This is the third of a series of posts finding the wisdom for living life well through the words of Oswald Chambers. If you missed part 1 or part 2, I hope you’ll go take a read.
God engineers our goings–lean not on personal understanding and I, God will direct your steps. So what that means is that God is in control. Now that is very easy to say, but not quite so easy to live out. How can we accomplish this task?
The key to the missionary’s difficult task is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work. In the natural realm, prayer in not practical but absurd. We have to realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view. (Oct 16)
If we will busy ourselves with prayer and prayer alone, then God will have a vessel He can use. When I say “prayer alone,” I am not absurdly hinting at a life that does no work ever, but I do mean that instead of the crazy, over-active life that has “no time for prayer,” we must make time for prayer. If we do not, we are merely wasting our time in a futile existence that the world calls religion.
We stay busy at work, while people all around us are ripe, and ready to be harvested; we do not reap even one of them, but simply waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities and programs. Sometimes our response is “O, but I have a special work to do!” No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own. Our Lord calls us to no special work–He calls us to Himself. (Oct 16)
If we can grasp this, then we can take the first steps to seeing God do mighty works in and around us. Notice I did not say, “see us do mighty works for God.” There is no mighty work of God done in ourselves. If God is not the agent doing the work, then all our glorious acts are clanging symbols and clashing brassy noise. Do you understand that?
The great enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ today is the idea of practical work that has no basis in the New Testament but comes from the systems of the world. This work insists upon endless energy and activities, but no private life with God. (Luke 17:20-21) An active Christian worker too often lives to be seen by others, while it is the innermost, personal area that reveals the power of a person’s life.
We must get rid of the plague of the spirit of this religious age in which we live. In our Lord’s life there was none of the pressure and the rushing of tremendous activity that we regard so highly today. The central point of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with Him, not public usefulness to others.(Oct 19)
You were not saved to work for God; you were saved to have a relationship with the Father, the Creator. Through that relationship, He can do mighty works in and around you, through the overflow of your relationship with Him. It can not happen any other way. Oh, wonderful things can be done apart from God in our own strength, but they are not God’s mighty works. Oh struggling saint, we still see the “mighty work” as something out there. No!! It is in the solitude of relationship building that you and God are in the process of doing that the mighty work.
Prayer does not equip us for greater works–prayer is the greater work. Yet we think of prayer as some commonsense exercise of our higher powers that simply prepares us for God’s work. (Oct 17)
If you waste your time in over activity, instead of being immersed in the great fundamental truths of God’s redemption, then you will snap when the stress and strain do come. But if this time of soaking before God is being spent in getting rooted and grounded in Him (Eph 3), which may appear impractical, then you will remain true to Him whatever happens. (Oct 19)
If we can overcome this hurdle, then we can be a vessel to honor that God can and will use. He’ll use us because He trusts us through the relationship that we have built together. Isn’t that cool!! But getting to that position only comes through our time together with Him in prayer.