Good Friday
Thoroughly enjoying Oswald Chambers, three excerpts from My Utmost for His Highest:
April 9th, Have I Seen Him?
"12Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country."
Mark 16
Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many are partakers of God's grace who have never seen Jesus. When once you have seen Jesus, you can never be the same, other things do not appeal as they used to do.
Always distinguish between what you see Jesus to be, and what He has done for you. If you only know what He has done for you, you have not a big enough God; but if you have had a vision of Jesus as He is, experiences can come and go you will endure as "seeing Him Who is invisible." The man blind from his birth did not know who Jesus was until He appeared and revealed Himself to him. Jesus appears to those for whom He has done something; but we cannot dictate when He will come. "Now I see Him!"
Jesus must appear to your friend as well as you; no one can see Jesus with your eyes. Severance takes place where one and not the other has seen Jesus. You cannot bring your friend unless God brings him. Have you seen Jesus? Then you will want other to see Him too. "And they went and told it unto the residue, neither believed they them." You must tell although they do not believe.
O could I tell, ye surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I've seen!
How should I tell or how can ye receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?
April 10th, Moral Decision About Sin
"6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin." -Romans 6
Co-Crucifixion. Have I made this decision about sin-- that it must be killed right out in me? It takes a long time to come to a moral decision about sin, but it is the great moment in my life when I do decide that just as Jesus Christ died for the sin of the world, so sin must die out in me, not be curbed or suppressed or counteracted, but crucified. No one can bring anyone else to this decision. We may be earnestly convinced, and religiously convinced, but what we need to do is come to the decision Paul forces here.
Haul yourself up, take a time alone with God, make the moral decision and say-- "Lord, identify me with Thy death until I know that sin is dead in me." Make the moral decision that sin in you must be put to death.
It was not a divine anticipation on the part of Paul, but a very radical and definite experience. Am I prepared to let the Spirit of God search me until I know what the disposition of sin is-- the thing that lusts against the Spirit of God in me? Then if so, will I agree with God's verdict on that disposition of sin-- that it should be identified with the death of Jesus? I cannot reckon myself "dead indeed unto sin" unless I have been through this radical issue of will before God.
Have I entered into the glorious privilege of being crucified with Christ until all that is left is the life of Christ in my flesh and blood? "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
April 12th, Moral Dominion
"9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus."
-Romans 6
Co-Eternal Life. Eternal life was the life which Jesus Christ exhibited on the human plane, and it is the same life, not a copy of it, which is manifested in our mortal flesh when we are born of God. Eternal life is not a gift from God, eternal life is the gift of God. The energy and power which was manifested in in Jesus will be manifested in us by the sheer sovereign grace of God when once we have made the moral decision about sin.
"Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost" --not power as a gift from the Holy Ghost; the power is the Holy Ghost, not something He imparts. The life that was in Jesus is made ours by means of His Cross when once we make the decision to be identified with Him. If it is difficult to get right with God, it is because we will not decide definitely about sin. Immediately we do decide, the full life of God comes in. Jesus came to give us endless supplies of life: "that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God." Eternal life has nothing to do with Time, it is the life which Jesus lived when He was down here. The only source of Life is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The weakest saint can experience the power of the Deity of the Son of God if once he is willing to "let go." Any strand of our own energy will blur the life of Jesus. We have to keep letting go, and slowly and surely the great full life of God will invade us in every part, and men will take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.
