important...I don't think for one second God just wants us to sit on our butts and wait for the show to start, but what are we counting on? I know my efforts aren't going to cut it...God has got to be in control, I've got to let Him use me! Who knows what that may look like...it could be a hundred times different than anything I imaged, but what I do know is that if I'm not talking to Him and listening to Him and seeking and searching for where it is He wants me, then...what's the point, really? Besides, I think it's a pretty sweet deal that I CAN talk to and hear from my father in heaven...talk to and hear from the creator of EVERYTHING! When I see it like that, I wonder why I don't pray more often...

Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest

-Matthew 9:38

The Key to the Master’s Orders - Oswald Chambers The key to the missionary’s difficult task is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work— that is, not work as the word is commonly used today, which often results in the shifting of our focus away from God. The key to the missionary’s difficult task is also not the key of common sense, nor is it the key of medicine, civilization, education, or even evangelization. The key is in following the Master’s orders— the key is prayer. "Pray the Lord of the harvest . . . ." In the natural realm, prayer is not practical but absurd. We have to realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view. From Jesus Christ’s perspective, there are no nations, but only the world. How many of us pray without regard to the persons, but with regard to only one Person— Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced through distress and through conviction of sin. This is the harvest for which we have to pray that laborers be sent out to reap. We stay busy at work, while people all around us are ripe and ready to be harvested; we do not reap even one of them, but simply waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities and programs. Suppose a crisis were to come into your father’s or your brother’s life— are you there as a laborer to reap the harvest for Jesus Christ? Is your response, "Oh, but I have a special work to do!" No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own, "a servant [who] is not greater than his master" (John 13:16), and someone who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls us to no special work— He calls us to Himself. "Pray the Lord of the harvest," and He will engineer your circumstances to send you out as His laborer.

It's Simple...

So, this morning I was praying for some guidance and wisdom about a couple situations and decisions to be made...I love the though-provoking ideas of Oswald Chambers. I was reading today's devotional from My Utmost For His Highest and felt like God kind of did the whole "could have had a V-8" thing! Haha! Really! Here is what I read:

"The simplicity that is in Christ."

-2 Corinthians 11:3

Imagination Vs. Inspiration - Oswald Chambers
Simplicity is the secret of seeing things clearly. A saint does not think clearly for a long while, but a saint ought to see clearly without any difficulty. You cannot think a spiritual muddle clear, you have to obey it clear. In intellectual matters you can think things out, but in spiritual matters you will think yourself into cotton wool. If there is something upon which God has put His pressure, obey in that matter, bring your imagination into captivity to the obedience of Christ with regard to it and everything will become as clear as daylight. The reasoning capacity comes afterwards, but we never see along that line, we see like children; when we try to be wise we see nothing
(Matthew 11:25).
The tiniest thing we allow in our lives that is not under the control of the Holy Spirit is quite sufficient to account for spiritual muddle, and all the thinking we like to spend on it will never make it clear. Spiritual muddle is only made plain by obedience. Immediately we obey, we discern. This is humiliating, because when we are muddled we know the reason is in the temper of our mind. When the natural power of vision is devoted to the Holy Spirit, it becomes the power of perceiving God's will and the whole life is kept in simplicity.

I love this...You can't think it clear, you have to OBEY it clear! So I had better stop asking so many questions and trying to handle these situations on my own and just start obeying! Praise God for humility and being able to open eyes, even we were plainly refuse to see things His way. He never gives up on us!

If That's What It Takes...

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

-Matthew 5:30 (ESV)

The Strictest Discipline – Oswald Chambers

"Jesus did not say that everyone must cut off his right hand, but that "if your right hand causes you to sin" in your walk with Him, then it's better to "cut it off". There are many things that are perfectly legitimate, but if you are going to concentrate on God you cannot do them. Your right hand is one of the best things you have, but Jesus says that is it hinders you in following His precepts, then "cut it off". The principle taught here is the strictest discipline or lesson that ever hit humankind.
When God changes you through regeneration, giving you new life through spiritual rebirth, your life initially has the characteristic of being maimed. There are a hundred and one things that you dare not do—things that would be sin for you, and things that would be recognized as sin by those who really know you. But the unspiritual people around you will say, "What's so wrong with doing that? How absurd you are!" There has never yet been a saint who has not lived a maimed life initially. Yet it is better to enter into life maimed but lovely in God's sight than to appear lovely to man's eyes but lame to God's. At first, Jesus Christ through His Spirit has to restrain you from doing a great many things that may be perfectly right for everyone else but not right for you.
The Christian life is maimed life initially, but in verse 48 Jesus gave us the picture of a perfectly well-rounded life—"You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.""

I really love that verse! The severity of it just makes wheels start turning. It's so true how there are things that many Christ followers would never even imagine doing, but that same thing is a walk in the park for the next person. It's almost upsetting sometimes when people who know your beliefs and convictions try to coerce into doing something that you consider sin! Or they tease you because "you're such a good little girl, you would never do anything fun anyways..." Yeah, it really hurts my feelings. So maybe I don't like to do the same things I used to do all the time, that I though were fun and I didn't see any sort of problem with. But this is my LIFE we are talking about, there is really no point in jeopardizing that for what the world perceives as a "good time".

Recognized...

It's so easy for a while to just shove everything to the side and make excuse after excuse and say you'll do better tomorrow, or you will just deal with it all later. I have been doing that in so many areas lately and it has just all built up and I get so frustrated. It is true the Lord's mercies are fresh each morning, but it is wrong to abuse that fact, and I certainly have been. It's absolutely heartbreaking, mainly to God, but also to me and many people who I come in contact with. I honestly can't stand when people claim to be Christians and deny Jesus with every choice they make, I refuse to be one of those "Christians". I want to apologize to a few people who I care a lot about. I haven't been the kind of friend that I am called to be lately, and I hope you guys will forgive me. This little bit of truth hit me hard today…

Reconciling Yourself To The Fact Of Sin – Oswald Chambers

"Not being reconciled to the fact of sin – not recognizing it and refusing to deal with it – produces all the disasters in life. You may talk about the lofty virtues of human nature, but there is something in human nature, that will mockingly laugh in the face of every principle you have. If you refuse to agree with the fact that there is wickedness and selfishness, something downright hateful and wrong, in human being, when it attacks your life, instead of reconciling yourself to it, you will compromise with is and say that it is of this "hour, and the power of darkness" into which includes no recognition of sin whatsoever? In your human relationships and friendships, how you reconciled yourself to the fact of sin? If not, just around the next corner you ill find yourself trapped and you will compromise with it. But if you will reconcile yourself to the fact of sin, you will realize the danger immediately and say, "Yes, I see what this sin would mean." The recognition of sin does not destroy the basis of friendship – it simply establishes a mutual respect for the face that the basis of sinful life is disastrous. Always beware of any assessment of life which does not recognize the face that there is sin.

Jesus Christ never trusted human nature, yet He was never cynical nor suspicious, because He had absolute trust in what He could do for human nature. The pure man or woman is the one who is shielded from harm, not the innocent person, The so-called innocent man or woman is never safe. Men and women have no business trying to be innocent; God demands that they be pure and virtuous. Innocence is the characteristic of a child. Any person is deserving of blame if he is unwilling to reconcile himself to the face of sin."