Thursdays With Oswald—Everyday Faith

June 12, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Oswald ChambersThis 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.

Everyday Faith

     The great need today is for Christians to toe the line: “And the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes” (Ezekiel 36:23). Unless Christians are facing up to God’s commands there is no use pushing forward to meet the life of our time.

     Jesus wants us to face the life of our time in the power of the Holy Spirit. Do we proclaim by our lives, by our thinking, by our faith in God, that Jesus Christ is sufficient for every problem life can present? that there is no force too great for Him to cope with and overcome? If our faith is not living and active it is because we need reviving; we have a faith that is limited by certain doctrines instead of being the faith of God.

From Conformed To His Image

People watch Christians to see how they behave in “real life.” If our faith is only for going to church on Sundays and not for meeting life’s challenges everyday, we need a revival!

Oswald Chambers’ question is one we should all ask ourselves: Do people see in our life a trust in God for every circumstance?

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Links & Quotes

June 9, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

link quote

Some good reading from today…

Food for thought: Worship In A Selfie World.

“The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.” —Rachel Naomi Remen

Pastor Dave Barringer has some good thoughts on Successful Communication In Marriage.

“Joy is distinctly a Christian word and a Christian thing. It is the reverse of happiness. Happiness is the result of what happens of an agreeable sort. Joy has its springs deep down inside. And that spring never runs dry, no matter what happens. Only Jesus gives that joy.” —S.D. Gordon

“The Holy Spirit does not bring text after text until we are utterly confused; He simply brings back with the greatest of ease the words which we need in the particular circumstances we are in. Then comes in the use of the will, will I obey the word which has been brought back to our remembrance? The battle comes when we begin to debate instead of obeying.” —Oswald Chambers

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Thursdays With Oswald—God Makes The Church Go

June 5, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Oswald ChambersThis 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.

God Makes The Church Go

     The Church is a separated band of people who are united to God by the regenerating power of the Spirit, and the bedrock of membership in the Church is that we know who Jesus is by a personal revelation of Him. The indwelling Spirit is the supreme Guide, and He keeps us absorbed with our Lord. 

     The emphasis today is placed on the furtherance of an organization; the note is, “We must keep this thing going.” If we are in God’s order the thing will go; if we are not in His order, it won’t.

From Conformed To His Image

It’s not clever tactics, or great preaching, or amazing music that makes the Church go. It’s only our focus on Jesus.

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Thursdays With Oswald—The Holy Spirit In Me

May 29, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Oswald ChambersThis 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.

The Holy Spirit In Me

     When I receive the Holy Spirit He lifts my personality back into its primal relationship with God. Holy Spirit coming into my spirit never becomes my spirit; He energizes my spirit and enables me “to will and to do of His good pleasure.” 

     … When the Holy Spirit begins to unearth the works of the flesh in you, don’t temporize it, don’t whitewash them; don’t call suspicion “discernment of the spirit,” or ill-temper “righteous indignation”; bring it to the light, come face to face with it, confess it and get cleansed away.

From Conformed To His Image

Jesus said the Holy Spirit would help form the righteousness of Christ in us, but we have to obediently respond to what the Spirit is convicting us of.

Probably like you, I am more apt to make excuses or rationalize why what I’m doing is okay (even though the Holy Spirit is convicting me otherwise). It becomes a battle that won’t end well for me! The better course of action is to listen to the conviction of the Holy Spirit, repent of my fleshly behavior as He reveals it to me, and receive more of the life in Christ in me.

What do you think?

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Thursdays With Oswald—Transforming Circumstances

May 22, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

ChambersThis 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.

Transforming Circumstances

     We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be. 

From Conformed To His Image

God will use whatever means necessary to fashion us into the man or woman He created us to be. We must not fight against these circumstances, but view them through the lens of God’s Word.

  • God created you in advance to do amazing things that would bring Him glory (Ephesians 2:10).
  • God loves you enough to discipline you if you are going astray from His purpose and design (Hebrews 12:5-11).
  • God will give you strength to withstand every circumstance (2 Corinthians 12:9).
  • God will redeem every circumstance to bring forth something good (Romans 8:28-39).
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Thursdays With Oswald—All Of Me

May 15, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

ChambersThis 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.

All Of Me

     Never run away with the idea that you are a person who has a spirit, has a soul and has a body; you are a person that is spirit, soul and body. Man is one; body, soul and spirit are terms of definition. My body is the manifest “me.” Some of us are so dominated by the body that our spirit lives only in the physical domain, instead of the physical being slowly taken into the spiritual by a series of moral choices. Our spirit goes no further than we bring our body. 

From Conformed To His Image

God created us as a three-part, integrated being. Quite simply, all parts are interdependent on each other.

If my body is diseased, it’s hard for me to develop my soul and spirit. If my emotions are out-of-balance, it adversely affects by body and spirit. If my spirit is still weighed down by sin, it cannot but affect my body and soul.

I love the brief description Dr. Luke gives us about how Jesus grew up: Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people (Luke 2:52). Let me state this verse differently. Jesus grew healthily…

  • …in wisdom (His mind)
  • …in stature (His physical body)
  • …in favor with God (His soul)
  • …in favor with all the people (His emotions and relationships)

Jesus showed us well-round, healthy growth. If you are diseased in your body, talk to a doctor about remedies; if you are diseased in your soul, talk to a counselor or psychologist about your emotional health; if you are diseased in your spirit, talk to God about forgiveness.

