Here is an excerpt from My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers (March 11):
'The only way to be obedient to 'the heavenly vision' is to give our utmost for His highest - our best for His glory. This can be accomplished only when we make a determination to continually remember God's vision. But the acid test is obedience to the vision in the details of our everyday life - sixty seconds out of every minute, and sixty minutes out of every hour, not just during times of personal prayer or public meetings.
''Though it tarries, wait for it...'' (Habbakkuk 2:3). We cannot bring the vision to fulfillment through our own efforts, but must live under its inspiration until it fulfills itself. [. . .]
Waiting for a vision that 'tarries' is the true test of our faithfulness to God. It is at the risk of our own soul's welfare that we get caught up in practical busy-work only to miss the fulfillment of the vision.
Watch for the storms of God. The only way God plants His saints is through the whirlwind of His storms. [. . .] Let God send you out through His storm, and don't go until He does. If you select your own spot to be planted, you will prove yourself to be an unproductive, empty pod. However, if you allow God to plant you, you will ''bear much fruit.'' (John 15 : 8)
It is essential that we live and ''walk in the light'' of God's vision for us (1 John 1 : 17).'This is all part of a learning process - learning to let God rule and reign and not to let that very idea become blasé. I am aware of a tendency in myself to be eager to speak to God and present all my supplications to Him (which He loves and would encourage us to do) and in all my busy-ness to go about 'doing' this and that - tasks that God requires of me or otherwise - without letting Him speak into me, not just for five minutes at the beginning of the day, but in every minute of the day. He watches over me in my coming and my going. He is always with me. I am His beloved and He is mine. And I am learning that He wants me to work alongside Him, conferring with Him every step of the way. Because if I can learn to walk with Him every step of the way, then I am safe. I can go forth with boldness, knowing that I have a lion at my side.
Through the stories that He stitches into my journey it's becoming more and more clear to me that God's thoughts are far above ours - His timing, His design, His planning and His logic are all out of this world! Far different from our own thinking which has been chopped down, broken up and squeezed into a box. No matter what we believe about God, most of our thinking has been filtered through a framework which has been constructed according to the limitations of this world. We often foolishly try to put God in a box, to figure Him out and to 'explain' Him. But we can never understand Him from within this broken mindset. We were made to be children of God. To see the things that He does and to do them. Just as a child imitates their Father. Simple.
It is only by the renewing of this mind that we can draw near to God, as we are made whole and restored to our real identity in Him. Our true identity and our reality are found only in Him.
And so I am on a journey and if I walk in the full awareness of this identity I will give my utmost for His highest, I will submit my thoughts and my plans to Him, I will surrender to His storms, I will ask for wisdom and gain it to use for His glory, I will focus and be determined 'to continually remember God's vision' for my life, all the while knowing that it's not through my own efforts that anything will come of it. Knowing that I am saved by Grace and Grace alone. I can't do it without Him. Learning to trust Him for nourishment and growth, knowing that it is Him who has planted me. The only effort required of me is to listen and be obedient, knowing that God is speaking to me all the time and all I need to do is listen and act upon what I hear.
And while I know that I know that I know all this, I also know that I will forget at times and I will fall down and I will find it hard and I will get scared - because I am helpless without Him - but when I do I know that He will pick me up again and whisper to me to carry on, to practice listening to my heavenly Father and to learn to obey and see as He sees - to be who I was made to be. . .and that is where the adventure begins! : )
"Attempt something so great for God it's doomed for failure unless God be in it" - John E. Haggai
