Today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers is a great exhortation of what is MOST important in our relationship with our Father!
Transformed By Insight
We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,
are changed into the same image. — 2 Corinthians 3:18
The outstanding characteristic of a Christian is this unveiled
frankness before God so that the life becomes a mirror for other lives. By
being filled with the Spirit we are transformed, and by beholding we become
mirrors. You always know when a man has been beholding the glory of the Lord,
you feel in your inner spirit that he is the mirror of the Lord’s own character.
Beware of anything which would sully that mirror in you; it is nearly always a
good thing, the good that is not the best.
The golden rule for your life and mine is this concentrated keeping of
the life open towards God. Let everything else — work, clothes, food,
everything on earth — go by the board, saving that one thing. The rush of other
things always tends to obscure this concentration on God. We have to maintain
ourselves in the place of beholding, keeping the life absolutely spiritual all
through. Let other things come and go as they may, let other people criticize
as they will, but never allow anything to obscure the life that is hid with
Christ in God. Never be hurried out of the relationship of abiding in Him. It
is the one thing that is apt to fluctuate but it ought not to. The severest
discipline of a Christian’s life is to learn how to keep “beholding as in a
glass the glory of the Lord.”
When JESUS said THIS in Mark 12:30-31, He was showing us the most important element of being in position to walk in the fullness of ALL that HE has provided for us as New Covenant believers!
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. 31 The second is like it and is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.
This is exactly what Oswald Chambers was saying above! So many believers try to fill that void, that can only be filled by intimate fellowship with HIM, with good works. Those good works SHOULD be a part of our lives, but only in obedience to His instructions that come out of our fellowship with Him! When we concentrate on our intimacy with JESUS, everything else that has been a priority in our lives will take their proper place and we will be a much better person, son/daughter, husband/wife, father/mother, friend, employer/employee, minister of life! NOTHING will be as good as it can be in our lives without this! Let's make those adjustments now, as we start this new year, and reap the glorious results! AMEN! Here is Hillsong with "One Thing", a song that says: "Everything I have means nothing, Jesus if you're not my One thing":
Shalom in Him!
