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The Gateway to the Family of GodI love these thoughts from Oz Chambers this morning, they smack of wonder and awe of Him and His ability to accomplish the impossible in anyone!
Rich
Beware of placing Our Lord as a Teacher first. If Jesus Christ is a Teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize me by erecting a standard I can not attain. What is the use of presenting me with an ideal I cannot possibly come near? I am happier without knowing it. What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be - to be pure in heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God? I must know Jesus Christ as Saviour before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of an ideal which leads to despair. But when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the disposition that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives are based on that disposition.
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the natural man - the very thing Jesus means it to do. As long as we have a self-righteous, conceited notion that we can carry out Our Lord's teaching, God will allow us to go on until we break our ignorance over some obstacle, then we are willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. "Blessed are the paupers in spirit," that is the first principle in the Kingdom of God. The bedrock in Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possession; not decisions for Jesus Christ, but a sense of absolute futility - I cannot begin to do it. Then Jesus says - Blessed are you. That is the entrance, and it does take us a long while to believe we are poor! The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works.
3 comments:
It is true that it take us a long while to believe we are poor...perhaps it's length is in accepting that we are poor when most of life has been spent trying so hard to fight it. The world and religion (flesh) scream at us to be more wise, more smart, more healthy, more beautiful, more compassionate, and to get more possessions and accolades. Indeed it is true poverty and humility to come to the place where HE is enough in me.
Thanks for posting that quote. It's been awhile since I read Oswald.
Silent Wings,
Always so good to see you.
Unlearning the world's matrix is a process as is our journey into discovering that by God's very nature being love, He loves us..but discovering He is especially fond of us, well that is something that simply undoes me :)
Still learning...but I like the thought that he not only loves me but delights in me.
Always nice to stop in. :) Been quiet awhile...digesting and wrestling but ever learning.
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