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.
Spiritual Overloading
One continually finds an encroachment of beliefs and of attachment to things which is so much spiritual overloading. Every now and again the Spirit of God calls us to take a spiritual stock-taking in order to see what beliefs we can do without. The things our Lord asks us to believe are remarkably few, and John 14:1 seems to sum them up—“Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” We have to keep ourselves alertly detached from everything that would encroach on that belief; we all have intellectual and affectionate affinities that keep us detached from Jesus Christ instead of attached to Him. We have to maintain an alert spiritual fighting trim.
From Facing Reality
Probably because I’m still studying and preparing for our Overloaded series, but I’ve been especially tuned into to the idea of all sorts of overload… even (especially) spiritual overloading. I never want to fall victim to the same trap the Pharisees were in:
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to His disciples, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.” (Matthew 23:1-4)
I don’t want to overload myself; nor do I want to overload those I teach. So I’m taking a hard look in the mirror—and listening closely to the Holy Spirit—about those spiritual overloading things that may be crushing me.
Craig T. Owens 