work out your own salvation…for it is God who works in you… —Philippians 2:12-13

As you do this, you do not bring an opposing will up against God’s will— God’s will is your will. Your natural choices will be in accordance with God’s will, and living this life will be as natural as breathing. Stubbornness is an unintelligent barrier, refusing enlightenment and blocking its flow. The only thing to do with this barrier of stubbornness is to blow it up with “dynamite,” and the “dynamite” is obedience to the Holy Spirit.

Who is the man that fears the Lord? —Psalm 25:12


Are you obsessed by something? You will probably say, “No, by nothing,” but all of us are obsessed by something— usually by ourselves, or, if we are Christians, by our own experience of the Christian life. But the psalmist says that we are to be obsessed by God. The abiding awareness of the Christian life is to be God Himself, not just thoughts about Him. The total being of our life inside and out is to be absolutely obsessed by the presence of God. A child’s awareness is so absorbed in his mother that although he is not consciously thinking of her, when a problem arises, the abiding relationship is that with the mother. In that same way, we are to “live and move and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28), looking at everything in relation to Him, because our abiding awareness of Him continually pushes itself to the forefront of our lives.

If we are obsessed by God, nothing else can get into our lives— not concerns, nor tribulation, nor worries. And now we understand why our Lord so emphasized the sin of worrying. How can we dare to be so absolutely unbelieving when God totally surrounds us? To be obsessed by God is to have an effective barricade against all the assaults of the enemy.

“He himself shall dwell in prosperity…” (Psalm 25:13). God will cause us to “dwell in prosperity,” keeping us at ease, even in the midst of tribulation, misunderstanding, and slander, if our “life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). We rob ourselves of the miraculous, revealed truth of this abiding companionship with God. “God is our refuge…” (Psalm 46:1). Nothing can break through His shelter of protection.

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June 2, 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning Lord and thank You for this devotional. I looked up Webster’s definition of obsession; a state in which someone thinks about someone or something constantly or frequently especially in a way that is not normal; someone or something that a person thinks about constantly or frequently. Both David and I thought we could substitute the word surrender for the word; obsess, and that would help us understand the lesson today. If we are constantly, in a way that is not normal, deciding to surrender to You, our issues of the day, hour and moment; is this the lesson for us today?

And God says…”This is the issue for you every day. Remember a few days ago the lesson about the cares of this world, and how those day to day, moment by moment “cares” of the world can be the real stumbling blocks. It is often the day to day mundane duties and responsibilities that you engage in on your own that get in the way of our intimate relationship. Often, you only come to Me for those large “impossible” issues, trying to take on the mundane yourself. Because you believe you are unconsciously competent on the little things, you only surrender the impossible issues of your day. Are you surprised to find more and more “impossible” issues in your way? If this is the only place we meet in an intimate and connected way, you should not be surprised to find more and more “impossible “ life issues surrounding you. However, try surrendering all of life, all of your issues, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, and see how this OBSESSION transcends into the peace that passes understanding. Philippians (MSG) 6-7 Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”

Jesus did not commit Himself to them…for He knew what was in man. —John 2:24-25

Put Trust in God First. Our Lord never put His trust in any person. Yet He was never suspicious, never bitter, and never lost hope for anyone, because He put His trust in God first. He trusted absolutely in what God’s grace could do for others. If I put my trust in human beings first, the end result will be my despair and hopelessness toward everyone. I will become bitter because I have insisted that people be what no person can ever be— absolutely perfect and right. Never trust anything in yourself or in anyone else, except the grace of God.

Put God’s Will First. “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God” (Hebrews 10:9).

A person’s obedience is to what he sees to be a need— our Lord’s obedience was to the will of His Father. The rallying cry today is, “We must get to work! The heathen are dying without God. We must go and tell them about Him.” But we must first make sure that God’s “needs” and His will in us personally are being met. Jesus said, “…tarry…until you are endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). The purpose of our Christian training is to get us into the right relationship to the “needs” of God and His will. Once God’s “needs” in us have been met, He will open the way for us to accomplish His will, meeting His “needs” elsewhere.

Put God’s Son First. “Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me” (Matthew 18:5).

God came as a baby, giving and entrusting Himself to me. He expects my personal life to be a “Bethlehem.” Am I allowing my natural life to be slowly transformed by the indwelling life of the Son of God? God’s ultimate purpose is that His Son might be exhibited in me.

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Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord, To think about your “needs” is a little different. I don’t think of you as needy. But, as happens many times with Oswald Chambers, the last paragraph summarizes the allegory and metaphor used earlier. My life being a “Bethlehem” is interesting, but the take-away today is, my natural life being slowly transformed by the indwelling life of the Son of God…God’s ultimate purpose… that His Son might be exhibited in me. Chambers doesn’t say how that is to be done today, but you’ve been teaching us that it happens through connection, surrender, obedience, curiosity, and living expectantly. So thank you for the list of ingredients. But we still need your empowerment… to put the list together and to actually do those things on the list.

