“This week, these worries, this world, may leave you feeling a bit depressed,
but you have a God who is obsessed with you.
His love for you is oceanic,
His welcome of you is enthusiastic,
His purpose through you is cosmic,
His commitment to you is astronomic, and
His hope in you is meteoric.”
—Ann Voskamp, in The Way Of Abundance
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.
Jeremiah 24
[These are notes from Oswald Chambers’ lecture on Jeremiah 24.]
The estimate a Christian must hold of his own value is what he is worth to God. You cannot judge whether you are right with God by His blessings because “He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” [Matthew 5:45]. God is not meant to bless us; the vital question is—What am I worth to God? In times of affliction am I giving way to self-pity? am I badgering the throne of God for Him to bless me, or am I saying, “Though He slay me, yet will I wait for Him” [Job 13:15]? …
The question, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” is the call for Jeremiah to state clearly to himself what it is he sees. ‘Two baskets of figs set before the temple of the Lord’—these symbolize the people as they appear before God. They have been trying to bring wrong things to the altar, and now God is saying He will destroy the evil and wrong out of the nation.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1). This verse refers to an abiding law, individually and nationally: we cannot consecrate to God anything that is sinful. We cannot present our bodies “a living sacrifice” to God unless we have been cleansed from sin; He won’t have them. The call in this verse is not for sanctification, but for the service of the sanctified. We could never begin to be of worth to God in service until we have been through what is represented in the atoning sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why the majority of us are of no worth to God. We are of no value to God until we enter into the experience of instantaneous, continuous sanctification, then our “spiritual act of worship” is the offering of ourselves “as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” and we no more bother about ourselves.
From Notes On Jeremiah
This is, without a doubt, a challenging word from Oswald Chambers that deserves some time for us to thoughtfully consider it.
Can God use me? Am I allowing the Holy Spirit to continually and instantaneously stamp the image of Jesus more clearly in my life? Or am I saying, “I’m good like this. I don’t need to go any further”?
God wants to use us for His glory. Are we allowing ourselves to be in a place where we can be used “as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God”?
Craig T. Owens 