Oswald Chambers | Craig T. Owens

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Our Portrait In Genesis (book review)

October 6, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

I love having Oswald Chambers walk alongside me as I study the Bible. He is like a wise, insightful friend pointing out, “Did you see that? Did you notice what God is doing here? What do you think that means for you?” In Our Portrait In Genesis, Chambers walks with us through the first book of the Bible.

Previously I reviewed Not Knowing Where by Oswald Chambers, which looks specifically at the life of Abraham in Genesis 12-25. In Our Portrait, Chambers turns his attention to the other notable people in Genesis.

As he looks at Adam, Eve, Cain, Able, Noah, and the other patriarchs, Chambers is constantly pointing out the lessons we can learn from their lives and apply to our lives. Because of his training in psychology, Chambers is so skilled at knowing what was going on in the minds of these biblical examples, and then helping us examine our own thinking along the same lines.

Our Portrait and Not Knowing Where are tremendously helpful commentaries to read as you work your way through the book of Genesis. As always, you can’t go wrong picking up an Oswald Chambers book!

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Abraham, Adam & Eve, Bible study, book review, Genesis, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, metacognition, Noah, Oswald Chambers, psychology, thinking. 4 Comments »

Links & Quotes

October 5, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“Authority never comes from you, but from God through you, therefore let God introduce or withhold as He chooses.” —Oswald Chambers

“The best of men are men at best; and, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, and the power of divine grace, hell itself does not contain greater monsters than you and I might become.” —Charles Spurgeon

“The Bible is the grand repository … It is the complete system of divine truth, to which nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be taken, with impunity. Every attempt to disguise or soften any branch of this truth, in order to accommodate it to the prevailing taste around us, either to avoid the displeasure, or to court the favor, of our fellow mortals, must be an affront to the majesty of God, and an act of treachery to men.” —John Newton

“Seeking the Kingdom of God is not a matter of doing first things first. Seeking the Kingdom is not just the first thing on the Christian’s daily to-do list. Seeking the Kingdom is a first things always proposition, so that whatever is on our to-do list on any given day, seeking the Kingdom is the first things pursuit which defines and directs everything else we do.” —T.M. Moore

Eric Metaxas said, “Children are being sexually abused in Afghanistan, and our soldiers are being told to turn a blind eye. That’s got to stop.” Read more in his commentary Their Custom, Our Complicity.

In the style of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, Burk Parsons writes a letter to pastors.

A thought-provoking piece from Nancy Pearcey, in light of the Kim Davis situation and the Obergefell decision: The Bait-and-Switch Over Same-Sex ‘Marriage.’

Seth Godin points out, “Thinking of one’s self as a failure is not the same as failing.” Read more from On Feeling Like A Failure.

Thursdays With Oswald—Beware Of The ‘Yes-but’

October 1, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

This is a periodic 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.

Beware Of The ‘Yes-but’

Beware of the “yes-but,” of putting your prudence-crutch under the purpose of God when you find His engineering of things has nearly unearthed your own little bag of tricks. Whenever you debate with a promise of God, watch how you begin to maneuver by your own prudence—but you can’t sleep at night. Whenever you maneuver it keeps up a ferment because it indicates a determination not to confess where you know you are wrong, and when we experience misgiving on account of wrong-doing which we do not intend to confess we are always inclined to put a crutch under God’s promise—“Now I see how I can make atonement for my wrong-doing.” Nothing can act as an atonement for wrong saving an absolutely clean confession to God. To walk in the light with nothing folded up is our conscientious part, then God will do the rest.

From Our Portrait In Genesis

I love that phrase, “Beware of the ‘yes-but.’” How many times do we say, “Yes, Lord, I will obey You, but…”? Or we excuse our sin by saying, “Yes, I know this wrong, but…”?

How quickly we can get freedom and experience new joy if we will simply confess: “Yes, Lord, I will obey you” and “Yes, I will repent from this sin.” Not a “yes-but,” but simply a “Yes, Lord” is all that it takes.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: confession, conscience, God's promise, obedience, Oswald Chambers, repentance. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

September 28, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“The warrior of God is not the man of muscle and a strong jaw, but the man of un-utterable weakness, the man who knows he has not any power; Jacob is no longer strong in himself, he is strong only in God, his life is no longer marked by striving, but by reliance on God. You cannot imitate reliance on God.” —Oswald Chambers

I normally don’t like having my picture taken, but for the Champions of Change project, Adam Bird did an amazing job with even a face like mine!

Pornography addictions act like any other addiction. Check out this video.

The Overview Bible Project always has great Bible study resources, like this one. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so.

