Oswald Chambers | Craig T. Owens

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Links & Quotes

April 21, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Some great reading I found today.

“God has sought us out: let us have good hope for those who are laid upon our hearts in prayer, for He will find them out also. … It is a point of honor with Jesus to seek and to save all the flock, without a single exception. What a promise to plead!” —Charles Spurgeon

Where is the outrage?! Christian Girls Abducted & Raped In Egypt.

[INFOGRAPHI] Right on the heels of Easter, Bible Overview has a great infographic of everyone in the Bible who was raised from the dead.

“The apostles had this instinct: When in trouble, pray. When intimidated, pray. When challenged, pray. When persecuted, pray!” —Jim Cymbala. Read more from Pastor Cymbala’s great post on prayer.

“Throughout our history Americans have put their faith in God and no one can doubt that we have been blessed for it. The earliest settlers of this land came in search of religious freedom. Landing on a desolate shoreline, they established a spiritual foundation that has served us ever since.” —Ronald Reagan

“Nobody ever got anything from God on the grounds that he deserved it. Having fallen, man deserves only punishment and death. So if God answers prayer it’s because God is good.” —A.W. Tozer

“Sacrifice is not giving up things, but giving to God with joy the best we have.” —Oswald Chambers

Thursdays With Oswald—The Historicity Of The Cross

April 17, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

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.

The Historicity Of The Cross

It is essential to have an historic basis for our Christian faith: our faith must be centered in the Life and Death of the historic Jesus. Why is it that that Life and Death have an importance out of all proportion to every other historic fact? Because there the Redemption is brought to a focus.

Jesus Christ was not a Man who twenty centuries ago lived on this earth for thirty-three years and was crucified; He was God Incarnate, manifested at one point of history. All before look forward to that point; all since look back to it. The presentation of this fact produces what no other fact in the whole of history ever could produce, viz.: the miracle of God at work in human souls. The death of Jesus was not the death of a martyr, it was the revelation of the Eternal heart of God. That is why the Cross is God’s last word.

From Conformed To His Image

This is THE Fact of history—

For God loved the world so much that He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through Him. (John 3:16-17)

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Calvary, Cross, crucifixion, eternal life, forgiveness, God's love, Gospel of John, Gospel of Matthew, historicity, history, Incarnation, Jesus Christ, Oswald Chambers, redemption. Leave a Comment »

Thursdays With Oswald—True Repentance

April 3, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

True Repentance

The essence of repentance is that it destroys the lust of self-vindication; wherever that lust resides the repentance is not true. Repentance brings us to the place where we are willing to receive any punishment under heaven so long as the law we have broken is justified. That is repentance, and I think I am right in saying that very few of us know anything at all about it.

We have the idea nowadays that God is so loving and gentle and kind that all we need do is to say we feel sorry for the wrong we have done and we will try to be better. That is not repentance. Repentance means that I am re-made on a plane which justifies God in forgiving me.

From Conformed To His Image

What is your definition of repentance?

If my definition only includes feeling sorry for being wrong, I have missed it. But when my heart breaks over my sin because I know my sin pierced the very heart of God, and when I am willing to receive God’s just punishment for that violation, and when I am awed that God forgives me and extends His mercy to a sinner such as me, and I begin to live in a totally new way than what led to my sin before, that is the essence of true repentance.

With that in mind, I need to ask myself, “Have I truly repented of my sins?”

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: feeling, forgiveness, mercy, Oswald Chambers, punishment, repentance, sin. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

April 1, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Some links to some interesting reading and quotes I found today.

An April Fools joke that’s not funny at all! The Joke’s On Us!

Great thoughts about church music from 97-year-old Bible professor Stanley Horton: What About Church Music?

I’m normally a University of Michigan fan, but this grotesque support of abortion is just over-the-top: University Goes Out Of Its Way To Support Abortion.

Love this from Ken Davis: This House Guest May Be Stealing Your Life.

“Unutterable mercy! There is no sinner out of hell so black but that God can wash him white. There is not out of the pit one so guilty that God is not able and willing to forgive him; for He declares the wondrous fact—‘I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions.’” —Charles Spurgeon

6 Things God Will Never Do To You (it will help if you sing Rick Astley while you read this!).

Tim Elmore shares Five Qualities Google Looks For In Hiring Employees.

