Oswald Chambers

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

As soon as you begin to live the life of faith in God, fascinating and physically gratifying possibilities will open up before you. These things are yours by right, but if you are living the life of faith you will exercise your right to waive your rights, and let God make your choice for you. God sometimes allows you to get into a place of testing where your own welfare would be the appropriate thing to consider, if you were not living the life of faith. But if you are, you will joyfully waive your right and allow God to make your choice for you. This is the discipline God uses to transform the natural into the spiritual through obedience to His voice.

Whenever our right becomes the guiding factor of our lives, it dulls our spiritual insight. The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. In this passage, it would seem that the wisest thing in the world for Abram to do would be to choose. It was his right, and the people around him would consider him to be a fool for not choosing.

Many of us do not continue to grow spiritually because we prefer to choose on the basis of our rights, instead of relying on God to make the choice for us. We have to learn to walk according to the standard which has its eyes focused on God. And God says to us, as He did to Abram, “… walk before Me…” (Genesis 17:1).

—-Oswald Chambers May 25th Devotion

Hudson Taylor

The other night, while spending time with my sis, we were watching TV and TruLife came on. Now I usually don’t watch much TV because of personal convictions of mine, but felt led to watch this episode. In this particular episode, they were focusing on best friends who were having issues. One pair of friends they showed peaked my interest. One of the friends had just gotten saved and was facing ridicule and isolation due to many of her friends who had left her, and now she was dealing with this same issue from her best friend.

Any of you who are saved and/or were “Christian in name only” like I was and then decided to have a real relationship with Jesus, have gone through this or will go through it eventually. For this girl, she was taking it very hard and seemed desperate to do whatever she could to save the friendship, and in the end, her and her friend made up and were trying to make the friendship work…now there’s nothing wrong with trying to keep in touch or trying to stay on good terms, but what this girl will eventually learn is that sooner or later the friendship will end if the other girl doesn’t desire to be saved.

I say this because it’s happened to me numerous times. As one draws closer to Christ, the close relationships that you had with others will be lost if they do not know Jesus or are not very close to Him. Since I’ve come to know Christ, I’ve lost a lot of friends, and even people who said they were Christians have distanced themselves from me. And the thing is, I still love and care for these people. I pray for them all the time and ask the Lord to keep them, provide for them and their families, and to bless them with a relationship with Himself. I’ve always tried to treat them right and tried to reach out if they allow me, but there’s always this tension…this separation…

I think a lot of it is that they see how Jesus has transformed my very being and they are either convicted about how they live and don’t want to be reminded of it by being around me, and/or they can not accept the new change Jesus has done in me.

But I’ve learned and had to finally accept that it’s just a part of following Jesus. It’s one of the cost that He said we as believers would have to face. And I don’t regret it. The love, the care, the joy I have received from knowing my King outweighs all the heart ache and loss I’ve endured from losing many acquaintances, friendships, dreams and goals that I had before I knew Christ, and various opportunities. It’s taken some time to get used to, and I won’t lie, it did hurt me, and at times it can still bother me, so I can relate to what this girl was feeling…but I REFUSE to compromise, pretend that sin and hell doesn’t exist, not speak the truth in love when the Holy Spirit leads me to, and/or deny Jesus just so I can hold on to superficial relationships.

When you are born of the Spirit, you will have little to nothing in common with those who are not saved or who are in a backslidden state. So as you grow in the Spirit of God, you will begin to naturally separate from those who are not focused on God or who are not saved. You can still reach out to them, especially with the life giving words of the Gospel, but more than likely, they will not reach out to you. That’s just how my experience has been.

The Word tells us this…

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Pastor Joe Schimmel via goodfight.org

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.

—- Oswald Chambers

I don’t know what it is lately, but God has been using these OC Devotions to really open up my eyes to various things around me. I had just been talking to the Lord yesterday night about this & how I need to get my mind off of my circumstances and on solely on Him, and then I read this on this morning. Lord, You are good!

Lord, You are always speaking to me :D