Love, Thou bottomless abyss,
What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered 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.
Winning The Spiritual Fights
“The love of God in Christ Jesus is such that He can take the most unfit man—unfit to survive, unfit to fight, unfit to face moral issues—and make him not only fit to survive and to fight, but fit to face the biggest moral issues and the strongest power of satan, and come off more than conqueror.”
“The devil is a bully, but when we stand in the armor of God, he cannot harm us; if we tackle him in our own strength we are soon done for.”
“It is never wise to under-estimate an enemy. We look upon the enemy of our souls as a conquered foe; so he is, but only to God, not to us.”
From Run Today’s Race
Run Today’s Race contains short statements from Oswald Chambers intended to stimulate Christians to ponder things like:
Take just a minute to get a clear mental picture of your best friend.
Got it?
Now, think of a few adjectives you would use to describe your best friend.
Did you think of words like loyal … trustworthy … honest … loving … faithful … reliable … authentic … funny … patient ….?
What about godly? Would you describe your best friend with that word? After all, if your friend is godly, wouldn’t he or she also be loyal, trustworthy, honest, loving, and so on?
This gives us an idea of how important friendships are to God. If calling someone “godly” sums up the very best attributes of your very best friend, then that means that you can see God in your friend. And hopefully they can see God in you too!
Jesus told His followers that He viewed them as friends. He told them…
Eugene Peterson said, “Friendship is not a way of accomplishing something but a way of being with another in which we become more authentically ourselves.”
Your best friend is someone you can be completely real around, right? No games, no masks, just come as you are. And your friend still loves you completely. This is how it is with God as our Best Friend too!
There is nothing you could ever do to make God love you any less, so stop worrying!
There is nothing you could ever do to make God love you any more, so stop trying!
Friends love us enough to be totally honest with us. That’s why Solomon said, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy only multiplies kisses” (Proverbs 27:6).
Friends want us to have the very best, and to stay on paths that lead to success. So again Solomon wrote, “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend” (Proverbs 27:17).
Oswald Chambers tells us, “Friendship with God is faith in action in relation to God and to our fellow men.”
So be assured of God’s friendship with you. Then be God’s friend to those in your life, and allow them to be God’s friend right back to you … THAT’S WHAT REAL FRIENDS ARE FOR!
’Midst the darkness, storm, and sorrow,
“God has loved me to the end of all my sinfulness, all of my self-will, all of my stiff-neckedness, all my pride, all my self-interest; now He says—‘Love one another, as I have loved you.’ I am to show my fellow men the same love that God showed me. That is Christianity in practical working order.” —Oswald Chambers, in Run Today’s Race
Tim Tebow is not only an upbeat athlete, he is an enthusiastic encourager to others too. His latest book is called Know Who You Are—Live Like It Matters. Although mainly written to help homeschool families with some journaling ideas, this book is jam-packed with uplifting thoughts. You can check out my full book review by clicking here.
“The world does not define you: Not the clothes you wear. Not the kind of music you listen to. Not the mistakes you’ve made. Not the trophies you’ve won. You are not defined by what others think of you, good or bad, or how many people follow or like you on Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook. You are not defined by the talents you have or don’t have. There is only one thing, one Person, who defines your identity. His name is Jesus Christ.”
“If you do the right thing just to do the right thing, you’re going to wear yourself out at some point. We should always do the right thing because we want to honor Jesus, because we want to be like Him in everything we think, say, and do. … This is why we seek to have integrity. This is why we build good character. This is why we do the right thing. Because Jesus did it first and our mission is to be like Him.”
“What happens when we hide God’s Words in our hearts? We grow our faith. When we grow our faith, we root our identity deeper and deeper in Whose we are. We become empowered with what we need so we can face the highs and lows of life.”
“When our identity is grounded in God, we live differently. Our priorities change. Our relationships reflect this truth—or at least they should. We aren’t desperate for attention because God fulfills all our needs. Instead of using people to make us look good, we learn how to be faithful friends. We treat others with love, respect, and kindness. We watch what we say. We apologize when we make mistakes.”
“If you hear a rumor about someone else, stop it from going any further. Don’t repeat it. You can also turn the conversation into something positive. Say something nice about that person. Show some grace. That’s a sure way to honor God and fan the flames of love.”
“If we mean it when we say ‘I’m sorry,’ do you know what that does for us? It keeps our hearts tender. Not weak, just open to God shaping us into the young men and women He has created us to be.”
“We live in such a me-focused world. We take pictures of ourselves all the time. We tell the world on Facebook and Instagram what we’re doing, what we like, where we are going. We want all eyes on us. But that’s not what we’re called to do as Christians. We’re called to be others-minded. We are called to love others. We’re called to serve others. We are called to be like Jesus to a world who doesn’t know Him.”
“The stand you take may not be the biggest deal to the entire world, but it can be a big deal for one person. For instance, you don’t have to feed all of Africa, but feeding one person can have more of an impact than you may realize.”
“We are never going to be perfect in this life. But we can stretch and we can change. If you want to live bigger, you need to grow. No matter how many times you get knocked down or mess up, you need to hold on to God’s promises. You need to believe that He has a better plan. You need to cling to His truth. And day by day, moment by moment, you will become more and more like Jesus.”
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.
