“Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink’ ” (John 4:7). How many of us are expecting Jesus Christ to quench our thirst when we should be satisfying Him! We should be pouring out our lives, investing our total beings, not drawing on Him to satisfy us. “You shall be witnesses to Me…” (Acts 1:8). That means lives of pure, uncompromising, and unrestrained devotion to the Lord Jesus, which will be satisfying to Him wherever He may send us.

Beware of anything that competes with your loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of true devotion to Jesus is the service we do for Him. It is easier to serve than to pour out our lives completely for Him. The goal of the call of God is His satisfaction, not simply that we should do something for Him. We are not sent to do battle for God, but to be used by God in His battles. Are we more devoted to service than we are to Jesus Christ Himself?

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January 18 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning Lord and thank you for this day and this devotional. Lord, I think once again Oswald Chambers has me confused with someone else. Especially when he writes: “We should be pouring out our lives, investing our total beings, not drawing on Him to satisfy us. “You shall be witnesses to Me…” (Acts 1:8). That means lives of pure, uncompromising, and unrestrained devotion to the Lord Jesus, which will be satisfying to Him wherever He may send us.” That is simply not how it works for me Lord. And once again Chambers tells me what I should be doing, ought to be doing, offering up more obligation and guilt because God, as you know, I am easily distracted from my surrender and connection to You.

And God says…”There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. When you say you want to be more devoted, more aware and more committed, have you considered that you are saying that I am not transforming you fast enough? Just because you or someone else tells you that you ought to be more devoted or committed does not make it so. All things work together for good for those that love the Lord.”

“When you surrender and are intimately connected to Me you get a sense of peace. You can be undisturbed in a whirlwind of disturbing circumstances. And you know that you are mine and I am yours. You trust that My ways are not your ways, and suddenly life is less about your “perfection”, it is more about delighting yourself in Me and living an abundant and wonderful adventure. Delight yourself in the Lord and I will give you the desires of our heart. Acknowledge Me in all your ways and I will make your paths straight. Seek first the kingdom of God and I will provide everything else you require, including peace about your growth and standing.”

God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, “…who will go for Us?” The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude. “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). That is, few prove that they are the chosen ones.

The chosen ones are those who have come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and have had their spiritual condition changed and their ears opened. Then they hear “the voice of the Lord” continually asking, “…who will go for Us?” However, God doesn’t single out someone and say, “Now, you go.” He did not force His will on Isaiah. Isaiah was in the presence of God, and he overheard the call. His response, performed in complete freedom, could only be to say, “Here am I! Send me.”Remove the thought from your mind of expecting God to come to force you or to plead with you.

When our Lord called His disciples, He did it without irresistible pressure from the outside. The quiet, yet passionate, insistence of His “Follow Me” was spoken to men whose every sense was receptive (Matthew 4:19). If we will allow the Holy Spirit to bring us face to face with God, we too will hear what Isaiah heard— “the voice of the Lord.” In perfect freedom we too will say, “Here am I! Send me.”

His Solitude with Us. When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship— when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.

Notice Jesus Christ’s training of the Twelve. It was the disciples, not the crowd outside, who were confused. His disciples constantly asked Him questions, and He constantly explained things to them, but they didn’t understand until after they received the Holy Spirit (see John 14:26).As you journey with God, the only thing He intends to be clear is the way He deals with your soul. The sorrows and difficulties in the lives of others will be absolutely confusing to you. We think we understand another person’s struggle until God reveals the same shortcomings in our lives.

There are vast areas of stubbornness and ignorance the Holy Spirit has to reveal in each of us, but it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone. Are we alone with Him now? Or are we more concerned with our own ideas, friendships, and cares for our bodies? Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet all our intellectual questions and get alone with Him.

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January 13 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning God and thank You for this devotional and the daily teaching You provide. This sentence Chambers offers up stopped me cold for a minute; When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship— when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us. David and I thought the same thing when we read this, isn’t there an easier way Lord? Is there any way for us to avoid these kinds of experiences as prerequisites for Your teaching? Then we recalled that in the Garden at Gethsemane Jesus also asked if there was another way.