Don’t let one part of you hold you back from being all the you God created you to be!

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Thursdays With Oswald—Thoughtful Questions

May 8, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Oswald ChambersThis 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.

Thoughtful Questions

Oswald Chambers usually sprinkles questions into his lectures, but in this passage, the questions came one right after another—

  • Are we lazy spiritually because we are so active in God’s work?
  • When the problems of the body face us, do we stop going with Jesus?
  • Do we listen to the tempter’s voice to put our bodily needs first—‘Eat bread, be well, first look after what you were going to wear, and then attend to God?’
  • Have we given God as much ‘elbow room’ in our lives as Our Lord gave Him in His?
  • Have we the one set purpose… not to do our own will but the will of God?
  • Are we going with Jesus in the life we are living now?
  • When we are tempted as He was, do we continue to go with Him?
  • What are we like where nobody sees?
  • Have we a place in our heart and mind and life where there is always open communion between ourselves and God so that we can detect the voice of the devil when he comes as ‘an angel of light’?
  • Are we compromising in the tiniest degree in mental conception with forces that do not continue to go with Jesus, or are we maintaining the attitude of Jesus Christ all through?
  • Are we departing from Jesus in the slightest way in connection with the world to which we belong?
  • Have we this past week choked the Son of God in our life by imperceptible degrees?

From The Love Of God

Yeah, I’m going to have to ponder these for awhile…

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The Love Of God (book review)

May 6, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

The Love Of GodAs I have often said, Oswald Chambers challenges me to think more deeply and broadly like few others can. This collection of books (there are six of them in this one volume) under the heading The Love Of God is no different.

And thinking is what this collection of books is all about. This is a series of lectures and sermons which caused me to rethink not the various biblical doctrines I have learned, but the application of those doctrines to my daily life. This is just what Oswald Chambers had in mind. For one set of lectures, Chamber wrote this introduction—

“The object of these studies is to stimulate thinking along Christian lines. So many among us have a good spiritual experience, but have never thought things out on Christian lines. It is just as true that a man may live a Christian life without thinking it as that a man may think the Christian life without living it; but to combine the two means that great help may be rendered during times of confusion, turmoil and tension like the present. Bear in mind that Christian growth is based on the regeneration of a man’s soul through Redemption.” (emphasis in his original)

If you want to have your thinking stretched, this is the book for you!

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Thursdays With Oswald—The Spirit Of Antichrist

May 1, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Oswald ChambersThis 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.

The Spirit Of Antichrist 

     The spirit of antichrist is that spirit which “dissolves by analysis” the Person of Jesus—“someone unique, but not what the New Testament claims.” To preach the Jesus of the Gospels at the expense of the Christ of the Epistles is a false thing, such a false thing that it is antichrist to the very core, because it is a blow direct at what Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do, viz.: expound Him to the disciples, and “through their word” to innumerable lives to the end of Time. 

     If I say, “Of course God would never convey a right interpretation of Himself through a handful of men like the disciples,” I am casting a slur on what Jesus said, telling Him that His reliance on God’s promise of the Spirit was without justification; that His basis of confidence on the Holy Spirit’s revelation of Himself to the disciples was misplaced. 

From Conformed To His Image 

The spirit of antichrist is any thought that diminishes God’s Word, or diminishes the Person of Jesus Christ. But I don’t want to spend my time trying to spot the counterfeit, antichrist teachings. I want to know the Original—the Authentic—so well, that I can easily spot the antichrist forgeries.

This means that I must study all of the Bible. I cannot exclude the Old Testament; nor can I choose the Epistles and ignore the Gospels, or vice versa. As I study, I must rely on the Holy Spirit’s help. He breathed on the men that wrote the inspired Word, so He is the only One Who can breathe on my heart and mind the truth of the Word as I study it.

If the spirit of antichrist was already being discussed in the New Testament, and again by Oswald Chambers 100+ years ago, how much more prevalent must it be now! I must know the Authentic Word and the Authentic Christ so well that I can immediately identify the masquerading antichrist.

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Thursdays With Oswald—Don’t Try To Persuade

April 24, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

ChambersThis 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.

Don’t Try To Persuade

     You can’t persuade a man to believe in God; belief in God is not an act of the intellect, it is a moral creation produced by the interaction of God’s Spirit and my spirit in willing obedience; intellect comes in afterwards to explain what has happened. 

From Conformed To His Image

I love reading and studying apologetics, but it’s important to remember that I’m not reading these arguments to persuade someone to believe in Jesus. Oswald Chambers is right on target: no one can be be persuaded to believe.

The Bible says that faith in Christ comes through hearing God’s Word. So I unabashedly share as much Scripture as I can, refraining from adding my own commentary. The Word speaks for itself. As Charles Spurgeon said, “How do I defend the Bible? I treat it like a lion. I let it out of its cage and it defends itself.”

The apologetic training comes in handy after someone has already placed their faith in Christ to explain what has happened. It works like this:

The Bible → Faith in Christ. 

Apologetics → Understanding my faith.

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