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.

Stay True To The Word

     We must disabuse our minds of the idea that God sits like a Judge on a throne and batters humanity into shape. …

     We have to remember that an enthusiasm for humanity which ignores the Bible is sure to end in disaster. … 

     It is quite possible for the human mind to blot God out of its thinking entirely, and to work along the line of the elements which are the same in every man, and to band the whole of the human race into a solid atheistic community. … 

     When men depart from the Bible they call humanity “God” in differing terms; the use of the term “God” means nothing to them, God is simply the name given to the general tendencies which further men’s interests. This spirit is honeycombing everything, we find it coming into the way we talk of Christian experience; there is creeping in the idea that God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are simply meant to bless us, to further our interests. … 

     Watch the tendency abroad today; people want to get rid of Jesus Christ, they cannot prove that He did not live, or that He was not a remarkable Man; but they set to work to dissolve Him by analysis, to say He was not really God Incarnate. Jesus Christ always upsets the calculations of humanity; that is what made Voltaire say “Crucify the wretch, stamp Him and His crazy tale out,” because He was the stumbling block to all the reasonings of men. You cannot work Jesus Christ into any system of thinking. If you could keep Him out, everything could be explained. The world could be explained by evolution, but you cannot fit Jesus Christ into the theory of evolution. Jesus Christ is an annoyance to satan, a thorn in the side of the world at large, an absolute distress to sin in the individual.

From The Philosophy Of Sin

Oswald Chambers always penned wise words, but what makes his words so wise is that they are solidly rooted in Scripture.

In the above passages, Chambers warns us what happens when we forget the word of God as given to us in the Bible:

• We see God as harsh and unloving
• We make short-sighted decisions
• We build a community in our image
• We all have a different idea of who God is
• We make “God” fit into our own molds
• We water down who Jesus is
• We create new worldviews not consistent with God’s design

Bottom line: Stay in the Word. Make Bible reading a regular part of your life, so that you don’t get caught up in the churning waves of “popular” culture.