And God says…”My ways are not your ways, and I know what it takes for you to come to surrender, connection and curiosity. If you could live in “the big four”: to look good, feel good, be right and be in control that is where you would reside, naturally. It takes heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, thwarted desires, broken friendships, and new friendships to stop you in your tracks so that you want and need to be alone with Me. Allowing you to live in difficult and trying circumstances is necessary for you to learn surrender. When you come to the end of yourself, where you know you cannot find relief or rescue in your own solutions, or in the solutions of others, is where you surrender. All things work together for the good of those that love the lord and are called according to His purpose. When you seek Me first, know that I will provide everything else you require so that I may teach you. I love you, and will not keep any good thing from you; including the refining fires of difficult circumstances. ”

If we obey God, it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the pain begins. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything— it is a delight. But to those who do not love Him, our obedience does cost a great deal. If we obey God, it will mean that other people’s plans are upset. They will ridicule us as if to say, “You call this Christianity?” We could prevent the suffering, but not if we are obedient to God. We must let the cost be paid.

When our obedience begins to cost others, our human pride entrenches itself and we say, “I will never accept anything from anyone.” But we must, or disobey God. We have no right to think that the type of relationships we have with others should be any different from those the Lord Himself had (see Luke 8:1-3).A lack of progress in our spiritual life results when we try to bear all the costs ourselves. And actually, we cannot. Because we are so involved in the universal purposes of God, others are immediately affected by our obedience to Him.

Will we remain faithful in our obedience to God and be willing to suffer the humiliation of refusing to be independent? Or will we do just the opposite and say, “I will not cause other people to suffer”? We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but it will grieve our Lord. If, however, we obey God, He will care for those who have suffered the consequences of our obedience. We must simply obey and leave all the consequences with Him.Beware of the inclination to dictate to God what consequences you would allow as a condition of your obedience to Him.____________________________________________________________

January 11, 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning Lord and thank You for this day and this devotional. I think that this is going to be one of those “iron sharpening iron” kinds of days with Oswald Chambers though. Occasionally he seems to take a polarizing position just to generate a response. Chambers suggests that our obedience to God will cause us to hurt others and we must be alright with that or we are disobeying God. I recall Luke 14:26 when Jesus was talking about letting go (hating is the word in the King James Version) of mother, father, brothers, sisters and ourselves. But are we to assume our obedience will always create polarizing results with our friends and family?

And God says…”Recall the lessons when we talked about letting go of the outcomes? Your surrender, connection and obedience require that you let go of your desired and imagined results and let God be in control of your life. When you are truly surrendered you live in a place where you absolutely know and believe that all things work together for good. And when you are truly surrendered, and the Holy Spirit is living through you, it is not difficult to let go of your own need to be right, look good, and feel good and to be in control. It is also not difficult to let go of your desired outcomes and the desired outcomes of others. Seek first the kingdom of God, which is Jesus, and I will provide everything else you require, including the peace that passes understanding about my love and grace as it applies to your life and the lives of those you love.”

This event is a picture of the mistake we make in thinking that the ultimate God wants of us is the sacrifice of death. What God wants is the sacrifice through death which enables us to do what Jesus did, that is, sacrifice our lives. Not— “Lord, I am ready to go with You…to death” (Luke 22:33). But— “I am willing to be identified with Your death so that I may sacrifice my life to God.

”We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God purified Abraham from this error, and the same process is at work in our lives. God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with Himself.

It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives. Those bands are loosened immediately by identification with the death of Jesus. Then we enter into a relationship with God whereby we may sacrifice our lives to Him.It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a “living sacrifice”— to let Him have all your strengths that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus (Romans 12:1). This is what is acceptable to God.

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January 8 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning God and thank you for this day and devotional. I really liked the portion that pointed back to our identification with Christ. …..God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with Himself. It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives. Those bands are loosened immediately by identification with the death of Jesus. This portion spoke to the lessons You have given us related to surrender and connection. Namely that when we are identified with Jesus, surrendered to You, we are set free to live without restraint or concern.