“True believers are determined to trust God even if their prayer isn’t answered. It doesn’t matter if all their goods are taken away, or even if they face death. They desire to enter God’s rest. What is the evidence of such a life? They have ‘ceased from [their] own works’ (see Hebrews 4:10). They no longer lie awake at night trying to solve their problems in their own wisdom and skill. Instead, they turn everything over to Jesus. It doesn’t matter whether they end up in gain or loss. Their only focus is that God has a plan, and that He is working it out in their lives.” —David Wilkerson

Seth Godin reminds us that improving our attitude is a skill that can be learned.

J. Warner Wallace shares the exquisite fine-tuning of our universe that points to an Intelligent Designer/Creator.

“Is there anything more freeing, more thrilling, or more strengthening than the truth that God Almighty is your refuge—all day, every day in all the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of life? If we believed this, if we really let this truth of God’s omnipotence get hold of us, what a difference it would make in our personal lives and in our ministries! How humble and powerful we would become for the saving purposes of God!” —John Piper

“All the year round, every hour of every day, God is richly blessing us; both when we sleep and when we wake, His mercy waits upon us. The sun may leave off shining, but our God will never cease to cheer His children with His love. Like a river His lovingkindness is always flowing, with a fulness inexhaustible as His own nature, which is its source. Like the atmosphere which always surrounds the earth, and is always ready to support the life of man, the benevolence of God surrounds all His creatures.” —Charles Spurgeon

Dan Reiland has 5 questions for great communicators.

Thursdays With Oswald—Quick Snippets

September 17, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

Quick Snippets

(Normally I share a longer passage from Oswald Chambers, but his book Disciples Indeed contains so many short, power-packed statements, that I wanted to share a few of those with you.)

“If we understood what happens when we use the Word of God, we would use it oftener.”
“Everything the devil does, God over-reaches to serve His own purpose.”
“There is nothing so still and gentle as the checks of the Holy Spirit if they are yielded to, emancipation is the result; but let them be trifled with, and there will come a hardening of the life away from God.”
“My conscience makes me know what I ought to do, but it does not empower me to do it.”
“In the moral realm if you don’t do things quickly you will never do them.”
“Second thoughts on moral matters are always the deflections.”
“The greatest test of Christianity is the wear and tear of daily life, it is like the shining of silver, the more it is rubbed the brighter it grows.”
“We have to do more than we are built to do naturally; we have to do all the Almighty builds us to do.”
“When I began to be satisfied with where I am spiritually, instantly I begin to degenerate.”

Which of these is your favorite?

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Bible, Christianity, conscience, devil, discipleship, Holy Spirit, Oswald Chambers, quotes, Scripture, spiritual warfare. 1 Comment »

Links & Quotes

September 7, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“The reason we know so little about God’s wisdom is that we will only trust Him as far as we can work things out according to our own reasonable common sense.” —Oswald Chambers

“To know God in His glory is to know ultimate reality—defining beauty, goodness, and truth. It is to enter into the heart of reality itself and to glimpse eternity in a most personal, intimate, and loving way. This is what God desires for us, that our hearts might soar within His glory and rejoice in things too wonderful to express.” —T.M. Moore

“My greatest fear in life is standing before the Lord and hearing Him say, ‘I had so much more for you, but you held on too tightly.’” —Larry Burkett

“Give me good proofs of what you have alleged: it is not enough to say—in such a bush there lies a thief—in such a cave a beast; you must show him to me ere I shoot, else I may kill one of my straggling sheep.” —William Shakespeare

“A man must keep his friendship in constant repair.” —Samuel Johnson

Eric Metaxas asks, “Why would a national museum refuse to remove an exhibit honoring one of the leading racists of the 20th century?” Check out his profound answer.

Thank you, Bear Grylls, for giving us a great example to follow! May we all pray for our President.

Exactly right: Christians cannot stand by and do nothing about these precious people displaced by war.

A very interesting legal look at the Kim Davis situation in Kentucky.

Thursdays With Oswald—The Memory Of Sin

September 3, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

The Memory Of Sin

No aspect of Christian life and service is in more need of revision than our attitude to the memory of sin in the saint. When the Apostle Paul said “forgetting those things which are behind,” he was talking not about sin, but about his spiritual attainment. Paul never forgot what he had been; it comes out repeatedly in the Epistles—“For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle” (1 Corinthians 15:9); “unto me who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given” (Ephesians 3:8); “…sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15). …

If one wants a touchstone for the depth of true spiritual Christianity, one will surely find it in this matter of the memory of sin. There are those who exhibit a Pharisaic holiness, they thank God with an arrogant offensiveness that they are “not as other men are”; they have forgotten the horrible pit and miry clay from whence they were taken, and their feet set upon a rock through the might of the Atonement. …

May the conviction of God come with swift and stern rebuke upon any one who is remembering the past of another, and deliberately choosing to forget their restoration through God’s grace. When a servant of God meets these sins in others, let him be reverent with what he does not understand and leave God to deal with them.