You are correct in that. Without my empowering Spirit, you only have a new list of things to strive for. That’s religion. Pharisees did a lot of that. So come to me, stay connected and I will lead you in all these things and you won’t have to strive. If you want to strive, because it’s built into you…. Strive only to maintain connection with me, and then just live out of what I show you.

Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT) Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

Jesus did not commit Himself to them…for He knew what was in man. —John 2:24-25

Pray without ceasing… —1 Thessalonians 5:17

Our thinking about prayer, whether right or wrong, is based on our own mental conception of it. The correct concept is to think of prayer as the breath in our lungs and the blood from our hearts. Our blood flows and our breathing continues “without ceasing”; we are not even conscious of it, but it never stops. And we are not always conscious of Jesus keeping us in perfect oneness with God, but if we are obeying Him, He always is. Prayer is not an exercise, it is the life of the saint. Beware of anything that stops the offering up of prayer. “Pray without ceasing…”— maintain the childlike habit of offering up prayer in your heart to God all the time.

Jesus never mentioned unanswered prayer. He had the unlimited certainty of knowing that prayer is always answered. Do we have through the Spirit of God that inexpressible certainty that Jesus had about prayer, or do we think of the times when it seemed that God did not answer our prayer? Jesus said, “…everyone who asks receives…” (Matthew 7:8). Yet we say, “But…, but….” God answers prayer in the best way— not just sometimes, but every time. However, the evidence of the answer in the area we want it may not always immediately follow. Do we expect God to answer prayer?

The danger we have is that we want to water down what Jesus said to make it mean something that aligns with our common sense. But if it were only common sense, what He said would not even be worthwhile. The things Jesus taught about prayer are supernatural truths He reveals to us.

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Journal DJR
Good morning Lord. I suppose that a common way of thinking about prayer qualifies for that last comment about watering down what you said to match common sense and therefore not being even worthwhile: “Yes, God always answers prayer, Yes, No, or Wait” That fits my common sense. But is it helpful? And as Chambers suggests, Is it even worthwhile?

Focus more on the type of prayer that he suggests. Breathing it in, breathing it out. Or as you said a few days ago, breathing me in, breathing out your sin. With prayer like that, I always answer and your common sense answer takes on a different meaning. Yes, No, or Wait, become secondary. Primary emphasis shifts to our relationship and then the “answers” come out of that. When you are living out of our relationship, you can relax, Knowing that “I’ve got this” Even if it doesn’t work out the way you initially planned, relax, I’ve still got this and Romans 8:28 is still true. All things work together for good for those who love me and are called to my purpose. Stay in love with me and in my purpose with that continuous breathing in, breathing out type of connection and you can live in constant victory… not necessarily over your circumstances, but in spite of those circumstances

Romans 8:35-39 (ESV)

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If you take the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left. —Genesis 13:9

When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. —Revelation 1:17

It may be that, like the apostle John, you know Jesus Christ intimately. Yet when He suddenly appears to you with totally unfamiliar characteristics, the only thing you can do is fall “at His feet as dead.” There are times when God cannot reveal Himself in any other way than in His majesty, and it is the awesomeness of the vision which brings you to the delight of despair. You experience this joy in hopelessness, realizing that if you are ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God.

“He laid His right hand on me…” (Revelation 1:17). In the midst of the awesomeness, a touch comes, and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. You know it is not the hand of restraint, correction, nor chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it gives inexpressible peace and comfort, and the sense that “underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27), full of support, provision, comfort, and strength. And once His touch comes, nothing at all can throw you into fear again. In the midst of all His ascended glory, the Lord Jesus comes to speak to an insignificant disciple, saying, “Do not be afraid” (Revelation 1:17). His tenderness is inexpressibly sweet. Do I know Him like that?

Take a look at some of the things that cause despair. There is despair which has no delight, no limits whatsoever, and no hope of anything brighter. But the delight of despair comes when “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells…” (Romans 7:18). I delight in knowing that there is something in me which must fall prostrate before God when He reveals Himself to me, and also in knowing that if I am ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God. God can do nothing for me until I recognize the limits of what is humanly possible, allowing Him to do the impossible.

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Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord. Fortunately(?) I don’t very often experience the awesome and absolute despair referred to here. But the lesser and more common variety seems to have the same cause and the same cure. For me it comes when I realize my failings and that I just can’t fix them, can’t try harder, work more, even pray more… and fix my self. And the cure for these littler despairs is also the same as for the big one described in Revelation: I can’t, but you can, and you have. The question is simply, How do I access what you have already done and continue to provide for me? What you’ve been teaching us are the components of this way of life. Surrender, Connection, Abandon, Obedience, Curiosity. Getting these things right and worked into our lives has been a challenge. It’s so easy to fall back into trying to look good, be right and be in control. It’s been good but not enough, to dedicate the day and surrender our wills each morning. Today, Lord help me surrender with each breath. Breathe out my striving (sin), Breathe in You & your peace. Stay curious about what you are doing, breath by breath, all day long.

