I want to share "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers again today because it goes right along with yesterday's!
The Overmastering Direction
I have appeared unto thee for this
purpose. — Acts 26:16
The vision Paul had on the road to
Damascus was no passing emotion, but a vision that had very clear and emphatic
directions for him, and he says — “I was not disobedient to the heavenly
vision.”; Our Lord said, in effect, to Paul — “Your whole life is to be
overmastered by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but
Mine.” “I have chosen him.”
When we are born again we all have
visions, if we are spiritual at all, of what Jesus wants us to be, and the
great thing is to learn not to be disobedient to the vision, not to say that it
cannot be attained. It is not sufficient to know that God has redeemed the
world, and to know that the Holy Spirit can make all that Jesus did effectual
in me; I must have the basis of a personal relationship to Him. Paul was not
given a message or a doctrine to proclaim, he was brought into a vivid,
personal, overmastering relationship to Jesus Christ. Verse 16 is immensely
commanding — “to make thee a minister and a witness.” There is nothing there
apart from the personal relationship. Paul was devoted to a Person not to a
cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ’s; he saw nothing else; he lived for
nothing else. “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified.”
I LOVE this line: "Paul was devoted to a person not to a cause." Paul himself said as much when he said THIS in Philippians 3:10-11:
10 [For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope] 11 That if possible I may attain to the [spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the body]. AMP
We will REALLY know that we have grown in the things of God when are no longer doing things that we think we must do, but we are doing what we do in response to His Word and to Holy Spirit within us because we hear His voice and recognize His plans and purposes for our lives. JESUS said that HIS sheep hear His voice! So, if we belong to Him, then we DO hear His voice. We simply have to develop confidence in that TRUTH by being a DOER of what we see and hear. The more that we do this, the bolder and more confident we will become! The ONLY way to hear Him more clearly is to PRACTICE! AMEN! Here is Hillsong with "Here Now":
Shalom in Him!
