Today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers will take some meditation to fully understand, but the message is SO important! And challenging!
The Overmastering Majesty Of Personal Power
For the love of Christ constraineth us. — 2 Corinthians 5:14
Paul says he is overruled, overmastered, held as in a vice, by the love
of Christ. Very few of us know what it means to be held in a grip by the love
of God; we are held by the constraint of our experience only. The one thing
that held Paul, until there was nothing else on his horizon, was the love of
God. “The love of Christ constraineth us” — when you hear that note in a man or
woman, you can never mistake it. You know that the Spirit of God is getting
unhindered way in that life.
When we are born again of the Spirit of God, the note of testimony is
on what God has done for us, and rightly so. But the baptism of the Holy Ghost
obliterates that for ever, and we begin to realize what Jesus meant when He
said — “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.” Not witnesses to what Jesus can do —
that is an elementary witness — but “witnesses unto Me.” We will take
everything that happens as happening to Him, whether it be praise or blame,
persecution or commendation. No one can stand like that for Jesus Christ who is
not constrained by the majesty of His personal power. It is the only thing that
matters, and the strange thing is that it is the last thing realised by the
Christian worker. Paul says he is gripped by the love of Christ; that is why he
acts as he does. Men may call him mad or sober, but he does not care; there is
only one thing he is living for, and that is to persuade men of the judgment
seat of God, and of the love of Christ. This abandon to the love of Christ is
the one thing that bears fruit in the life, and it will always leave the
impression of the holiness and of the power of God, never of our personal
holiness.
We often times major on what we can do to please Him, when all that He REALLY desires is for us to obey the ONE commandment! Mark 12:29-30:
29 Jesus answered, The first and principal one of all commands is: Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord; 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.
When we are completely given over to loving HIM with everything within us, obedience to His Word, His ways and His will becomes second nature to us! We will have such a strong confidence in our oneness with Him that we WILL be doing the works that He did, and all of the glory will go to Him! I hope that as you begin to see this clearly, you will be able to simplify your life and your expectations of yourself, and simply rest IN HIM! AMEN! Here is Hillsong with "In Control":
Shalom in Him!
