Craig T. Owens

This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

In Christ I Can

     We are made sons and daughters of God through the Atonement and we have a tremendous dignity to maintain; we have no business to bow our necks to any yoke saving the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ [Matthew 11:28-30]. …

     Every detail of our physical life is to be absolutely under the control of the new disposition which God planted in us by means of identification with Jesus Christ, and we shall no longer be allowed to murmur ‘can’t.’ There is no such word as ‘can’t’ in a Christian’s vocabulary if he is rightly related to God; there is only one word and that is ‘can.’

From Biblical Psychology

Sometimes Christians are known more for what we’re against than what we’re for. I think Oswald Chambers would say that is because we don’t really understand the full power of the Atonement.

We can better understand that word by saying it “at one-ment.” We have been made one with Christ. You hear this in Jesus’ prayer for us in John 17, “I in them and You in Me, in order that they may become one and perfectly united, that the world may know and definitely recognize that You sent Me and that You have loved them even as You have loved Me.”

When we are in this sort of relationship, we don’t even say can’t to sin. Instead, we say I can live a holy life because of Christ in me!

As Paul said, we can say:

I CAN do everything through Christ Who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13)