Thursdays With Oswald—Whose Approval?

December 30, 2010 — 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.

Whose Approval?

     The Gospel of Jesus Christ awakens an intense craving and an equally intense resentment. Base on personal love for the Lord, not on personal love for men. Personal love for men will make you call immorality a weakness, and holiness a mere aspiration; personal love for the Lord will make you call immorality devilish, and holiness the only thing that can stand in the light of God. The only safety for the preacher is to face his soul not with his people, or even with his message, but to face his soul with his Savior all the time.

From Approved Unto God

As a pastor, if I endeavor to please men, I cannot call sin “sin,” nor can I call people to holiness before God. If I love the approval of people more than I love the approval of God, I must naturally water things down.

I must live for the applause of nail-scarred Hands alone.

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Thursdays With Oswald—The Preacher And The Word

December 16, 2010 — 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 Preacher And The Word

     Keep yourself full to the brim in reading; but remember that the first great Resource is the Holy Spirit Who lays at your disposal the Word of God. The thing to prepare is not the sermon, but the preacher. …

     It is easy to tell men they must be saved and filled with the Holy Spirit; but we have to live amongst men and show them what a life filled with the Holy Spirit ought to be.

From Approved Unto God

My takeaways: (a) My other reading is fine, but it should never take the place of the reading of the Bible; and (b) People would rather see a sermon in me than hear a sermon from me any day.

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Thursdays With Oswald—General Maxims

December 9, 2010 — 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.

General Maxims

     (a) If you lack education, first realize it; then cure it.

     (b) Beware of knowing what you don’t practice.

From Approved Unto God

I know the maxim for some is, “Fake it until you make it.” I can’t do that. I won’t do that. The Bible has a word for doing that: Hypocrisy.

How can you say to your brother, “Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,” when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye (Luke 6:42).

But just as bad is when I know what I’m supposed to do, and then make excuses not to do that. The Bible has a word for not doing that: Sin.

Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it (James 4:17).

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Thursdays With Oswald—Whose Ideas?

December 2, 2010 — 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.

Whose Ideas?

     Am I allowing anyone to mold my ideas of Christian service? Am I taking my ideas from some servant of God or from God Himself?

From Approved Unto God

My relationship with God is a personal relationship; it is unique to me. I can certainly pick up some principles from others, but the application to my life has to be what I hear the Holy Spirit speaking directly to me.

Don’t be a copycat. Be the original you that God needs you to be.

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Thursdays With Oswald—The Master’s Standard

November 18, 2010 — 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 Master’s Standard

     Jesus Christ’s standard for the worker is Himself. Am I allowing His standard to obsess me? Am I measuring my life by His all the time? The one standard put before us is Our Lord Himself; we have to be saturated in this ideal in thinking and in praying, and allow nothing to blur the standard. We must lift up Jesus Christ not only in the preaching of the Gospel but to our own souls. If my mind and heart and spirit is getting fixed with one Figure only, the Lord Jesus Christ, and other people and other ideas are fading, then I am growing in grace. The one dominant characteristic in the life of the worker is that Jesus Christ is coming more into the ascendant. The motive is not a sentiment but a passion, the blazing passion of the Holy Ghost in the soul of the worker; not—“because Jesus has done so much for me,” that is a sickening, unscriptural statement. The one attitude of the life is Jesus Christ first, second, and third, and nothing apart from Him. The thing that hinders God’s work is not sin, but other claims which are right, but which at a certain point of their rightness conflict with the claims of Jesus Christ. If the conflict should come, remember it is to be Jesus first.

From Approved Unto God

Am I measuring my life by His all the time? Great question!

Am I?

Are you?

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Thursdays With Oswald—Work-In-Progress

November 11, 2010 — 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.

Work-In-Progress

     If you are a worker whom God has sent, and have learned to live under His shadow, you will find that scarcely a day goes by without your Father revealing the need of further chastening. If any child of God is free from the goads of God, he is not in the line of the succession of Jesus Christ.

From Approved Unto God

The writer of Hebrews said the same thing…

And have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as His children? He said, “My child, don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline, and don’t give up when He corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes each one He accepts as His child.”

It’s true: No pain, no gain. God will continue to work on you and me as His child.

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Thursdays With Oswald—Your Greatest Stumbling Block

October 28, 2010 — 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.

Your Greatest Stumbling Block

The greatest stumbling block that prevents some people from being simple disciples of Jesus is that they are gifted—so gifted that they won’t trust in the Lord with all their hearts.

From Approved Unto God

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth…

But to us who are personally called by God Himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”

In my weakness, let Christ be strong!

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Thursdays With Oswald—Integrated Life

October 21, 2010 — 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.

Integrated Life

     God will never allow us to divide our lives into sacred and secular, into study and activity. We generally think of a student as one who shuts himself up and studies in a reflective way, but that is never revealed in God’s book. A Christian’s thinking ought to be done in activities, not in reflection, because we only come to right discernment in activities. Some incline to study naturally in the reflective sense, others incline more to steady active work; the Bible combines both in one life. We are apt to look on workers for God as a special class, but that is foreign to the New Testament. Our Lord was a carpenter; Paul was a weaver. If you try and live in compartments, God will tumble up the time.

From Approved Unto God

You and I don’t have sacred and secular lives. If you are a follower of God, your whole life is holy: it’s all set apart for God. Don’t slack off in areas that you think are secular; treat everything as holy.

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Thursdays With Oswald—The Same Gospel Re-Stated

October 14, 2010 — 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 Same Gospel Re-Stated

      What is needed today is not a new gospel, but live men and women who can re-state the Gospel of the Son of God in terms that will reach the very heart of our problems. Today men are flinging the truth overboard as well as the terms. Why should we not become “workmen who need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” to our own people? The majority of orthodox ministers are hopelessly useless, and the unorthodox seem to be the only ones who are used. We need men and women saturated with the truth of God who can re-state the old truth in terms that appeal to our day.

From Approved Unto God

So saturated with God’s Word that I think it, speak it, live it. Just as the Apostle Paul stated to the Corinthian church:

Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you. This “letter” is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts.

Can I repeat Oswald Chambers’ last line again, just so it can sink in: We need men and women saturated with the truth of God who can re-state the old truth in terms that appeal to our day.

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Thursdays With Oswald—Not Imitating Jesus

October 7, 2010 — 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.

Not Imitating Jesus

      God does not expect us to imitate Jesus Christ: He expects us to allow the life of Jesus to be manifested in our mortal flesh. God engineers circumstances and brings us into difficult places where no one can help us, and we can either manifest the life of Jesus in those conditions, or else be cowards and say, “I cannot exhibit the life of God there.” Then we deprive God of glory. If you will let the life of God be manifested in your particular human edition—where God cannot manifest it, that is why He called you, you will bring glory to God.

From Approved Unto God

This so encourages me, because it tells me that every difficult situation I’m in is God-engineered. He put me in these tough spots because He wants the life of Jesus to be seen through me. And He wants to be glorified. If God desires these things, then He will give me His Holy Spirit to strengthen me to shine in difficult places.

Shine on!

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