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.
Not A Happy Life, But A New Life
This attitude is spreading amongst us today amazingly, people are enchanted with the truth, sympathetic with the truth of God, but remaining in sin. “Repentance” is not in their vocabulary, only regret; there is no confession of sin, only admitting. Religion is turned into education, and the Christian life is made to mean a happy life instead of a new life.
Has God been convicting us of spiritual pose before Him? Have we taken the great passion of the Atonement and made it simply mean that we must have a right attitude to God? We have to have much more than a right attitude; we have to get into an active, living relation to God, the inspiration of which is a great deep true penitence. Have we forgotten all about penitence these days? Has penitence ever rung down to our very soul, or have we only known regret? Have we ever known what it is to confess our sin, to unfold our life before God until there is nothing folded up, and God’s penetrating truth has its way? If not, we shall find as [Ezekiel 33:31] reveals, that it is perilously easy to have amazing sympathy with God’s truth and still remain in sin.
From God’s Workmanship
Sometimes my new life in Christ won’t be a happy life in Christ. Why? Because if I’m truly letting God’s Word penetrate my heart, I’m going to be unhappy with the sin His penetrating look reveals.
What will I do then? Will I just feel sorry for my sin? Or will I confess it, be penitent because of it, turn from it, and leave that sin behind?
That’s the new life God is calling me to.
A new life will become a happy life. But a happy life won’t become a new life.
Craig T. Owens 