MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 7TH MAY 2025 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 7th May 2025 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Wednesday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: Building for Eternity
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Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? — Luke 14:28
In Luke 14:26–33, our Lord isn’t referring to a cost we need to plan for; he’s referring to a cost he planned for, for our sake. What did it cost Jesus to redeem the world? Thirty years in Nazareth; three years of popularity, scandal, and hatred; the deep, unfathomable agony in Gethsemane; and, finally, the onslaught at Calvary—the pivot upon which the whole of time and eternity turns. Jesus Christ planned for this cost, so that in the final reckoning no one could say of him, “This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish” (v. 30).
Have you anticipated the cost of discipleship? Jesus states the cost clearly: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother … such a person cannot be my disciple” (v. 26). The only people the Lord will use in his mighty building projects are those who have been entirely remade by him: men and women who love him personally, passionately, and devotedly, above any of their closest family or friends on earth. His conditions are stern, but they are glorious.
Everything we build will be inspected by God. Will he find that we have built something of our own on the foundation of Jesus, something for our selfish gain? These are days of tremendous enterprises, days when many people are striving mightily to work for God—and therein lies the trap. We can never work for God. We can only give ourselves to Jesus and let him take us over for his work. We have no right to dictate to our Lord where we will be placed or what we will do.
Further Reading: 2 Kings 1-3; Luke 24:1-35
Wisdom from Oswald
We are not fundamentally free; external circumstances are not in our hands, they are in God’s hands, the one thing in which we are free is in our personal relationship to God. We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be.
Conformed to His Image, 354 L
