My Utmost - Oct 29, 2009

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http://www.myutmost.org/10/1029.html

Substitution

2 Corinthians 5:21
“He hath made Him to be sin for us... that we might be made the righteousness of God...”

Key Passages

• The New Testament view is that He bore our sin not by sympathy, but by identification. He was made to be sin.

• Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the explanation of His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy with us.

• What is taught in the New Testament is that “He died for all” (not – He died my death), and that by identification with His death I can be freed from sin, and have imparted to me His very righteousness.

My Own Thoughts

Sometimes I find that I ignore the Father and the Spirit because we are focused on the life of Jesus. I feel like they get left behind because we focus on Jesus. While obviously its not wrong to focus on Jesus, we gotta realize that He is part of the triune God. The Father loved us so much, that He sent His son... (John 3:16-17), Christ died for us out of obedience to His Father... (Philippians 2:6-8). When we believe in the sacrifice of Christ and repent and turn from our ways and follow the way that Christ laid out for us to live, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-8) which empowers us to live the way that Christ prescribed for us to live. This is the Kingdom Life. The life that God wants for all His children to live. The life that brings His Kingdom to where we are now. This is not some promise delayed for when we die, but it is the life we are able to live now. All this brought about by the Father's love, Christ's obedience, and the Holy Spirit's work in us...

My Utmost - Oct 21, 2009

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http://www.myutmost.org/10/1021.html

Direction By Impulse

Jude 20
“Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.”

Key Passages

• There was nothing either of the nature of impulse or of cold-bloodedness about our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into panic.

• Impulse is a trait in natural life, but our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple.

• Impulse is alright in a child, but it is disastrous in a man or woman; an impulsive man is always a petted man.

• Impulse has to be trained into intuition by discipline.

• … it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through the drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.

• It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.

My Own Thoughts

I am an impulsive guy. I live my life by feeling. I know this because I recently took a personality test that told me as much. I get an impulse I move on it... although sometimes its a blurry line whether that impulse should have been entertained or moved upon. I've been really wrestling with this idea of “living in the drudgery”. I feel that inbred desire or impulse to do something or to be a part of something exceptional for God. I don't think its a bad thing, other than I keep sitting on my hands and waiting for that exceptional thing to come along. I think to myself, when this thing happens, when things get rolling in this direction, then I can really serve God. Meanwhile I am not serving Him where He has me. What if the grand exceptional thing I am looking for never comes along? Will I never have served God? How will I look back on my life when I am 80 years old and I realize that I have wasted my whole life waiting for some grand calling that never came along, and all He really wanted from me was to live the life He described to live all the while....

Everyone should read this passage. We have this crazy idea in our culture that amazing things are going to happen to us in life. That we are all going to be celebrities and we're all going to be famous and doing amazing things, at least in the world's eyes. Well, that most likely just isn't going to happen to us (didn't I hear this speech in the movie “Fight Club”?)... It's so true though, Tyler Durton had it right. We all think we're going to make it, and we keep waiting for that and looking for it, and even trying things that would make us appear crazy in an attempt to make it happen. Forget it! Live your life now, where you are at, where God has placed you. Live the life he described for us to live where He has put you. I am screaming this at myself right now.

There's lots more to say on this subject, but I'd love to hear from anyone out there reading. If there is anyone...

My Utmost - Oct 19, 2009

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http://www.myutmost.org/10/1019.html

The Unheeded Secret

John 18:36
“My kingdom is not of this world.”

Key Passages

• The great enemy to the Lord Jesus Christ in the present day is the conception of practical work that has not come from the New Testament, but from the systems of the world in which endless energy and activities are insisted upon, but no private life with God.

• Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation, for lo the Kingdom of God is within you,” a hidden, obscure thing.

• The central thing about the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship to Himself, not public usefulness to men.

• You have no idea where God is going to engineer your circumstances, no knowledge of what strain is going to be put on you either at home or abroad, and if you waste your time in overactive energies instead of getting into soak on the great fundamental truths of God's Redemption, you will snap when the strain comes; but if this time of soaking before God is being spent in getting rooted and grounded in God on the unpractical line, you will remain true to Him whatever happens.

My Own Thoughts

Here is something I need... I need to soak in the great fundamental truths of God's redemption. I need to stop reading books about the Bible and hearing what others have to say about the Bible, and I need to actually read the Bible.

My Utmost - Oct 16, 2009

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http://www.myutmost.org/10/1016.html

The Key To The Master's Orders

Matthew 9:38
“Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest.”

Key Passages

• The key to the missionary problem is not the key of common sense, nor the medical key, nor the key of civilization or education or even evangelization. The key is prayer.

• Naturally prayer is not practical, it is absurd; we have to realize that prayer is stupid from the ordinary common-sense point of view.

• We are taken up with active work while people all around are ripe to harvest, and we do not reap one of them, but waste our Lord's time in over-energized activities.

