Wednesday, August 31, 2005

What YOU Focus on You Become (my mantra)
MY JOY . . . YOUR JOY (Oswalds Title Utmost Devo for today 8/31)
That My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. John 15:11

What was the joy that Jesus had? It is an insult to use the word happiness in connection with Jesus Christ. The joy of Jesus was the absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice of Himself to His Father, the joy of doing that which the Father sent Him to do. "I delight to do Thy will." Jesus prayed that our joy might go on fulfilling itself until it was the same joy as His. Have I allowed Jesus Christ to introduce His joy to me?

The full flood of my life is not in bodily health, not in external happenings, not in seeing God's work succeed, but in the perfect understanding of God, and in the communion with Him that Jesus Himself had. The first thing that will hinder this joy is the captious irritation of thinking out circumstances. The cares of this world, said Jesus, will choke God's word. Before we know where we are, we are caught up in the shows of things. All that God has done for us is the mere threshold; He wants to get us to the place where we will be His witnesses and proclaim Who Jesus is.

Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. Be a centre for Jesus Christ to pour living water through. Stop being self-conscious, stop being a sanctified prig, and live the life hid with Christ. The life that is rightly related to God is as natural as breathing wherever it goes. The lives that have been of most blessing to you are those who were unconscious of it.

Oswald so deep and yet so real..an Emergent before there was emergent? into Spiritual Formation......Why do I insist on overwriting, overthinking something/everything ...or is it the urge within all of us born of the Spirit to find ways to communicate how gloriously real the gospel of Christ is, the journey is, how REAL God is and can be in a persons life.....once begun YOU can't stop because the Spirit in YOU drives you now and that is confusing and confirming and real and unreal and exciting and scary and risky and did I say confusing...but only confusing when I am about ME and worrying about ME and thinking about ME and....unfortunately that is quite a bit of the time and maybe just maybe becoming less or ...oh who am I kidding I still think about ME and make things about ME but I am realizing more and more how that breaks Your heart and that seems to be driving me more and more to repentance......
And then THIS quote from Oswald via John Fishers PDL devo this morning..... Oswald Chambers has said that we don’t truly own our faith unless we have struggled over it in some form. Belief is not pure acceptance. God desires interaction and He revels in our working through the process of believing Him. He wrestled with Jacob and even let him win.

I do love wrestling with You Father and yet like a child with her Daddy I know I am overpowered and yet YOU never overpower me or maybe more like a child... I didn't know and the older I get the more I come to appreciate how YOU didn't and don't overpower me......a child won't wrestle with a stranger.......They only fully abandon themselves to the joy of it with their Daddy......hmmmmm

2 comments:

Melissa said...

Becky,

I sometimes ache so deeply with a deep communion with God that it hurts. However, I miss His still small voice with the trappings of worrying about me, how I can be better, how I can serve Him...

I'm so sick of me it isn't even funny...yet, I'm so grateful that He really allows us to restle with Him, to find the joy that can only derive from a right relationship with Him...
...what took the breath out of me was "Oswald Chambers" has said that we don't truly own our faith unless we have struggled over it in some form. Belief is not pure acceptance."...there are not words...keep stirring the pot of truth in my life.

Be Blessed!

Curious Servant said...

Right.

The all powerful creator simply stands at the door and waits for us. He can do anything, yet insists on us doing the choosing.

Simply astounding.