And God says…”Jesus came to give you life and life more abundantly. When you acknowledge Me in all your ways and let go of your own understanding, I can make your paths straight. When you delight yourself in the Lord, I can give you the desires of your heart. When you give up the rights to yourself to Me, you loosen the bands that hold back your life. You can live a life knowing that all things work together for good for those that love the Lord and are called according to My purpose. There is great freedom in living this way. And you find “this way” through surrender; surrendering your rights to yourself, letting go of your rights to look good, feel good, to be right and to be in control. And when you do this, Jesus can live through you.”

These words were not spoken as a rebuke, nor even with surprise; Jesus was encouraging Philip to draw closer. Yet the last person we get intimate with is Jesus. Before Pentecost the disciples knew Jesus as the One who gave them power to conquer demons and to bring about a revival (see Luke 10:18-20). It was a wonderful intimacy, but there was a much closer intimacy to come: “…I have called you friends…” (John 15:15). True friendship is rare on earth. It means identifying with someone in thought, heart, and spirit.

The whole experience of life is designed to enable us to enter into this closest relationship with Jesus Christ. We receive His blessings and know His Word, but do we really know Him?Jesus said, “It is to your advantage that I go away…” (John 16:7). He left that relationship to lead them even closer. It is a joy to Jesus when a disciple takes time to walk more intimately with Him. The bearing of fruit is always shown in Scripture to be the visible result of an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ (see John 15:1-4).

Once we get intimate with Jesus we are never lonely and we never lack for understanding or compassion. We can continually pour out our hearts to Him without being perceived as overly emotional or pitiful. The Christian who is truly intimate with Jesus will never draw attention to himself but will only show the evidence of a life where Jesus is completely in control. This is the outcome of allowing Jesus to satisfy every area of life to its depth. The picture resulting from such a life is that of the strong, calm balance that our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him.

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January 7 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning God. Thank you for the hope and eager enthusiasm for this day. Waking up knowing you are God, and I am surrendered to You leaves me excited and eager to face the day…even though there are tasks, challenges and a number problems to face.

Chambers says, Once we get intimate with Jesus we are never lonely and we never lack for understanding or compassion. Using our terminology we might say, once we are surrendered and connected to Jesus, we are never lonely and we never lack for love, understanding, compassion, patience, empathy, intelligence, or strength and spiritual power. And like the efficiency experts say, we get all these things, “just in time”; just when they are needed.

And God says…”You have used the term, “peace meter” or dashboard to describe how you might monitor your daily or hour by hour, issue by issue surrender and connection with Jesus. You know you are intimate with Jesus when you can eagerly face the constant demands of life curious and happy to face the day. As Paul says in the Living translation of Philippians4:7, ” If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ Jesus.”

“The song reminds you that it is right and proper to surrender and just be held by Jesus. He is eager to hold you and give you this day your daily bread; everything you need to find peace right in the middle of life.”

 

Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love-gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard it for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded (see Exodus 16:20).

God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.Bethel is the symbol of fellowship with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abram “pitched his tent” between the two. The lasting value of our public service for God is measured by the depth of the intimacy of our private times of fellowship and oneness with Him. Rushing in and out of worship is wrong every time— there is always plenty of time to worship God. Days set apart for quiet can be a trap, detracting from the need to have daily quiet time with God. That is why we must “pitch our tents” where we will always have quiet times with Him, however noisy our times with the world may be.

There are not three levels of spiritual life— worship, waiting, and work. Yet some of us seem to jump like spiritual frogs from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God’s idea is that the three should go together as one. They were always together in the life of our Lord and in perfect harmony. It is a discipline that must be developed; it will not happen overnight.

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January 6 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning God and thank you for this devotional and the music. Lord, I couldn’t keep from tapping my feet and moving to the sound of the music this morning. And like he does on many occasions, Chambers fueled my fires again this morning, especially when he said … “God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.” At first this sounded very spiritual and correct but the more I prayed and pondered the statement it occurred to me that when we are blessed as we are truly surrendered and connected to You, we have no choice. The blessings simply flow out of us. Is this right Lord? We are not to feel obligated or guilty about having to share our blessings, it will simply flow out of us  through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And God says…”As you worship, recall what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth… 2 Corinthians 9:8 (TLB) God is able to make it up to you by giving you everything you need and more so that there will not only be enough for your own needs but plenty left over to give joyfully to others. When you worship out of your surrender; that is giving up your rights to yourself and your own ideas and the limitations you put on God, and are blessed, you will find it impossible to not bless others. Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways, and do not rely on your own understanding and He will make your paths straight. You do not have to wait for your own blessings to be manifest in order to be a blessing for others. You can trust God to meet all your needs, blessing others while you wait on the Lord. Give and it shall be given unto you, rolled up, pressed down and overflowing. The living waters and blessings of the Holy Spirit cannot be contained as they flow from your surrender and connection,  blessing you and others.”