From Conformed To His Image (emphasis added)

These are good questions for Christians to ask themselves regularly: (1) Am I remembering the sins of others the way I would want others to remember my sins? (2) Am I remembering my forgiven sins the way that God remembers them (Psalm 103:10-12)?

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy, apostle Paul, atonement, Christian, conviction, Ephesians, forgiveness, grace, introspection, memory, Oswald Chambers, Pharisees, Psalm, saints, sin, video. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

August 31, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

“Is it not said in Scripture, ‘If any man sin, we have an Advocate’? Why is Christ an advocate today? Only because we want an advocate every day. Does He not constantly intercede yonder before the eternal throne? Why does He do that? Because we want daily intercession. And it is because we are constantly sinning that He is constantly an advocate, constantly an intercessor.” —Charles Spurgeon

“The only right a Christian has is the right to give up his rights.” —Oswald Chambers

“Unbelief hinders Christ from working those works which show the glory. It seems a strange saying, and one which we could not have ventured to utter had it not been written down for us by inspired men. That a child’s hand held up against the sun should hinder it from shining; that a weathered leaf thrown into a stream should stay its flowing or dry up its source; that the breath of man, breathed up against the sky, should quench the light of its myriad stars—these things would not really be so marvelous as that man’s unbelief should prevent God’s power from being sent forth, and the Son of God from doing those things which would reveal the glory of the Father. Yet we find the strange truth thus recorded. The evangelist Matthew thus writes, ‘He did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief’ (13:58); and Mark uses still stronger language, ‘He could there do no mighty work, saving that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk and heal them; and He marveled because of their unbelief ‘(6:5, 6).” —Horatius Bonar

A really nice story about our church’s move.

Despite what some people want to teach, here are 24 reasons to believe Hell is a reality.

George Muller was a faith giant. But check out what John Piper writes about him: Muller did not have the gift of faith.

Jon Bloom writes, “If we want to really know what’s going on in the world, we cannot depend on CNN or FoxNews. We will keep our eyes on the global church. She is at the center of history,” in his post entitled America’s one enduring legacy in history.

[VIDEO] Does free speech offend you?

17 More Quotes From “Our Brilliant Heritage”

July 30, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

This is the second batch of quotes from Our Brilliant Heritage. You can read the first set of quotes here, and my review of this book is posted here.

“God does not supply us with character, He gives us the life of His Son and we can either ignore Him and refused to obey Him, or we can so obey Him, so bring every thought and imagination into captivity, that the life of Jesus is manifested in our mortal flesh. It is not a question of being saved from hell, but of being saved in order to manifest the Son of God in our mortal flesh. Our responsibility is to keep ourselves fit to manifest Him.”

“We cannot do anything for our salvation, but we must do something to manifest it; we must work it out. Am I working out my salvation with my tongue, with my brain, and with my nerves?”

“We are not called to success but to faithfulness.”

“The marvelous thing about spiritual wealth is that when we take our part in that, everyone else is blessed; whereas if we refused to be partakers, we hinder others from entering into the riches of God.”

“It is a crime to allow external physical misery to make us sulky with God. There are desolating experiences, such as the Psalmist describes in Psalms 42-43, and he says, ‘Then will I go…unto God my exceeding joy’—not ‘with joy,’ but unto God Who is my joy. No calamity can touch that wealth. No sin is worse than self-pity because it puts self-interest on the throne; it ‘makes the bastard of self seem in the right’; it obliterates God and opens the mouth to spit out murmurings against God; and the life becomes impoverished and mean, there is nothing lovely or generous about it.”

“The witness of the Holy Spirit is that we realize with growing amazement Who Jesus is to us personally, our Lord and Master. The baptism of the Holy Ghost makes us witnesses to Jesus, not wonder-workers. The witness is not to what Jesus does, but to what He is.”

“When we say—‘But it is common sense to do this and that,’ we make our common sense Almighty God, and God has to retire right out, then after a while He comes back and asks us if we are satisfied.”

“There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed.”

“Pride is the deification of myself.”

“‘Oh, I’m no saint.’ To talk like that is acceptable to human pride, but it is unconscious blasphemy against God. It literally means I defy God to make me a saint. The reason I am not a saint is either that I do not want to be a saint or I do not believe God can make me one.”