Out Of The Wreck I Rise
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)
The Apostle Paul is not talking of imaginary sentimental things, but of desperately actual things, and he says we are “more than conquerors” in the midst of them all, super-conquerors, not by our wits or ingenuity, our courage or pluck, or anything other than the fact that not one of them can separate a man from the love of God in Christ Jesus. …
The word “tribulation” has its roots in the Latin tribulum—a sledge for rubbing out corn; literally, a thing with teeth that tears. …
“Anguish” comes from a word meaning to press tightly, to strangle, and the idea is not a bit too strong for the things people are going through. … Can the love of God in Christ hold there, when everything says that God is cruel to allow it, and that there is no such thing as justice and goodness? Shall anguish separates us from the love of God? No, we are more than conquerors in it, not by our own effort but by the fact that the love of God in Christ holds. …
In every one of “these things” logic is shut up. … A man can go through tribulations which make you hold your breath as you watch him; he goes through times that would knock the wits out of us and make us give way to blasphemy and whimperings. He is not blind or insensitive, yet he goes through in marvelous triumph—what accounts for it? One thing only, the fact that behind it all is the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Spiritually, morally, and physically the saint is brought clean through, triumphant, out of the wreck wrought by tribulation, anguish, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and sword. Whatever maybe the experiences of life, whether terrible and devastating or monotonous, it makes no difference, they are all rendered impotent, because they cannot separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. “Out of the wreck I rise” every time.
From The Saints In A Disaster Of Worldliness
Thank You, Jesus, that because of Your love “out of the wreck I rise” every time.
Whenever I read an Oswald Chambers’ book, I know I’m going to get exceptional content that is really going to make me think. The Servant As His Lord lived up to my expectations! I have shared several passages from this book already in my weekly “Thursdays With Oswald” posts (more about that in a moment), but here are a few more quotes I wanted to pass along to you.
“I continually come across people with rusty ‘thinkers,’ they think about their business but about nothing else, and the forces within have become desperately weak; consequently when tribulation comes their minds are confused, and the result is that errors come into the life. If the forces within are strong and healthy they give us warning and enable us to crush in a vice on the threshold of the mind everything that ought not to come there. God can impart to a man the power to select what his mind thinks, the power to think only what is right and pure and true.”
“God has no favorites, but when we let Him have His right of way through us He begins to unveil something more of His purposes in our lives. … Is tribulation making you wilt? making you swoon for sympathy? making you stagnate? It is an easy business to want to get away from tribulation, but fighting makes us strong, gloriously strong.”
“God grant we may be so filled with the Holy Spirit that we listen to His checks along every line. No power can deceive a child of God who keeps in the light with God. I am perfectly certain that the devil likes to deceive us and limit us in our practical belief as to what Jesus Christ can do. There is no limit to what He can do, absolutely none. ‘All things are possible to him that believeth.’ Jesus says that faith in Him is omnipotent. God grant we may get hold of this truth.”
“Look at the world either through a telescope or a microscope and you will be dwarfed into terror by the infinitely great or the infinitely little. Naturalists tell us that there are no two blades of grass alike, and close inspection of a bee’s wing under a microscope reveals how marvelously it is made. What do I read in the Bible? I read that the God of heaven counts the hairs of our heads. Jesus says so. I read that the mighty God watches the sparrows so intimately that not one of them falls on the ground without His notice. I read that the God who holds the seas in the hollow of His hand and guides the stars in their courses, clothes the grass of the field. Through the love of God in Christ Jesus we are brought into a wonderful intimacy with the infinitely great and the infinitely little.”
“The great need today amongst those of us who profess sanctification is the patience and ability to work out the holiness of God in every detail of our lives.”
“We are only safe in taking an estimate of ourselves from our Creator, not from our own introspection.”
“There is no one in the world more easy to get to than God. Only one thing prevents us from getting there, and that is the refusal to tell ourselves the truth.”
“God does not do what false Christianity makes out—keep a man immune from trouble, there is no promise of that; God says, ‘I will be with him in trouble.’ … No matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a man’s life, not one of them can touch the central citadel, that is, his relationship to God in Christ Jesus.”
“The afflictions after sanctification are not meant to purify us, but to make us broken bread in the hands of our Lord to nourish others.”
“If we are self-willed when God tries to break us and will do anything rather than submit, we shall never be of any use to nourish other souls; we shall only be centers of craving self-pity, discrediting the character of God.”
“Thursdays With Oswald” is a weekly feature where I share a longer section from an Oswald Chambers book, along with a thought or two of my own. You can subscribe to my blog and get notified each time I share one of these posts, or you can type Thursdays With Oswald in the search box.
You can read my review of The Servant As His Lordclicking here by .
Humans are hardwired by God to be in relationship with Him and with others.
Sadly, Brennan Manning pointed out that Christians “have come a long sad journey from the first century, when pagans exclaimed with awe and wonder, ‘See how these Christians love one another!’”
When I read this, I don’t want to throw in the towel, but I want to reclaim this awe and wonder!
One of the things that will quickly kill relationships is having low expectations for the other person or for the relationship itself. This can be counteracted by having higher expectations for other people and for our relationships with them.
John Maxwell noted, “People rise or fall to meet our level of expectations for them. If you express skepticism and doubt in others, they’ll return your lack of confidence with mediocrity. But if you believe in them and expect them to do well, they’ll wear themselves out trying to do their best.”
Consider the high expectations that God had for a relationship with us. If He had low expectations, one of the best-known verses in the Bible would be, “God thought a few people in the world had something worth saving, so He sent a handful of angels to tell us His story.”
Instead, the verse tells us: God so loved the entire world that He sent the very best that He had—He sent His One and Only Son!
Since God has this high expectation for us … what would happen if we had the same high expectations for everyone with whom we came into contact? What would happen if we believed the best for everybody, and then gave all that we could to bring the best out of them? I think that once again people would exclaim with awe and wonder,
We will be talking more about Relationship Builders & Killers this Sunday and I would love if you could join me!
Craig T. Owens 