• Our Lord calls to no special work: He calls to Himself. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,” and He will engineer circumstances and thrust you out.

My Own Thoughts

Dear Father, I'd only pray tonight that you'd call on my heart and bring me into a right relationship with you. Take away all my thoughts of some grandiose vision that I could be part of and give me the vision of simply living my life for you wherever I am at, and whenever I am there. I don't believe the vision to be bad or wrong, but help me not to place all my hope on some future maybe while I let the current opportunities to share you slip through my fingers. Help me to live the missionary life for you now Lord.

My Utmost - Oct 15, 2009

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http://www.myutmost.org/10/1015.html

The Key To The Missionary Message

1 John 2:2
“And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Key Passages

• “The Lamb of God which taketh away the since of the world!” - that is limitless.

• The missionary message is the limitless significance of Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins, and a missionary is one who is soaked in that revelation.

• The missionary message is not patriotic, it is irrespective of nations and of individuals, it is for the whole world.

• When the Holy Ghost comes in He does not consider my predilections, He brings me into union with the Lord Jesus.

• A missionary is one who is wedded to the charter of his Lord and Master, he has not to proclaim his own point of view, but to proclaim the Lamb of God.

My Own Thoughts

I want to be soaked in the revelation that is Jesus as the payment for my sins. I want to know my sins. I want to know just exactly what it is that I am saved from, and I want it before my eyes at all times. Honestly I struggle sometimes to see my sinfulness. There are other times that it is at the forefront begging my attention, but sometimes it slips from my conscience and I forget my great need for Savior. I want to be a missionary soaked in the revelation of Jesus Christ giving His life as the great payment for my sins, and I want that message to seep from every pore in my body. I am tired of myself really. I can't do anything right. Even when I am doing things right I quickly realize and forget my need and get prideful. When will I ever not need God? There is no time when that statement will be true. I will always have great need.

My Utmost - Oct 14, 2009

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http://www.myutmost.org/10/1014.html

The Key To The Missionary

Matthew 28:18-19
“All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.”

Key Passages

• He does not say the heathen will be lost if we do not go; He simply says - “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.”

• If I want to know the universal sovereignty of Christ, I must know him for myself, and how to get alone with Him; I must take time to worship the Being Whose Name I bear.

• “Come unto Me” - that is the place to meet Jesus. Are you weary and heavy laden? How many missionaries are! We banish those words of the universal Sovereign of the world to the threshold of an after-meeting; they are the words of Jesus to His disciples.

• “Go ye therefore...” Go simply means live. Acts 1:8 is the description how to go. Jesus did not say – Go into Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, but, “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me” in all these places. He undertakes to establish the goings.

• “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you...” - that is the way to keep going in our personal lives. Where we are placed is a matter of indifference; God engineers the goings.

• “None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself...” That is how we keep going till we're gone.

My Own Thoughts

As usual, Oswald just has a way of putting these things into words. I might as well have copied the whole chapter today. “Go simply means live”... what a truth to live by. Wherever we are at, at any given moment is where we are a missionary for God. That is where we are to reflect Him. “Come unto Me”... this is said for us now. We are promised rest now, not just in the future. The rest of God is here for us now, if we will come to Him. Just like any good relationship, it is based upon spending time together. You have to soak in the presence and the very essence of what God is like. How do we know what God is like? We look at Jesus... Jesus says “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you”... we must soak in His word and abide in it. Live in it. Take as much in as we can. This is a terrible weakness for me. I tend to go to other books first. I can read books about the Bible all day. I can read commentaries and devotionals, and theology or whatever else about the Bible, whenever. But I struggle immensely to simply come to the very Word of God and abide in it. I am a child of our culture for sure. I want the instant gratification of having someone do the hard work for me instead of digging and and finding the truth myself.

Dear Father, I want to abide in you. I want your word to saturate me. Give me a thirst for your presence and your word Lord.

My Utmost - Oct 13, 2009

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http://www.myutmost.org/10/1013.html

Individual Discouragement And Personal Enlargement

Exodus 2:11
“Moses went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens.”

Key Passages

• In the beginning Moses realized that he was the man to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in the individual aspect, but he was not the man for the work until he had learned communion with God.

• We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and we start to do the thing, then comes something equivalent to the forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing, and when we are roughly discouraged God comes back and revives the call, and we get the quiver in and say - “Oh, who am I?”

• We have to learn that our individual effort for God is an impertinence; our individuality is to be rendered incandescent by a personal relationship to God.

• If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a big personal enlargement ahead.

My Own Thoughts

Dear Father, you know me better than I know myself, and definitely better than I give you credit for. You know what makes me tick. You know what brings me up, and what takes me down. You know the vision I have had because you have given it to me. You also knew I would try to make it happen myself, and ever since I started trying I've been nothing but discouraged. And so I give myself to you Lord, I render my will to be yours and I wait as the silence is tearing me apart and making me into what you want me to be.