The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success

The following blog is an excerpt from My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers

Copyright ©1992 by Oswald Chambers Publications Association, Ltd.  Original edition copyright© 1935 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success

Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you…” (Luke 10:20)

Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor it is sin.  The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live.  Never seek after anything other than the approval of God, and always be willing to go “outside the camp, bearing his reproach” (Hebrews 13:13)

In Luke 10:20, Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice.  We have a commercialized view—we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think everything is all right.  Yet our work only begins where God’s grace has laid the foundation.  Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them.  Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally yielded to God.  One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simple awakened by His Spirit.  As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God’s testimony to us as His workers.  God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.

Unless the worker lives a life that “is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an active, living disciple.  Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups.  But Jesus never dictates to us in that way.  Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an “if”, never with the forceful or dogmatic statement—“You must.”  Discipleship carries with it an option.

Reflections on Resurrection

"But your iniquities have separated you from God.  For your hands are stained with blood, and your tongue mutters wicked things.  No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity.

We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows.  Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.

The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice.  He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him."

(selections from Isaiah 59)

 I took portions of scripture and fitted them together here.  I don't think I've changed the meaning of the overall passage.  Please, follow the link to Isaiah 59 or open your own Bible to read the whole thing.  I'm not discussing the finer points of the composition or the deep theological issues of this.  Just think of what today represents.

It's the Resurrection of Jesus.

I read the passage in Isaiah and I think of me.  Of us today.  That those descriptions fit us.  Our iniquities have separated us from God.  Our hands are stained with blood.  (maybe not literally, but remember what Jesus said about just being angry with a brother...)  Our tongues mutter wicked things.  We walk in deep shadows because we cannot find the light.  Truth is nowhere and anyone who rejects evil...is prey!

I'm tired of being that person.  I'm tired of being separated from God.

We do not have to be separated from him.  He already fixed everything.  "So his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him."

God made the way back through the darkness.  Back to the Truth.  We can come out from beneath our iniquities, our wicked tongues, and blood stained hands and be with Him in the light.

Jesus is that salvation worked out, the sustaining righteousness.

The coolest thing is that it is done.  We just have to embrace him.  To acknowledge who he is.  Then we live life changed, different, out of darkness.  We follow the lessons and commands he left for us.  We live life according to the salvation Jesus provided through his resurrection.

Enjoy the flowers and eggs and candy today, but remember there is so much more to it than that.  "Easter" is a holiday.  The Resurrection is a way of life.  Live it.

grace, peace + hope

-Jesse

Shadows & Dust

My spirit is feeling a bit more poetic today. It tends to get that way after a good spiritual kick to the head.  Which if you read the last post you'll know what I'm talking about.  If you did not read it click the pretty blue letters, here.

One of my all time favorite movies is Gladiator.  In this sweeping epic tale, Maximus, a general of the Roman army is betrayed.  He is captured and made into a slave/gladiator.  In one scene Maximus is talking with his owner/trainer, Proximo, right before a fight meant to kill Maximus.  They were talking about the intentions the now dead emperor had for Rome and how the emperor's son was ruining that vision.

Proximo: He knows too well how to manipulate the mob.
Maximus: Marcus Aurelius had a dream that was Rome, Proximo. That is not it. That is not it!
Proximo: Marcus Aurelius is dead, Maximus. We mortals are but shadows and dust. Shadows and dust, Maximus!

Much later in the movie Proximo repeats his words.  This time he had helped Maximus escape and soldiers were closing in to kill the old trainer.  Now the "shadows and dust," is not original to the writer of the screenplay.  It comes from an ancient Roman poet named Horace.  He's also the guy who gave us, "Carpe diem."


There is something here that is teasing me at the corners of my mind.

First the dust.  God created Adam from the dust of the earth.

"the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."
                                                                                                     -Genesis 2:7

Our physical bodies are dust.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  I mean literally.  Part of the dust you just cleaned off your bookshelf (or maybe you need to) is some of your dead skin and hair particles.  God also tells Adam and Eve in Genesis that from dust they were created and to dust they will return.  So will we.  These bodies we have, are temporary.  We can use them wisely, or waste them.  The funny thing is that we are also told that our bodies are the temple of God.  So these bodies of dust are the temple of God.

That is awesome!


God made us.  He chose to dwell amongst us, within us.  There is no greater thought than that!  God's presence makes the dust into something more.  We are something more than ourselves when the Spirit of God is at work in our lives.

Which brings us to the shadow part.

What is the point of a shadow?  A shadow is an area that light cannot reach due to an obstruction.  So, if we as humans are shadows, we are an area that light cannot reach due to an obstruction.

Maybe not our physical being, but what about our souls?

Jesus is the light of the world.  When he shines on us there are shadows.  The obstruction?  Sin.  Self.  Anything we put before him.  Jesus says this in Matthew 6:23

"But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"

Darkness exists because something is blocking the light.  Whatever that is for you, for me, we need to drop it at the feet of Jesus.  I know it is easy to say.  The dust side of us, the flesh, is strong.  And by strong I  mean weak.  Weak to the influence of sin.  It's easy to let those unclean words fly from our tonges.  It's easy to let our eyes wander and linger.  It's easy to (____fill in the blank___).

Horace and Proximo had it wrong.  We are more than shadows and dust.  We may do things wrong from time to time, look at pretty much every "hero" in the Bible.  They all made mistakes.  Abraham constantly lied.  Jacob was a manipulator.  Moses starts his story off killing a guy.  David...I don't have room to list all the things David did wrong (yet he is still mentioned as a man after God's own heart!)  Samson.  Jonah.  Paul.  Peter.  You.  Me.

Fill the dust of your being with the Spirit of God and let his light shine forth in you and eradicate the shadows from your life.

grace, peace + hope
-Jesse