Daily Devotional: My Utmost For His Highest

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I welcome others to comment on these daily devotionals.
I have been posting them in my CF blog
and thought it nice if others could also comment on them.

This is the link to the DAILY DEVOTIONAL.

And here is the copyright info from the site:

Taken from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. (c) l935 by Dodd Mead & Co., renewed (c) 1963 by the Oswald Chambers Publications Assn., Ltd., and is used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved.

 

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Programme of Belief

"Believest thou this?" John 11:26

Martha believed in the power at the disposal of Jesus Christ, she believed that if He had been present He could have healed her brother; she also believed that Jesus had a peculiar intimacy with God and that whatever He asked of God, God would do; but she needed a closer personal intimacy with Jesus. Martha's programme of belief had its fulfilment in the future; Jesus led her on until her belief became a personal possession, and then slowly emerged into a particular inheritance - "Yea, Lord, I believe that Thou art the Christ. . . "

Is there something like that in the Lord's dealings with you? Is Jesus educating you into a personal intimacy with Himself? Let Him press home His question to you - "Believest thou this?" What is your ordeal of doubt? Have you come, like Martha, to some overwhelming passage in your circumstances where your programme of belief is about to emerge into a personal belief? This can never be until a personal need arises out of a personal problem.

To believe is to commit. In the programme of mental belief I commit myself, and abandon all that is not related to that commitment. In personal belief I commit myself morally to this way of confidence and refuse to compromise with any other; and in particular belief I commit myself spiritually to Jesus Christ, and determine in that thing to be dominated by the Lord alone.

When I stand face to face with Jesus Christ and He says to me - "Believest thou this?" I find that faith is as natural as breathing, and I am staggered that I was so stupid as not to trust Him before.


Above from My Utmost for His Highest
Highlights are mine

I think it is awesome that God is willing to deal with each of us personally where we are.
He wants us all to come to Him and be able to say "I believe".

 

[MMXII]

I think it is awesome that God is willing to deal with each of us personally where we are.
He wants us all to come to Him and be able to say "I believe".

Something hit me the other day. It is so easy for me to pray and request something from God and I feel like my life line to him is one way...me entreating Him. But I read something very simply put that hit me right between the eyes. He just wants to spend time with us. I said...Wow!! I spend time in prayer but don't spend a lot of time waiting on Him, waiting for His peace, waiting on His love and assurances, waiting on His conversation with me. It's so easy for me to pray for someone but He wants me to talk to Him. And here is the big realization...to have a relationship with Him.

 

[tryme]

Something hit me the other day. It is so easy for me to pray and request something from God and I feel like my life line to him is one way...me entreating Him. But I read something very simply put that hit me right between the eyes. He just wants to spend time with us. I said...Wow!! I spend time in prayer but don't spend a lot of time waiting on Him, waiting for His peace, waiting on His love and assurances, waiting on His conversation with me. It's so easy for me to pray for someone but He wants me to talk to Him. And here is the big realization...to have a relationship with Him.

In this crazy, hectic, busy world it is easy to lose sight of God's purpose for us.
We were created to have fellowship with him.

I make an effort to shut off the world in order to converse with him.
It is so important to just be still and open yourself to hearing him.

 

[MMXII]

In this crazy, hectic, busy world it is easy to lose sight of God's purpose for us.
We were created to have fellowship with him.

I make an effort to shut off the world in order to converse with him.
It is so important to just be still and open yourself to hearing him.

I remember a previous Pastor of mine said that his mother (mother of 10 kids) would go into a broom closet and cover her head with her apron to pray. You are right about the hectic world that we live in and I'm saddened to say that I do not spend enough time alone with God. Something that I need to schedule away from "things and stuff" that's going on in my life.

 

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The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances

"All things work together for good to them that love God." Romans 8:28

The circumstances of a saint's life are ordained of God. In the life of a saint there is no such thing as chance. God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you cannot understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands. God is bringing you into places and among people and into conditions in order that the intercession of the Spirit in you may take a particular line. Never put your hand in front of the circumstances and say - I am going to be my own providence here, I must watch this, and guard that. All your circumstances are in the hand of God, therefore never think it strange concerning the circumstances you are in. Your part in intercessory prayer is not to enter into the agony of intercession, but to utilize the common-sense circumstances God puts you in, and the common-sense people He puts you amongst by His providence, to bring them before God's throne and give the Spirit in you a chance to intercede for them. In this way God is going to sweep the whole world with His saints.

Am I making the Holy Spirit's work difficult by being indefinite, or by trying to do His work for Him? I must do the human side of intercession, and the human side is the circumstances I am in and the people I am in contact with. I have to keep my conscious life as a shrine of the Holy Ghost, then as I bring the different ones before God, the Holy Spirit makes intercession for them.

Your intercessions can never be mine, and my intercessions can never be yours, but the Holy Ghost makes intercession in our particular lives, without which intercession someone will be impoverished.


Above from My Utmost for His Highest
Highlights are mine

WOW- I wanted to highlight the whole first paragraph.
Funny thing I was thinking about that verse last night before going to bed.
I wake up this morning and it is the verse in my devotional.

 

[MMXII]

Your highlights are what hit me too.

 

[Abiel]

This is an ace thread- sticky?

 

[MMXII]

Abiel, you're the best!!

 

[tryme]

Your highlights are what hit me too.

I hope it does not take away from your reading the whole text????

 

[tryme]

This is an ace thread- sticky?

Thanks for the sticky and adding the Bible icon.

 

[Abiel]

Today's passage reminds me that their are people in my life who I am the only person actively praying for by name in the whole wide world. I think particularly of my unsaved family. Perhaps I don't taken that responsibility seriously enough.

