Some Sabbath Thoughts

It has been impressed on me over and over in the past several months how intensely personal the Christian life must be.

Last February, when I was in GA with Diane, Uncle Dave had a wonderful mid-week meeting along these lines. He talked about "the secret place" - that hidden place in which our souls commune with God. And he talked about the white stone given to the overcomer, on which a name is written that only God and the overcomer know. He connected the two ideas, hypothesizing that the relationship we form in secret with God is the basis for that secret name, as if the name captures the essence of the relationship between that soul and God. I love that.

It made me think of C.S.Lewis' "The Four Loves" in which he talks about friendships, and how, when two people are friends there are three identities: friend one, friend two, and the relationship between friend one and friend two. Fascinating thought. So with God. The relationship I have with God is an entity totally unique from any other entity.

And as I prayed, a few months ago, for revival and vision in the church, I realized so clearly that in praying that way I wasn't praying for a church that had incredible Sunday services in which everyone was crying and shouting hallelujahs and never disagreeing about anything. I was praying for individuals to catch a fresh glimpse of Jesus, and follow after Him with their whole hearts - totally in love with Him and desirous of His will. A church of individuals whose eyes are fixed on Jesus. And it was very real to me that in praying for revival in the church, I needed to start with praying for my own relationship with God to take on new and vibrant life.

And since those thoughts started percolating in my mind I've run across SO many Oswald Chambers quotes along the same lines. (And I will now take this opportunity to HIGHLY recommend the Oswald Chambers one-year Bible: "My Utmost Devotional Bible." So good.) I know it's hard to read quoted work sometimes, but believe me, this is well worth it!

"It is not sufficient to know that God has redeemed the world, and to know that the Holy Spirit can make all that Jesus did effectual in me; I must have the basis of a personal relationship to Him. Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim, he was brought into a vivid, personal, overmastering relationship to Jesus Christ... Paul was devoted to a Person not a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ's, he saw nothing else, he lived for nothing else."

"Abandon in the profound sense if of infinitely more value than personal holiness. Personal holiness brings the attention to bear on my own whiteness... The holiness produced through the indwelling of the His Son in me is a holiness which is never conscious of itself. There are some people in who you cannot find a speck and yet they are not abundantly blessed of God, while others make grave indiscretions and get marvelously blessed; the reason being that the former have become devotees of personal holiness, conscientious to a degree; the latter are marked by abandonment to God. The only way to be kept cleansed is by walking in the light as God is in the light."

"The battle is lost or won in the secret places of the will before God, never first in the external world... That is the way abandonment begins. Every now and again, not often, but sometimes, God brings us to a point of climax. That is the Great Divide in the life; from that point we either go toward a more and more dilatory and useless type of Christian life, or we become more and more ablaze for the glory of God - My Utmost for His Highest."