Today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers is another excellent one!
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The plaintive, self-centered, morbid kind of prayer, a dead-set that I want to be right, is never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is a sign that I am rebelling against the Atonement. “Lord, I will purify my heart if You will answer my prayer; I will walk rightly if You will help me.” I cannot make myself right with God, I cannot make my life perfect; I can only be right with God if I accept the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift. Am I humble enough to accept it? I have to resign every kind of claim and cease from every effort, and leave myself entirely alone in His hands, and then begin to pour out in the priestly work of intercession. There is much prayer that arises from real disbelief in the Atonement. Jesus is not beginning to save us, He has saved us, the thing is done, and it is an insult to ask Him to do it.
If you are not getting the hundredfold more, not getting insight into God’s word, then start praying for your friends, enter into the ministry of the interior. “The Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.” The real business of your life as a saved soul is intercessory prayer. Wherever God puts you in circumstances, pray immediately, pray that His Atonement may be realized in other lives as it has been in yours. Pray for your friends now; pray for those with whom you come in contact now.
This is real insight into the problem that some believers have accepting that they have already been MADE righteous by what Jesus accomplished FOR us (2 Corinthians 5:21)! When we become self-centered and look only at our own lives, we can become conscious of every misstep and mistake that we make! We can get discouraged and be tempted to give up and quit. When we turn our attention outward, toward other believers' needs and toward the lost, and begin to pray in intercession for them, our vision will be enlarged to see the bigger picture! When we pray for others and when we preach the Gospel and teach the Word, the lost will be reached and the believers will be set free! When WE do this, we won't have to be concerned for our own needs, because God Himself has promised us THIS in Ephesians 6:8:8 Knowing that for whatever good anyone does, he will receive his reward from the Lord, whether he is slave or free.
AMEN! Let's be God-inside minded so that we recognize who we are IN HIM. Now let's use THAT knowledge and understanding to take up our position of authority and see to it that others have their needs met! We CANNOT out-give the God of the Bible! Here is Hillsong with one of my favorite songs, "Desert Song":
Shalom in Him!
