I LOVE the message of today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers.
The Gateway To The
Kingdom
Blessed are the poor in spirit. — Matthew 5:3
Beware of placing Our Lord as a Teacher first. If Jesus Christ
is a Teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalise me by erecting a standard
I cannot attain. What is the use of presenting me with an ideal I cannot
possibly come near? I am happier without knowing it. What is the good of
telling me to be what I never can be — to be pure in heart, to do more than my duty,
to be perfectly devoted to God? I must know Jesus Christ as Saviour before His
teaching has any meaning for me other than that of an ideal which leads to
despair. But when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus
Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me
what He teaches I should be. The Redemption means that Jesus Christ
can put into any man the disposition that ruled His own life, and all the
standards God gives are based on that disposition.
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the
natural man — the very thing Jesus means it to do. As long as we have a
self-righteous, conceited notion that we can carry out Our Lord’s teaching, God
will allow us to go on until we break our ignorance over some obstacle, then we
are willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. “Blessed are the
paupers in spirit,” that is the first principle in the Kingdom of God. The
bedrock in Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possession; not decisions for
Jesus Christ, but a sense of absolute futility — “I cannot begin to do it.”
Then Jesus says — “Blessed are you.” That is the entrance, and it does take us
a long while to believe we are poor! The knowledge of our own poverty brings us
to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works.
AMEN! Without HIM, we are NOTHING! But, IN HIM, we can do ALL things! Philippians 4:13:
13 I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency].
AMEN! Here is Hillsong with "Search My Heart":
Shalom in Him!
