Who is shaping your life?
Week 43 – Celebrating 100 Years of Oswald Chambers
VERSE: “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” 1 Corinthians 9:22
OSWALD: “‘I chose you…’ (John 15:16). Keep these words as a wonderful reminder in your theology. It is not that you have gotten God, but that He has gotten you. God is at work bending, breaking, molding, and doing exactly as He chooses. And why is He doing it? He is doing it for only one purpose— that He may be able to say, ‘This is My man, and this is My woman.’ We have to be in God’s hand so that He can place others on the Rock, Jesus Christ, just as He has placed us…Never choose to be a worker, but once God has placed His call upon you, woe be to you if you ‘turn aside…to the right or the left…'” – (My Utmost for His Highest, October 25th)
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How It Spoke to Me…
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.
They are called to a higher standard, that is, 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, molding” 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,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part; When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways! How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands! How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And which every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out-
God knows what He’s about.
Author Unknown
Read WEEK 42 – “The Greater Work | Guest Michelle Ule”
Read WEEK 44 – “The Doorway of Heartbreak” >>
I’d love to hear from you…How has God “shaped” your life for His purposes?