Week Thirty-four Question

Do we so appreciate the marvelous salvation of Jesus Christ that we are our utmost for His highest?

“His salvation is a glad thing, but it is also a heroic, holy thing. It tests us for all we are worth. God’s grace turns out men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not milk-sops. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it does not make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome” – Chambers  July 7

My Response:

Am I an overcomer or am I a “milk-sop” - someone who retreats rather than charges? To live my “utmost for His highest” means that I need to live a fully hope-full life in Christ. Living in the Truth, not in my feelings.

          “Living hope means to live in the depths with God, to seek out His will, His heart, and His love. It means to live in the hope-full reality of God’s Truth, not in hope-less misleading circumstances.

What is the Truth? You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you; you are loved; you are provided for; you are rescued. The Truth is you are protected, redeemed, forgiven, restored, chosen, and you have been given beauty for ashes.

To live hope means to daily take a stand to remember not only who God is, but who you are in Christ.

To live hope means to speak the Word of God, the Word of life, His breath of life into situations that the world would consider hopeless. The bones are dry and dead, but the breath of God restores.

To live hope is to live in truth, to live in Christ because He is the truth that covers and revives us.

To live hope is to live daily in the promises of God, not in circumstances or worldly standards and judgments.

To live hope is to be attached and nourished and sustained by the very hand of God, to be cradled in His embrace, free to take flight like the eagles, to stand on the heights like the deer, and to dance like the angels.” – from The Human Hope Shift – Zilske

Father-God, when I rise up on the wings of Your strength and love, I will not faint or grow weary – that is the Truth.

Week Thirty-three Question:

Is the Son of God getting His chance in me? Is the direct simplicity of the life of God’s Son being worked out exactly as it was worked out in His historic life? Is the Lord Jesus Christ being abundantly satisfied in your life or have you got a spiritual strut on? As we living in such human dependence upon Jesus Christy that His life is being manifested moment by moment?

“Common sense is a gift which God gave to human nature; but common sense is not the gift of His Son. Supernatural sense is the gift of His Son; never enthrone common sense. Our ordinary wits never worship God unless they are transfigured by the indwelling Son of God” - Chambers August 9

My Response:

“You say that you may not be living up to your beliefs, but by definition, this is impossible. We always live up or down to our beliefs. Beliefs are the rails which govern our lives. Our trains roll on them whether we like it or not. If your train is not rolling on the set of rails which you claim are yours, it’s because you have diverted your train to another set of rails-these are your true beliefs now, not the rails you left. Unless you first understand this, you can never find what you seek…It’s the greatest misconception in Christianity today. That what you once believed, you will always believe. That to profess is the same as to believe. That a profession made twenty years ago somehow trumps what you really believe today…To believe in Christ is to follow him. To be his apprentice with full intention of living as he lived…Casting all aside for the sake of the treasure” (139-140) from A Man Called Blessed by Ted Dekker and Bill Bright

Father-God, I ask that the direct simplicity of Jesus’ life be made manifest in my life. Transfigure me.

Are you rightly related to your wife, to your husband, to your children, to your fellow-students – are you a “good child” there? Have I been asking God to give me money for something I want when there is something I have not paid for?

“I am a child of God only by regeneration, and as a child of God I am good only as I walk in the light. Prayer with most of us is turned into pious platitude, it is a matter of emotion, mystical communion with God. Spiritually we are all good at producing fogs.  We talk about prayer as if God heard us irrespective of the fact of our relationship to Him. Never say it is not God’s will to give you what you ask, don’t sit down and faint, but find out the reason, turn up the index.” – Chambers August 24

My Response:

What can I say? Lord, help me to “turn up the index.”

Week Thirty-one Question

Do I believe I need to be holy? Do I believe God can come into me and make me holy?

“The destined end of man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness. The preaching of the gospel awakens an intense resentment because it must reveal that I am unholy; but it also awakens an intense craving. God is not an eternal blessing-machine for men; He did not to save men out of pity: He came to save men because He created them to be holy. The Atonement means that God can put me back into perfect union with Himself, without a shadow between, through the Death of Jesus Christ” - Chambers September 1

My Response:

I remember the first time I read the words in 1 Peter 1:16: “Be holy because I am holy” (originally from Leviticus). Growing up as I did attending church every Sunday, holiness was a word used to describe God, Jesus and the Saints. But me? I was to be holy?

Not until I came into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and understood the meaning behind His sacrifice on the cross did I accept it was not what I did that made me holy – but what He did.

Do I have an intense craving for God’s holiness?