“The Holy Spirit is the missing factor in our personality, and without Him we cannot be altogether as God wants us to be. An abiding gift makes an abiding change in the person to whom the gift is made.” —Thomas Selby

“Continually revise your relationship to God until the only certainty you have is not that you are faithful, but that He is.” —Oswald Chambers

Thursdays With Oswald−Remorse Is Hell On Earth

March 27, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Remorse Is Hell On Earth

Never mistake remorse for repentance; remorse simply puts a man in hell while he is on earth, it carries no remedial quality with it at all, nothing that betters a man.

From Conformed To His Image

I meet people all the time who are sorry for the wrong things they’ve done, and perpetually beat themselves up over those sins. As Chambers says, their remorse has created a hell on earth and it doesn’t do a single thing to help them.

Even a great man like the Apostle Paul felt the hell-on-earth trap of remorse. “I know what the wrong thing is and I don’t want to do it, but I give in and do it anyhow. I say I’m not going to do it again, but I do it again. Oh, what a wretched man I am! (see Romans 7:15-24). That’s where remorse leaves us, and the devil uses that feeling of remorse to condemn us and to imprison us in his hell on earth.

Repentance, on the other hand, is feeling bad for the sin and also asking God to forgive us through the work Jesus Christ did on the Cross—Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:25). As a result of this repentance and forgiveness Paul can then conclude…

So now there is NO CONDEMNATION for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to Him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. (Romans 8:1-2)

Remorse imprisons. Repentance and forgiveness are the only things that free us!

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: apostle Paul, Bible, condemnation, Cross, death, forgiveness, freedom, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Oswald Chambers, remorse, repentance, Romans, sin, video. Leave a Comment »

Thursdays With Oswald—Knowing God’s Thoughts

March 20, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Knowing God’s Thoughts

As soon as we begin to examine the foundations of our salvation we are up against the thoughts of God, and as Christians we ought to be busy thinking God’s thoughts after Him. That is where we fall short…. It is because of the refusal to think on Christian lines that satan has come in as an angel of light and switched off numbers of God’s children in their head, with the result that there is a divorce between heart and head.

From Conformed To His Image

I read a report recently that said in the United Kingdom, Facebook is read more each day than the Bible. My guess is that the same thing could be said for the United States of America. So if we’re not reading God’s Word, how in the world can we think God’s thoughts? If we don’t know what God is saying, we can’t know what He is thinking?!

So what are we left with? “I feel that God would want…” or “I don’t think God would…” and the like. WE, the biblically-illiterate, have become the final authority on what God thinks. No wonder satan has switched off so many people’s heads!

Don’t simply repeat what someone else says that God says. Read it for yourself! Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (Acts 17:11).

If you want help getting started reading the Bible, check out some reading plans from BibleGateway.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Bible, Bible study, BibleGateway, Christian, Facebook, God's thoughts, God's Word, Oswald Chambers, salvation, satan, Scripture, social media, thought life, United Kingdom, United States of America. Leave a Comment »

Thursdays With Oswald—Too Focused On Numbers?

March 13, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Too Focused On Numbers?

We don’t go in for making disciples today, it takes too long; we are all for passionate evangelism—taken up with adding to the statistics of saved souls, adding to denominational membership, taken up with the things which show splendid success. Jesus Christ took the long, long trail—“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself”—take time to make up your mind. Men were not to be swept into the Kingdom on tidal waves of evangelism, not to have their wits paralyzed by supernatural means; they were to come deliberately, knowing what they were doing. One life straight through to God on the ground of discipleship is more satisfactory in His sight than numbers who are saved but go no further.

From Conformed To His Image

When Jesus first called His disciples He simply said, “Follow Me.” They followed Him for nearly four years, learning from Him exactly what it meant to be disciples. There was not one “Aha!” moment of complete surrender to Jesus, but a long, gradual, sometimes stumbling and painful process to discipleship.

Jesus was focused on true disciples, not multitudes of fickle fans.

