"My Utmost For HIs Highest" by Oswald Chambers for today is a powerful reminder that Christianity is NOT a religion! We do NOT follow a set of rules and ordinances, but we DO follow the ONE Who put those rules into place! AMEN!
The Abandonment of God
God so loved the world that He gave…. — John 3:16
Salvation is not merely
deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the salvation of
God is deliverance out of self entirely into union with Himself. My
experimental knowledge of salvation will be along the line of deliverance from
sin and of personal holiness; but salvation means that the Spirit of God has
brought me into touch with God’s personality, and I am thrilled with something
infinitely greater than myself, I am caught up into the abandonment of God.
To say that we are called to preach holiness or sanctification,
is to get into a side eddy. We are called to proclaim Jesus Christ. The fact
that He saves from sin and makes us holy is part of the effect of the wonderful
abandonment of God.
Abandonment never produces the consciousness of its own effort,
because the whole life is taken up with the One to Whom we abandon. Beware of
talking about abandonment if you know nothing about it, and you will never know
anything about it until you have realized that John 3:16 means that God gave
Himself absolutely. In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as
God gave Himself for us, without any calculation. The consequence of
abandonment never enters into our outlook because our life is taken up with
Him.
Remember, JESUS said that THIS is the most important commandment in Mark 12:30:
30 And you shall love the Lord your God out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your life) and out of and with all your mind (with your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. This is the first and principal commandment.
When we obey this verse, THEN we will be capable of obeying verse 31:
31 The second is like it and is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.
AMEN! So, let's put FIRST things FIRST and trust the Spirit of the Living God, Who lives IN us, to continue to carry out His good work IN us! AMEN! Here is Hillsong Worship with "Behold":
Shalom in Him!
