MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 7 JUNE 2024 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 7 June 2024 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Friday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: Don’t Slack Off
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. — John 15:7
Am I fulfilling the ministry of the interior life, taking time alone with the Father to intercede for others in prayer? I need not worry that the moments I claim for prayer are selfish. There is no danger of infatuation or pride in intercession; it is a hidden ministry which brings forth the fruit that glorifies the Father. Am I slacking off in my spiritual life, allowing my spiritual energies to be frittered away? Or am I learning to remain in Jesus? To remain in Jesus is to concentrate my spiritual energies around a single point: the atonement of the Lord.
I must begin to realize this central point of power in my life. Do I give one minute out of sixty to concentrate upon it? “If you remain in me” means “If you continually act and think and work on the basis of my atonement.” What holds the most power over me right now? Is it my job? Serving others? Trying to work for God? It isn’t the thing I spend the most time on that shapes me the most; it’s the thing that exerts the greatest power over me. What ought to exert the greatest power over me is Jesus Christ. I must decide to be limited in my affinities, to choose carefully where I place my attention. If Jesus Christ is more and more my dominating interest, every phase of my life will bear fruit for him.
Jesus says that if we remain in him and his words remain in us, God will answer our prayers. Do we recognize this truth? “But,” you say, “suppose I ask for something not according to God’s will?” You won’t—not if you’re fulfilling Jesus’s wish that you remain in him. The disciple who remains in Jesus is the will of God. The choices this disciple makes, though they appear to be made freely, are actually God’s foreordained decrees. Mysterious? Yes. Logically contradictory and absurd? Yes. But a glorious truth to those who remain in him.
FURTHER READING: 2 Chronicles 28-29; John 17
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
A fanatic is one who entrenches himself in invincible ignorance.
Baffled to Fight Better, 59 R
Oswald Chambers was an early-twentieth-century Scottish Baptist evangelist and teacher who was aligned with the Holiness Movement. He is best known for the daily devotional My Utmost for His Highest