Thursdays With Oswald—Our Broken Treasures

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.

Oswald Chambers

Our Broken Treasures 

     It is a revelation of pure joyousness in which the child of God pours into the Father’s bosom the cares which give pain and anxiety that He may solve the difficulties. Too often we imagine that God lives in a place where He only repairs our broken treasures, but Jesus reveals that it is quite otherwise; He discerns all our difficulties and solves them before us. 

     We are not beggars on the one hand or spiritual customers on the other; we are God’s children, and we just stay before Him with our broken treasures or our pain and watch Him mend or heal in such a way that we understand Him better. 

From Christian Disciplines 

I think we sometimes forget the infinite capacity of our Heavenly Father. He is All-Loving: no one has ever—or can ever—love more completely and deeply than He does. He is also All-Powerful: there isn’t anything that limits His potency. What an amazing combination! If God were only loving but not powerful, we couldn’t be sure He was able to answer our prayer. If God were only powerful but not loving, we wouldn’t be comfortable about bringing our concerns to Him.

But He is Both! And as such, we should have such rock-solid confidence that He not only can answer prayer, but that He wants to answer prayer. He answers, as Oswald Chambers says, in ways that reveal more of His nature to us, so that we can understand Him better and better through each answered prayer.

“Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.”

Set Up

I absolutely love this quote from Albert Einstein:

“‎Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

This is so right on. And can be so sad.

I run into so many people that have this terrible message playing over and over and over in their minds, “I’m stupid … I’m worthless … I don’t have any talent …”

Perhaps we need to find some water for these fishes!

Get it? Instead of trying to change people’s wrong perspective of themselves, let’s get them set up for success. Help them discover where they are a genius … where they are invaluable … where they are talented.

Gotta go… I have a few fishes I need to point to water.