My Utmost For His Highest
July 29th

WHAT DO YOU SEE IN YOUR CLOUDS?

“Behold, He cometh with clouds.” Revelation 1:7

In the Bible clouds are always connected with God. Clouds are those sorrows or sufferings or providences, within or without our personal lives, which seem to dispute the rule of God. It is by those very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were no clouds, we should have no faith. “The clouds are but the dust of our Father’s feet.” The clouds are a sign that He is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow and bereavement and suffering are the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near without clouds, He does not come in clear shining.

It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials: through every cloud He brings, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in the cloud is to simplify our belief until our relationship to Him is exactly that of a child – God and my own soul, other people are shadows. Until other people become shadows, clouds and darkness will be mine every now and again. Is the relationship between myself and God getting simpler than ever it has been?

There is a connection between the strange providences of God and what we know of Him, and we have to learn to interpret the mysteries of life in the light of our knowledge of God. Unless we can look the darkest, blackest fact full in the face without damaging God’s character, we do not yet know Him.

“They feared as they entered the cloud . . .” – Is there anyone “save Jesus only” in your cloud? If so, it will get darker; you must get to the place where there is “no one any more save Jesus only.”

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Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?” John 11:40

Every time you venture out in the life of faith, you will find something in your common-sense circumstances that flatly contradicts your faith. Common sense is not faith, and faith is not common sense; they stand in the relation of the natural and the spiritual. Can you trust Jesus Christ where your common sense cannot trust Him? Can you venture heroically on Jesus Christ’s statements when the facts of your common-sense life shout – “It’s a lie?” On the mount it is easy to say – ‘Oh, yes, I believe God can do it’; but you have to come down into the demon-possessed valley and meet with facts that laugh ironically at the whole of your mount-of-transfiguration belief. Every time my programme of belief is clear to my own mind, I come across something that contradicts it. Let me say I believe God will supply all my need, and then let me run dry, with no outlook, and see whether I will go through the trial of faith, or whether I will sink back to something lower.

Faith must be tested, because it can be turned into a personal possession only through conflict. What is your faith up against just now? The test will either prove that your faith is right, or it will kill it. “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me.” The final thing is confidence in Jesus. Believe steadfastly on Him and all you come up against will develop your faith. There is continual testing in the life of faith, and the last great test is death. May God keep us in fighting trim! Faith is unutterable trust in God, trust which never dreams that He will not stand by us.

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(London, December 29, 1893)

Away from the world and the cruel,

Away from the day and its strife;

Away from the sad and the joyful,

Away from the struggle of life.

Away through the high hush of midnight,

Away from myself am I borne,

Away to the region of music,

Where the beautiful ever is worn.

Like a strange eager thing, half-frightened,

Like the rushing of wind held back,

My soul, yearning, longing was waiting,

Strained intensely, as held on a rack.

Far away, now so near—now so far

Came a presence so painfully dear;

Away burst my soul from its longing,

Away burst my heart from the fear.

Home from those wayward wanderings,

Home from that cold foreign clime,

Home, to the arms of “Our Father,”

Where I am all His and He’s mine.

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1. Prayer Pleading

In this day of church where there is so much pressure on so many people to be “doing, doing, doing” for others, brother David shares so eloquently that the first ministering we are called to is not for others, but for the Lord Himself – to get to know the Lord for Himself, to grow in love for the Lord Himself.  Oswald Chambers always used to say that if you looked after your relationship with the Lord, He will look after everything else. And you know what? He does.

Soli Deo Gloria!!

Be so blessed as you read.

Friday, August 21, 2009

GOD’S MEASURE OF SUCCESS

Success in God’s eyes is being totally fulfilled in ministering to him. Such servants aren’t striving to “make it” or seeking earthly security. They only want to know their Lord and to minister to him.

Think about the 100 prophets hidden by Obadiah (1 Kings 18:4). They lived an isolated existence in caves for at least three to four years, during a severe famine. These men had no outside ministry. They were completely out of the public’s view, forgotten by most people. They couldn’t even share in Elijah’s victory on Mount Carmel. No doubt, the world would call them failures, insignificant men who hadn’t accomplished anything.

Yet God had given these devoted servants the precious gift of time. They had days, weeks, even years to pray, study, grow and minister to the Lord. You see, God was preparing them for the day when he would release them to minister to his people. Indeed, these same men would shepherd those who returned to God under Elijah’s ministry.

Years ago, the Lord blessed me with this gift of time. Before I ever pastored a church, I went into the woods and preached to the birds and trees. I had no plans, no agenda, no dreams. I only wanted to get to know God’s heart. So I prayed daily, seeking the Lord and ministering to him. And I marked my Bible from cover to cover. I was hidden, not seen by anyone. But God knew my address all along.

