Oswald Chambers

P 2925 The truth should change our lives.

/ DVH

“If the Spirit is the source of our life, we must also allow the Spirit to direct every aspect of our lives.”Galatians 5:25 TPT.“My true life is the Anointed One, and dying means gaining more of Him.”Philippians 1:21 TPT. I had put these two verses away for further meditation a while ago, because they seem to be seamlessly interwoven. They were written by the same man, Paul, at different times, to different churches.

Moving on …that verse in Galatians totally hinges on that first word. IF. That word is a word that is often overlooked, but it actually gives us immediate context. IF the Holy Spirit is our source then HE needs to be in charge … of … everything. Over the years people have baulked at what I’ve just said when I said it — in their opinion God gave us a brain and He expects us to use it. My problem with that line of thinking is this – something is wrong with our brain … it needs to be constantly refreshed! 

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it…”  Genesis 3:6. Eve made a judgment call. She used her own opinion, her eyes, and her brain, to decide what was good. Now God had already told her it would not be good for them to eat it — BUT EVE—this is a really important point—discarded what God said in favour of what she thought. 

That point is important because you and I do this every day. The Lord speaks to us. He doesn’t shout or have a brass band, or angels flying about the room, so we dismiss what we hear because we are unsure if it is Him or not! The way to be sure of what you hear is to know what the bible says, and then obey it, even when it seems too hard. We cannot digest the word by simply reading it, we must participate in God’s processes, voluntarily.

God clearly said to both Adam and Eve: “… but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:17. And because of their disobedience, Adam and Eve both died on the spot … even though they didn’t actually fall down DEAD! They died in their relationship with Him, and slowly but surely mankind walked away from Almighty God, by allowing distance to give us the freedom to do whatever we wanted.

Disobedience ushers in death. It won’t physically kill us, in fact we may go for a very long time without even realising we are dying! But eventually, because the Holy Spirit is gracious and He continually strives with us – we will realise we have walked further and further away from Him. That’s a dumb move!! HE’S THE SOURCE OF ALL LIFE. The further away we walk, the dead-er we will get, until we don’t care anymore what He thinks. That’s very dead.

The way we fix this dilemma is clearly shown to us in that second verse, Philippians 1:21. We must live this life choosing to die to ourselves, voluntarily, otherwise we will slowly lose sight of our heavenly calling and we will be dragged away by our own lusts and need for comfort. If we choose to die to what we think, and obey Him in the face of our fears, temptations, unbelief, antagonism, anger etc. – that means we are choosing to die to self. Self is the bit that needs to die. SELF ate from that tree!

At the right time, Jesus was born into this world. God came to earth Himself, as a MAN. Jesus Christ accepted the dreadful fate that awaited Him. He knew what came next and, despite the cost, He still made that choice to continue on that road. Now, we follow His example every single day.The Lord Jesus was separated from His Father when He became sin, He was separated so we don’t have to be. Intimacy with God is now our portion.

Jesus chose to die knowing that His Father would raise Him from the dead. Now the fear of death, and death itself no longer had a hold over Him – it could not keep Him in the grave. He knew the pain had a bigger purpose. Jesus died for us, so SIN will no longer have a hold over us, either. We don’t have to fail – we have been given the freedom to choose His Will, His Way. He gave us the power to overcome sin and our enemies..

We can live like Jesus Himself did – by living for the will of our Father. The secret is to make the hard choices, like this: “But I will do it, I will go to that person I cannot get along with and ask for forgiveness and then I will die daily as I apply that decision into my everyday life, no matter what it costs me.” The Holy Spirit will lead us, day by day, to die to ourselves, and live a brand new life. He knows the Way through every pitfall, every temptation, every grief stricken moment. 

Now we can go beyond the veil of ignorance about our own sin and unbelief, into the Holy of Holies, where God is. Jesus paved the way for us. The Holy Spirit has been given to us to lead us, and reveal to us what God wants from each one us. We have a reference book that is alive, this book is used by our Helper, to convict and convince us about where we need to change. The truth should change our lives. Bye. 👋

P 2919 Go to the Source.