“And when He had spoken this, He said to him, ‘Follow Me’ ” (John 21:19). Three years earlier Jesus had said, “Follow Me” (Matthew 4:19), and Peter followed with no hesitation. The irresistible attraction of Jesus was upon him and he did not need the Holy Spirit to help him do it. Later he came to the place where he denied Jesus, and his heart broke. Then he received the Holy Spirit and Jesus said again, “Follow Me” (John 21:19). Now no one is in front of Peter except the Lord Jesus Christ. The first “Follow Me” was nothing mysterious; it was an external following. Jesus is now asking for an internal sacrifice and yielding (see John 21:18).

Between these two times Peter denied Jesus with oaths and curses (see Matthew 26:69-75). But then he came completely to the end of himself and all of his self-sufficiency. There was no part of himself he would ever rely on again. In his state of destitution, he was finally ready to receive all that the risen Lord had for him. “…He breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ ” (John 20:22). No matter what changes God has performed in you, never rely on them. Build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives.

All our promises and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to accomplish them. When we come to the end of ourselves, not just mentally but completely, we are able to “receive the Holy Spirit.” “Receive the Holy Spirit” — the idea is that of invasion. There is now only One who directs the course of your life, the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are times when you can’t understand why you cannot do what you want to do. When God brings a time of waiting, and appears to be unresponsive, don’t fill it with busyness, just wait. The time of waiting may come to teach you the meaning of sanctification— to be set apart from sin and made holy— or it may come after the process of sanctification has begun to teach you what service means. Never run before God gives you His direction. If you have the slightest doubt, then He is not guiding. Whenever there is doubt— wait.At first you may see clearly what God’s will is— the severance of a friendship, the breaking off of a business relationship, or something else you feel is distinctly God’s will for you to do. But never act on the impulse of that feeling. If you do, you will cause difficult situations to arise which will take years to untangle. Wait for God’s timing and He will do it without any heartache or disappointment. When it is a question of the providential will of God, wait for God to move.Peter did not wait for God. He predicted in his own mind where the test would come, and it came where he did not expect it. “I will lay down my life for Your sake.” Peter’s statement was honest but ignorant. “Jesus answered him, ‘…the rooster shall not crow till you have denied Me three times’ ” (John 13:38). This was said with a deeper knowledge of Peter than Peter had of himself. He could not follow Jesus because he did not know himself or his own capabilities well enough. Natural devotion may be enough to attract us to Jesus, to make us feel His irresistible charm, but it will never make us disciples. Natural devotion will deny Jesus, always falling short of what it means to truly follow Him.

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January 4 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning Lord. This devotional reminded me that in my own strength I am not capable of following You. In my own strength, I seem to always follow the path to the “Big Four”: to look good, feel good, to be right and to be in control. How do I let go of this tendency and seek to follow You in all things?

And God says…”Apart from Me you can do nothing. When you try to muster up the discipline, persistence and personal power to follow Me you will always fail. I require perfection. And you cannot achieve perfection this side of heaven. However your surrender to Jesus allows Me to see His perfection in you, and you to live in the mercy and grace provided by His sacrifice. Seek first the kingdom of God, which is Jesus, and I will provide everything else you need, including the perfection I require. Acknowledge Me in all your ways and I will make your paths straight.

“Surrender your “Big Four” to me daily, hourly and minute by minute. This is the way to pray without ceasing. Simply see yourself placing all your requests, needs, needs of your family and friends, visions hopes, dreams, success and failures at the foot of the cross every day. And if you feel that you cannot muster enough faith to believe that I will meet all your needs, according to My riches in heaven, do as the father did when speaking with Jesus (Mark 9:24). Simply say, “I believe, help me in my unbelief”. I will always meet you at the very point of your need as you seek to follow Me. Seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened. ”