We all say we want to be used by God, but do we really mean it?
Week 17 – Celebrating 100 Years of Oswald Chambers
SCRIPTURE: “Be instant in season, out of season.” 2 Timothy 4:2
OSWALD: There are unemployables in the spiritual domain, spiritually decrepit people, who refuse to do anything unless they are supernaturally inspired. The proof that we are rightly related to God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not…If you make a god of your best moments, you will find that God will fade out of your life and never come back until you do the duty that lies nearest, and have learned not to make a fetish of your rare moments. (My Utmost for His Highest, April 25th)
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How It Spoke to Me…
As I’ve shared before, I love to use a journal to record what God speaks to me during my quiet time. So many times, it isn’t until I put pen to paper and respond that I discover the deeper truths God wants to reveal to me through His Word.
In a sense, I write to find out. But journaling does something more. It gives me a tangible space to respond to the Spirit of God as He speaks in the hidden places of my heart.
In the April 25th entry of My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald writes:
There are unemployables in the spiritual domain, spiritually decrepit people, who refuse to do anything unless they are supernaturally inspired. The proof that we are rightly related to God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not…If you make a god of your best moments, you will find that God will fade out of your life and never come back until you do the duty that lies nearest, and have learned not to make a fetish of your rare moments.
Like I usually do, I worded my response to what I read as a prayer – something I highly recommend. For instead of recording a third-person analysis of what I’ve read, I invite God to a first-person conversation. I ask Him to change me, to conform me to His image. For until I agree with the diagnosis, I will never receive the cure.
Here’s what that day’s response looked like in my journal:
O Lord, it is so true. This daughter of Yours wants the constant mountain top. The glow of Your presence always around me, Your voice forever in my ear. I want Your anointing to be so visible upon me that, like Moses, my life requires a veil. I want my spiritual walk to be marked with the extraordinary and the miraculous so that the world stands up and takes notice that I belong to You.
And yet, I’ve found what one pastor said to be true in my life as well…
I’m firmly convinced that I was never of any use to God until I made peace with being ordinary. Click To Tweet
Ordinary. How that word cuts against our human desire to be significant and the “selfish ambition and vain conceit” Philippians 2:3 speaks of – the drivenness to be more than we are (and more importantly, to be more than what other people are!)
Can I serve you as faithfully in the shadows as I serve you on the stage? Can I give my life away when no one’s looking and no one sees? Am I willing to make washing dishes an act of worship and scrubbing toilets my sacrifice of praise?
Can I live by faith in the midst of the ordinariness of my life? On those days when You don’t speak – during those long, dry periods when I have no mountain tops to point to and no great moments on which to lean. Can I live my life without seeing You? Or necessarily “feeling” You? Can I live my life without needing to be significant in order to prove my value to You or to those around me?
Oh, how I want to. Because then, Lord, I believe I will finally have begun to learn what it means to live by faith.
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Read WEEK 18 – “When You Run from Judgment| Guest Kelly Balarie” >>
I’d love to hear from you…Who have you seen God use mightily all because they lived by faith in their “ordinary life”?