Why have we gotten this backwards in our churches? When someone asks, “How’s your church doing,” they are really asking, “How many people show up on Sundays?” Perhaps a better gauge of God-honoring success would be: How many disciples?

What do you think?

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: church, church growth, discipleship, evangelism, Jesus Christ, Oswald Chambers, salvation. Leave a Comment »

Thursdays With Oswald—Right Thinking

March 6, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

Right Thinking

We have to be so faithful to God that through us may come the awakening of those who have not yet realized that they are redeemed.

We must distinguish between the revelation of Redemption and the experience of regeneration. We don’t experience life; we are alive. We don’t experience Redemption; we experience regeneration, that is, we experience the life of God coming into our human nature, and immediately the life of God comes in it produces a surface of consciousness, but Redemption means a great deal more than a man is conscious of.

From Conformed To His Image

These comments come from a class Oswald Chambers taught called “Christian Thinking.” His contention was that (1) Christians are the living, breathing testimony of what God does for man; (2) Christians need to think right in order to live right; (3) the way Christians live will either attract or repel others to Jesus Christ.

This right thinking is formed in Christians as the Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us through the Word. Often times we will find that we have been thinking all wrong about something, and we need to “be so faithful to God” that we are willing to give up these wrong lines of thinking.

Are you? Am I? Are we willing to admit, “I was wrong on this point” in order that others may see Christ in us and accept Him as their Savior? I sure hope so!

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Bible, Christian, confession, God's Word, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Oswald Chambers, redemption, repentance, thinking. Leave a Comment »

Thursdays With Oswald—The Patience Of The Saints

February 27, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

The Patience Of The Saints

The patience of the saints may be illustrated by the figure of a bow and arrow in the hands of God. He sees the target and takes aim, He strains the bow, not to breaking-point, however sever the pain may seem to the saint, but to just that point whence the arrow will fly with surest, swiftest speed to the bull’s-eye.

The patience of the saints, like the patience of our Lord, puts the sovereignty of God over all the saint’s career….

From Christian Disciplines

This talk of patience is the last thing Oswald Chambers discusses in his rather lengthy book Christian Disciplines. We have to remember that God is working in our lives with the view of eternity in mind. We often want things microwave-fast: “Okay, God, go ahead and do something in my life, but do it quickly!”

God’s timing is perfect. His plan is set, and He knows exactly when, where, and how to launch us. Wait for Him. Wait in expectation. Wait in readiness. Wait in hope that He will accomplish exactly what He wants to accomplish, at exactly the right moment He wants to accomplish it.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Christian, discipleship, God's plan, God's purpose, God's timing, Jesus Christ, Oswald Chambers, patience, saints. 2 Comments »

Links & Quotes

February 20, 2014 — Craig T. Owens

These are links to articles and quotes I found interesting today.

“The patience of hope does not turn men and women into monks and nuns, it gives men and women the right use of this world from another world′s standpoint.” —Oswald Chambers

The proper place of science in our culture: Science And Its Limits

Astronomers, cosmologists and physicists are always trying to explain the “missing” parts of their evolutionary theories: Missing Galaxy Mass Found

Very good! The Non-Physical Sides Of Sex

“You may think it out of place for me to say so, but in our churches today we are leaning too heavily upon human talents and educated abilities. We forget that the illumination of the Holy Spirit of God is a necessity, not only in our ministerial preparation, but in the administrative and leadership functions of our churches.” —A.W. Tozer

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor.” —Seneca

“Selfish religion loves Christ for His benefits, but not for Himself.” —David Brainerd

“Few marriages can make it if both partners are hiding out from God. Show me a marriage without one partner that is close to Jesus, and I’ll show you a marriage with little chance of survival. At least one of the partners must be in daily consultation with the Lord. It is best when both husband and wife are talking to Him, but if one partner is running from God, it is all the more important that the other be able to run to a secret closet of prayer for help and direction. A praying wife can often save her marriage, as can a praying husband. Love alone is not enough to keep a marriage strong—only God’s power can do that. That power is at work right now, healing and keeping marriages. Where Jesus rules, the marriage can make it.” —David Wilkerson