VERSE: “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”
1 Corinthians 9:22
OSWALD: “’I have chosen you.’ Keep that note of greatness in your creed, It is not that you have got God but that He has got you. Here, in this College, God is at work, bending, breaking, moulding, doing just as He chooses. Why He is doing it, we do not know; He is doing it for one purpose only – that he may be able to say, This is My man, My woman. We have to be in God’s hand so that He can plant men on the Rock as He has planted us….Never choose to be a worker, but when God has put His call on you, woe be to you if you turn to the right hand or the left.” (October 25th)
MY THOUGHT: Most of the entries in My Utmost for His Highest came from lectures given by Oswald Chambers during devotions at Clapham, England’s Bible Training College he founded in 1911. He had a passion to train the next generation of Christian leaders. Men and women who had a distinct call on their life for ministry.
In the introduction to My Utmost, Biddy Chambers notes that this weekly “Devotional Hour at the College” was “an hour which for many of the students marked an epoch in their life with God.”
Though we can all glean from these entries, Oswald consistently points to the higher call of those who’ve dedicated their lives to full-time ministry. Not in a sense that they are more valuable to the Kingdom of God, but to the fact that they are more accountable. Called to a higher standard, they are to be an “example for all the believers” (1 Tim 4:12).
A monumental task which requires those of us who’ve answered that call to make ourselves constantly available to the rebuke, discipline and the “bending, breaking, moulding” of the Lord.
Today’s entry reminds me of poem that describes the process God often uses to shape us into instruments “fit for the master’s use” (2 Tim 2:21 KJV).
When God wants to drill a man,
When He yearns with all His heart
How He ruthlessly perfects
Into trial shapes of clay which
How He bends but never breaks