“The greatest hindrance of our spiritual life lies in looking for big things to do; Jesus Christ ‘took a towel….’”

“We say we do not expect God to carry us to heaven on ‘flowery beds of ease,’ but we act as if we did!”

“We can all shine in the sun, but Jesus wants us to shine where there is no sun, where it is dark with the press of practical things.”

“Our Lord never taught us to deny sin: sin must be destroyed, not denied. Nothing sinful can ever be good.”

“Never say you will pray about a thing; pray about it. … It is not part of the life of a natural man to pray. We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life if he does not pray; I question it. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer.”

“The five minutes we give to the words of Jesus the first thing in the morning are worth more than all the rest of the day.”

“Are we in the habit of listening to the Words of Jesus? Do we realize that Jesus knows more about our business than we do ourselves? Do we take His Word for our clothes, our money, our domestic work; or do we think we can manage these things for ourselves?”

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: baptism, Bible, book review, brain, character development, difficulties, faithfulness, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, joy, listening, Oswald Chambers, prayer, pride, Psalm, quotes, saints, sanctification, servanthood, tongue. Leave a Comment »

14 Quotes From “Our Brilliant Heritage”

July 29, 2015 — Craig T. Owens

As I said in my book review of Oswald Chambers’ book Our Brilliant Heritage, it’s hard to come up with enough good words to say about this man’s insights! You can read my review of this book by clicking here, and check out my first batch of quotes below.

“The writer to the Hebrews does not tell us to imitate Jesus when we are tempted; he says—‘Come to Jesus, and He will succor [help] you in the nick of time.’ That is, all His perfect overcoming of temptation is ours in Him. … Jesus Christ does not give us power to work up a patience like His own. His patience is manifested if we will let His life dwell in us.”

“Paul does not say, nor does the Spirit of God say anywhere, that after we are born again of the Spirit of God, Jesus Christ is put before us as an Example and we make ourselves holy by drawing from Him. Never! Sanctification is Christ formed in us; not the Christ-life, but Christ Himself. In Jesus Christ is the perfection of everything, and the mystery of sanctification is that we may have in Jesus Christ, not the start of holiness, but the holiness of Jesus Christ.”

“The very spirit that ruled Jesus in His life now rules us. How has it come about? Read Romans 8:10. ‘And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.’ John the Baptist said of Jesus—‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’ The Spirit of God who wrought out that marvelous Life in the Incarnation will baptize us into the very same life, not into a life like it, but into His life until the very holiness of Jesus is gifted to us. It is not something we work out in Him, it is in Him, and He manifests it through us while we abide in Him.”

“Some of us have never allowed God to make us understand how hopeless we are without Jesus Christ.”

“‘Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation’! (2 Corinthians 5:17). … Those of us who are in the experience of God’s mighty salvation do not give ourselves half enough prayerful time, and wondering time, and studying time to allow the Spirit of God to bring this marvelous truth home to us.”

“We are too free from wonder nowadays, too easy with the Word of God; we do not use it with the breathless amazement Paul does. Think what sanctification means—Christ in me; made like Christ; as He is, so are we.”

“Men are apt to cry to God to stop—‘If only God would leave me alone!’ God never will. His passionate, inexorable love never allows Him to leave men alone, and with His children He will shake everything that can be shaken till there is nothing that can be shaken anymore; then will abide the consuming fire of God until the life is changed into the same image from glory to glory, and men see that strong family likeness to Jesus that can never be mistaken.”

“The marvelous thing about the inheritance of the saints in light is that when we take our part of the inheritance, everyone else is blessed in the taking; but if we refused to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, we rob others of its glory and its wonder.”

“We cannot do what God does and God will not do what we can do. We cannot save ourselves or sanctify ourselves; God only can do that; but God does not give us good habits, He does not give us character, He does not make us walk aright; we must do all that.”

“If, when no one is watching us, we are building ourselves up in the Word of God, then, when a crisis comes, we shall stand; but if we are not building on the Word of God, when a crisis comes we shall go down, no matter what our wills are like.”

“With Jesus it is never ‘Do, do,’ but ‘Be, be and I will do through you.’”

“One strong moral man will form a nucleus around which others will gather; and spiritually, if we put on the armor of God and stand true to Him, a whole army of week-kneed Christians will be strengthened.”

“The surest evidence that the nature of God has come into me is that I know I am a sinner.”

“The deepest repentance is not in the sinner, but in the saint. Repentance means not only sorrow for sin, it involves the possession of a new disposition that will never do the thing again.”