 

[mysparrow]

thank you for the devotionals , very much needed and thought provoking,

 

[tryme]

thank you for the devotionals , very much needed and thought provoking,

You are welcome.
I am glad others are enjoying it.

 

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The Unrivalled Power of Prayer

"We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Romans 8:26

We realize that we are energized by the Holy Spirit for prayer; we know what it is to pray in the Spirit; but we do not so often realize that the Holy Spirit Himself prays in us prayers which we cannot utter. When we are born again of God and are indwelt by the Spirit of God, He expresses for us the unutterable.

"He," the Spirit in you, "maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God," and God searches your heart not to know what your conscious prayers are, but to find out what is the prayer of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit of God needs the nature of the believer as a shrine in which to offer His intercession. "Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost." When Jesus Christ cleansed the temple, He "would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple." The Spirit of God will not allow you to use your body for your own convenience. Jesus ruthlessly cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and said - "My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."

Have we recognized that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? If so, we must be careful to keep it undefiled for Him. We have to remember that our conscious life, though it is only a tiny bit of our personality, is to be regarded by us as a shrine of the Holy Ghost. He will look after the unconscious part that we know nothing of; but we must see that we guard the conscious part for which we are responsible.


Above from My Utmost for His Highest
Highlights are mine

Another great devotional.
It's a great reminder of the Holy Spirit working thru us.
I think it is awesome that even when we can not utter the prayers on our heart the Holy Spirit does it for us.

I know sometimes I have such a heavy heart I really can not speak the words.
Sometimes I can not even consciencely fathom what I should be praying for.
I am so glad the Holy Spirit exists to intercede with God for me.

 

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Another very good one.

 

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Sacramental Service

"Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ. . . ." Colossians 1:24

The Christian worker has to be a sacramental "go-between," to be so identified with his Lord and the reality of His Redemption that He can continually bring His creating life through him. It is not the strength of one man's personality being superimposed on another, but the real presence of Christ coming through the elements of the worker's life. When we preach the historic facts of the life and death of Our Lord as they are conveyed in the New Testament, our words are made sacramental, God uses them on the ground of His Redemption to create in those who listen that which is not created otherwise. If we preach the effects of Redemption in human life instead of the revelation regarding Jesus, the result in those who listen is not new birth, but refined spiritual culture, and the Spirit of God cannot witness to it because such preaching is in another domain. We have to see that we are in such living sympathy with God that as we proclaim His truth He can create in souls the things which He alone can do.

What a wonderful personality! What a fascinating man! Such marvellous insight! What chance has the Gospel of God through all that? It cannot get through, because the line of attraction is always the line of appeal. If a man attracts by his personality, his appeal is along that line; if he is identified with his Lord's personality, then the appeal is along the line of what Jesus Christ can do. The danger is to glory in men; Jesus says we are to lift Him up.


Above from My Utmost for His Highest
Highlights are mine

It is our goal to exemplify the personality of Christ.
It is such a humbling thought to be like Christ.
As we strive to accomplish that daily by focusing on God
the hope is others will be able to see and feel Christ's compassion thru us.

 

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Fellowship In The Gospel

"Fellow labourer in the gospel of Christ." 1 Thessalonians 3:2

After sanctification it is difficult to state what your aim in life is, because God has taken you up into His purpose by the Holy Ghost; He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself - God has called me for this and that; you are putting a barrier to God's use of you. As long as you have a personal interest in your own character, or any set ambition, you cannot get through into identification with God's interests. You can only get there by losing for ever any idea of yourself and by letting God take you right out into His purpose for the world, and because your goings are of the Lord, you can never understand your ways.

I have to learn that the aim in life is God's, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him, and never say - Lord, this gives me such heart-ache. To talk in that way makes me a clog. When I stop telling God what I want, He can catch me up for what He wants without let or hindrance. He can crumple me up or exalt me, He can do anything He chooses. He simply asks me to have implicit faith in Himself and in His goodness. Self pity is of the devil, if I go off on that line I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. I have "a world within the world" in which I live, and God will never be able to get me outside it because I am afraid of being frost-bitten.


Above from My Utmost for His Highest
Highlighted is mine.

These devotions are really speaking to me.
Just what I needed to hear at the time I needed to hear it.
We need to let go and let God.
I use to think that was a silly, corny expression.
But it is really so true.
Nothing should be about us, but rather about God and His desires.
We should have complete faith in God even in difficult time.

 

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The Supreme Climb

"Take now thy son ." Genesis 22:2

God's command is - Take now, not presently. It is extraordinary how we debate! We know a thing is right, but we try to find excuses for not doing it at once. To climb to the height God shows can never be done presently, it must be done now. The sacrifice is gone through in will before it is performed actually.

"And Abraham rose up early in the morning and went unto the place of which God had told him" (v. 3). The wonderful simplicity of Abraham! When God spoke, he did not confer with flesh and blood. Beware when you want to confer with flesh and blood, i.e., your own sympathies, your own insight, anything that is not based on your personal relationship to God. These are the things that compete with and hinder obedience to God. Abraham did not choose the sacrifice. Always guard against self-chosen service for God; self-sacrifice may be a disease. If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; if He has made it bitter, drink it in communion with Him. If the providential order of God for you is a hard time of difficulty, go through with it, but never choose the scene of your martyrdom. God chose the crucible for Abraham, and Abraham made no demur; he went steadily through. If you are not living in touch with Him, it is easy to pass a crude verdict on God. You must go through the crucible before you have any right to pronounce a verdict, because in the crucible you learn to know God better. God is working for His highest ends until His purpose and man's purpose become one.

Above from My Utmost for His Highest
Boldness by me



I pray when you, God, present a ministry for me I will say yes, Lord, reporting for duty "NOW".
You have prepared me for whatever may came my way.
You have put me in a place that I have the time to focus on Your work.

 

[MMXII]

Amen!