My advice is, “Quit looking for ministry. Spend your time seeking God instead. He knows where to find you. He’ll summon you when he sees you are ready. Forget what others are doing. Strive to be a success at God’s throne. If you’re ministering to the Lord and praying for others, you are already a success in his eyes!”

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Oswald Chambers wrote this in 1901 at Kirn, Scotland. When you read the poems at Kirn, compared to the poems before Kirn, there is a marked difference in the tone. At the end of his collection of poems, he states that in 1901, he gave himself and his life fully consecrated to the Lord and He was filled with the Holy Spirit and he stopped writing poetry because perhaps he wanted to now live poetry? He then went on to become one of the most beloved of writers of the things and heart of God.

As you read this wonderful, rich poem, ask yourself if you have ever been brought to the place he writes of below. Have you felt you would break in two if the Lord did not give you what you asked for, which is Him for His sake only…

I really pray that this would awaken something really deep within you that would give you this craving if you do not already have it.

May the Lord bless you

Prayer Pleading – September 30, 1901

O take my heart my Saviour

Move its inward springs for me

Till Thy life in my behaviour

Springs in actions constantly

O my Saviour, I am mourning

For a living touch with Thee;

Let Thy Spirit’s pure adorning

Mould Thy character in me.

O do hear me, O do hear me

Else I think my heart will break;

In its longing, be Thou near me

And my burning thirst – O slake!

O Lord Jesus hear my crying

For a consecrated life

For I bite the dust in trying

For release from this dark strife.

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1. Longing After God

Ever felt yourself falling into an abyss spiritually? Where you realise for the first time that you cannot make yourself holy, that you cannot create a reality with God, that you cannot bring any revelation from Him and that your chances of hitting the bottom are pretty certain, unless He intervenes in a miraculous way? It has to begin and end in God.

It is both a frightening and exhilarating place to be. It is a time when you realise that you need to take your hands off your life, and allow God to steer it; to be a leaf blown about at whim by the wind of the Holy Spirit; where you cease from focussing on yourself and seeing God simply as a supply of blessing only, and allow Him to rearrange your focus onto Himself and all it encompasses, regardless of the cost to you.

I fell head first into this abyss back in October 2005. I thought I was going to be lost forever as my so-called ‘spiritual life’ of 27 years was in tatters, broken, neglected and dying as there was no  true reality of God in it.  I had failed so often and had no understanding of what it was to be His child and how He works with us. I was so frustrated as I had no-one to ask what to do, as I knew no-one who had this one thing that I so craved. And so I did what I should have done right at the beginning and pleaded with God to show me that He was real and that if  He was not, then I would rather be dead, because all I had lived through had now been for nothing anyway.

He was waiting to catch me at the bottom of the abyss…Praise His Holy Name!

O could I tell, ye surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can ye receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?
Oswald Chambers

Completely

Down
Down
Down
I go all the way into the abyss. Emptied completely.
Til no resistance is left
Til no hands are holding on
Til no heart can feel anything, discern anything
but Your presence.
Just that.
Only that
and that’s enough.
More than enough.

Lord,
My Lord.
All else is futile
Empty
Lost
Depraved
Numb
Dead.
But now I feel Your fountain washing over me.
Drenching. Cleansing. Refreshing. Reviving.
I feel Your Life growing inside of me. Surrounding me. Leading me.
Awakening every pore of my being one at a time.
I feel alive for the first time – truly, willingly yielding.
Stepping aside and learning to hand over bit-by-bit.
Learning to trust, simply
Moment by moment.

August 2006

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“Having therefore these promises.” I claim the fulfilment of God’s promises, and rightly, but that is only the human side; the Divine side is that through the promises I recognize God’s claim on me. For instance, am I realizing that my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, or have I a habit of body that plainly will not bear the light of God on it? By sanctification the Son of God is formed in me, then I have to transform my natural life into a spiritual life by obedience to Him. God educates us down to the scruple. When He begins to check, do not confer with flesh and blood, cleanse yourself at once. Keep yourself cleansed in your daily walk.

I have to cleanse myself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit until both are in accord with the nature of God. Is the mind of my spirit in perfect agreement with the life of the Son of God in me, or am I insubordinate in intellect? Am I forming the mind of Christ, Who never spoke from His right to Himself, but maintained an inner watchfulness whereby He continually submitted His spirit to His Father? I have the responsibility of keeping my spirit in agreement with His Spirit, and by degrees Jesus lifts me up to where He lived – in perfect consecration to His Father’s will, paying no attention to any other thing. Am I perfecting this type of holiness in the fear of God? Is God getting His way with me, and are other people beginning to see God in my life more and more?

Be serious with God and leave the rest gaily alone. Put God first literally.

Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest

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