MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 5TH SEPTEMBER 2024 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 5th September 2024 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Thursday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: Keeping Watch
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Watch with Me. — Matthew 26:38
When Jesus says, “Watch with me,” he is telling us to watch with no private point of view at all. In the early stages of our life with him, we do not watch with Jesus; we watch for him and expect him to watch with us. It takes us time to begin to view everything that happens in the way our Lord views it—through the revelation of the Bible.
Jesus asked his disciples to watch with him in the garden of Gethsemane, when peril was close at hand. In the same way, he comes to us, in some present-day Gethsemane where his honor is at stake, and says, “Watch with me.” He does this to teach us to identify ourselves with him and to see things from his perspective. But we will not. We say, “No, Lord. I can’t see the meaning of this. It’s too awful.”
If we don’t understand our Lord, if we don’t even know what his suffering is for, how can we ever watch with him? The disciples loved Jesus to the limits of their natural capacity, but they didn’t understand what he was after; they couldn’t grasp why his goal was to go to his death. In the garden of Gethsemane, they allowed themselves to be consumed by their own sorrow, and they fell asleep instead of keeping watch. At the end of three years of the closest intimacy with their Lord, “all the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56).
And yet, the disciples did eventually learn to watch with Jesus. How? After Gethsemane, a series of wonderful things happened. Our Lord died, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven; he sent the Holy Spirit, telling his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you” (Acts 1:8). This is how the disciples were changed. On the day of Pentecost, “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” (2:4), and they learned to watch with Jesus for the rest of their lives.
Further Reading: Psalms 146-147; 1 Corinthians 15:1-28
Wisdom from Oswald
We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us, our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
My Utmost for His Highest, April 23, 773 L
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