…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. —Matthew 6:25

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? —Romans 8:35

God does not keep His child immune from trouble; He promises, “I will be with him in trouble…” (Psalm 91:15). It doesn’t matter how real or intense the adversities may be; nothing can ever separate him from his relationship to God. “In all these things we are more than conquerors…” (Romans 8:37). Paul was not referring here to imaginary things, but to things that are dangerously real. And he said we are “super-victors” in the midst of them, not because of our own ingenuity, nor because of our courage, but because none of them affects our essential relationship with God in Jesus Christ. I feel sorry for the Christian who doesn’t have something in the circumstances of his life that he wishes were not there.

“Shall tribulation…?” Tribulation is never a grand, highly welcomed event; but whatever it may be— whether exhausting, irritating, or simply causing some weakness— it is not able to “separate us from the love of Christ.” Never allow tribulations or the “cares of this world” to separate you from remembering that God loves you (Matthew 13:22).

“Shall…distress…?” Can God’s love continue to hold fast, even when everyone and everything around us seems to be saying that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?

“Shall…famine…?” Can we not only believe in the love of God but also be “more than conquerors,” even while we are being starved?

Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver, having deceived even Paul, or else some extraordinary thing happens to someone who holds on to the love of God when the odds are totally against him. Logic is silenced in the face of each of these things which come against him. Only one thing can account for it— the love of God in Christ Jesus. “Out of the wreck I rise” every time.

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Journal DJR
Good morning Lord,
Today I used JD’s favorite method of song search to find our song to match the daily devotion from Oswald Chambers… looking at the list of songs being played on K-Love, starting with what’s being played right now. It works pretty well, not 100%, but many times the right song is right there, waiting for us. So today, I instantly knew that this song was the right one to go with the message. But then I opened it up and evaluated the lyrics and felt three things. First, I didn’t see your name in there and then it seemed like there might be too much work in the prescription of steps to survive hard times. Kind of like self help prescriptions. Good Ideas that work with or without You. But then I saw that you were really in the lyrics, just different aspects.

Let every heartbreak and every scar
Be a picture that reminds you Who has carried you this far
‘Cause love sees farther than you ever could
In this moment Heaven’s working everything for your good

And the Romans 8:28 mantra that you have given us in that last line, confirmed that I once again had been led to the right song for the day. Thank you for being there for us and leading us… whenever we are ready, you are always there. How great is that!

I have said, I will never leave you or forsake you. You and all humans leave and forsake me from time to time, some more some less. But I am not offended. Remember I made you and I know you. I watch you with curiosity, not judgement. It would be good for you to watch others that way also. It will help you appropriate that peace that passes understanding that I make available to all.

Look at the birds of the air….Consider the lilies of the field… —Matthew 6:26, 28

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin”— they simply are! Think of the sea, the air, the sun, the stars, and the moon— all of these simply are as well— yet what a ministry and service they render on our behalf! So often we impair God’s designed influence, which He desires to exhibit through us, because of our own conscious efforts to be consistent and useful. Jesus said there is only one way to develop and grow spiritually, and that is through focusing and concentrating on God. In essence, Jesus was saying, “Do not worry about being of use to others; simply believe on Me.” In other words, pay attention to the Source, and out of you “will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). We cannot discover the source of our natural life through common sense and reasoning, and Jesus is teaching here that growth in our spiritual life comes not from focusing directly on it, but from concentrating on our Father in heaven. Our heavenly Father knows our circumstances, and if we will stay focused on Him, instead of our circumstances, we will grow spiritually— just as “the lilies of the field.”

The people who influence us the most are not those who detain us with their continual talk, but those who live their lives like the stars in the sky and “the lilies of the field”— simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mold and shape us.

If you want to be of use to God, maintain the proper relationship with Jesus Christ by staying focused on Him, and He will make use of you every minute you live— yet you will be unaware, on the conscious level of your life, that you are being used of Him.

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May 18 2016

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning God, thank You for this day and this devotional. Today’s devotional seems to sum up all that You have been teaching us for a long while. These two sentences from Chambers seem to sum up all that You have been revealing to us for a number of years: We cannot discover the source of our natural life through common sense and reasoning, and Jesus is teaching here that growth in our spiritual life comes not from focusing directly on it, but from concentrating on our Father in heaven. Our heavenly Father knows our circumstances, and if we will stay focused on Him, instead of our circumstances, we will grow spiritually— just as “the lilies of the field.” As the song says, I am to keep my eyes on You.

And God says…”Just like the lilies of the field, you do not have to worry about how you exist or grow. Even though I have given you the intellect and awareness, that does not mean you need to figure out what, when, how, where or why. Acknowledge Me in all your ways and do not rely on your own understanding and I will make your paths straight. Seek first the kingdom of God and My righteousness, which is Jesus, and I will provide everything else you require for daily living. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart; this is the lesson and teaching I have given you: Surrender, connection, curiosity and obedience. Live out of this, and the Holy Spirit can lead, guide and direct you. But He cannot take the wheel unless you first let go. “