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 27-28
[These are notes from Oswald Chambers’ lecture on Jeremiah 27-28.]
God does not act according to His own precedents, therefore logic or a vivid past experience can never take the place of personal faith in a personal God. … God is constantly stirring up our nests that we may learn that the only simplicity there is is not the simplicity of a logical belief, but “the simplicity that is in Christ” [2 Corinthians 11:3]. …
Never try to explain God until you have obeyed Him…. The only bit of God we understand is the bit we have obeyed. … Never be surprised if there our whole areas of thinking that are not clear, they never will be until you obey (John 7:17). …
We never gain any knowledge by intellectual curiosity, but only as a relationship of simplicity to God is it maintained. In John 9 Our Lord was dealing with religious teachers who had known God’s way in the past but they were blind to His ways in the present. … Our Lord’s phrase “blind leaders of the blind” was used of those who built their teaching as to how God would act in the future on their knowledge of how He had acted in the past, instead of on a personal knowledge of God. …
We have to keep in unbroken touch with God and give every soul the same freedom and liberty before God as God gives us. …
No silence is so profound as the silence that falls on a soul that has quenched the Spirit of God by concentration on religious convictions. … Our only safety is in concentration on God with nothing between.
From Notes On Jeremiah
God is infinitely creative—He never has to repeat Himself. For proof, just look at the billions of unique snowflakes!
We must be very careful not to say, “God, You worked just like this last time so I expect You to work exactly the same way this time.” Let God be God; let Him do what He knows is best to do. Don’t tell God how He’s supposed to work, and don’t teach others to interact with God the same way you have interacted with God.
Let God be God—unique, inimitable, creative, sovereign, omnipotent, personal—with you and with others.











Light & Truth—Acts And the Larger Epistles (book review)
February 9, 2016 — Craig T. OwensBonar grew up in a pastoral home, with plenty of other pastors and evangelists in his family tree. You might say that he was weaned on Scripture and its application to our lives. This Bible-based heritage comes through in all he writes. By no means, though, does Bonar simply ride the coattails of his esteemed family, but he is quite brilliant in his own Holy Spirit-inspired insights.
Bonar’s commentaries are not a verse-by-verse exposition of the Scripture. Instead, he may just take one or two verses and “go deep” with them. A short passage may be taken apart word by word, and many rich applications are thus brought forth.
As I am reading through the New Testament, I am finding Horatius Bonar to be a helpful “tour guide” on my journey.
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