/ DVH

“And if anyone longs to be wise, ask God for wisdom and He will give it! He won’t see your lack of wisdom as an opportunity to scold you over your failures but He will overwhelm your failures with His generous grace.” James 1:5 TPT. Around about this time in our mission (day 6 of 12 days), Hubby and I have learnt that we can end up on a huge down-a-later…  right before our Heavenly Father is about to do something that will blow our socks off … again!

To be honest with you, I’m not sure we would choose to go on these trips purely for the people the Lord sets us up to met – although they are often fantastic people. But I strongly suspect we both do this because we can’t wait to see what He IS going to do next. He is always surprising us – He literally never does what we might imagine at all – nothing looks like you think it will! 

I think the reason that many Christians don’t often see the Holy Spirit working around them is because they won’t want take any risks. People who lay down their lives to follow Jesus, end up taking risks. Like walking on water, or feeding thousands of people with some kid’s lunch. Or waiting for the Holy Spirit to come – when no-one has any idea what that looks like!  We need to stop thinking He’s only present when we see miracles –  because the Lord promised never to leave us or forsake us. He will go with us, wherever we go in His Name, and He always keeps His promises.

However in those times when it seems as if hubby and I have run out of enthusiasm for moving around from one place to another, and we are slowly getting toward empty — then He just simply takes over, particularly when we confess that we are hopeless without Him and we need His wisdom …like brother James suggested in his book. That’s when wisdom flows everywhere, and we just stand back and watch Him move. I  love those times, they are the best. 

One of those fantastic times happened at the beginning of our journey, when we first arrived in Victoria, utterly exhausted. Hubby gave away a half a dozen bookmarks, and a block of chocolate to the cleaners. Their leader was so overjoyed she raced off to our cabin and hugged me – she said this: “Nobody ever thinks about the cleaners!” Hey guess what lady?? Jesus always does!! 

Another one happened because the TV and DVD in our cabin didn’t work. So two guys came to fix it and then one of them suggested we all watch some porn to see if it was working now. I laughed and said: “Boy, are you going to feel bad when you find out what WE do!” Then we told him, and we all laughed together! You just never know who the Lord is going to bring along next, like two rough Aussie blokes and 2 weak wobbly little missionaries.

Only a few days ago, hubby took bibles and bookmarks into yet another caravan park office, and after a few minutes talking, he gave the lady behind the desk, a bookmark. She burst into tears and started sobbing: “You just don’t know what this means to me,” she said through her tears. You know, that book mark was not that good, trust me! It’s the Lord!! Jesus wants people to know He loves them, and He’s not dead – He’s alive!

So far, and we are on day 6, we have given away nearly all our bibles, 341 things in 6 days and 3 of those days were hard travel days. And we, Mr and Mrs We-haven’t-got-a-clue, are simply doing whatever He tells us to do. We were able to give that sobbing receptionist one of our books that talks about knowing Jesus, as well as a heap of bibles for that park. Then somebody else came in, which kind of terminated the conversation and changed the atmosphere. The window of opportunity may be very small, but Hubby is brilliant he jumps right through it!

Travelling around by car is difficult, the roads aren’t great to start with! And it means we don’t see a lot of people in a day, as we have to cover a lot of ground between towns … where there are only emus, kangaroos, and deer – would you believe?  Australia is a land with lots of space, so that means a lot of driving. We have driven about 1500 kms, to places that often don’t even have churches. Places where faith is not a part of any conversation, so if you bring up Jesus it usually takes people by surprise. 

The Lord wants to be so much a part of our lives that we talk about Him quite naturally. Like I said to the man when he wanted to play a porn DVD – that we didn’t have (!!!) – “Sorry mate, HE wouldn’t like it.” And I pointed to the ceiling. We need to defer to the Source, first, last and always. Bye 👋.