MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 12 MAY 2024 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 12 May 2024 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Sunday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: Make a Habit of Having No Habits
For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. — 2 Peter 1:8
When we first begin to form a habit, we are highly aware of what we are doing. If we are cultivating habits of patience and godliness, we might consciously think, “Look at how patient and godly I’m being!” This kind of conscious awareness is a stage we must pass through. If we get stuck in it, we’ll become spiritual snobs.
Our spiritual life continually calls us to look within ourselves. When we do, we see that there are some qualities we’re still missing. Our god may be our little Christian habit—praying at bedtime or reading the Bible in the morning. “I can’t do that right now; it’s my hour with God,” you say. No, it’s your hour with your habit. Watch how the Father will upset these times if you begin to worship your habit instead of him. If this is the case in your life, recognize that there is a quality missing in you, and look for the opportunity to set things right.
The right thing to do with habits is to lose them in the life of the Lord, until every habit is so automatic that there is no awareness of it at all. Ultimately, the relationship between our souls and Christ should be very simple: it should be based on love. Love means that there is no detectable habit. You have come to the place where the habit has been lost in the bliss of unconscious devotion. If you are consciously holy, there are certain things you think you can’t do, certain places you feel you can’t go. The only supernatural life is the life the Lord Jesus lived, and Jesus was at home with God anywhere.
Where do you not feel at home with God? Let God press through in that place until you find him, and your life will become the simple life of the child.
Further Reading: 2 Kings 15-16; John 3:1-18
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Defenders of the faith are inclined to be bitter until they learn to walk in the light of the Lord. When you have learned to walk in the light of the Lord, bitterness and contention are impossible.
Biblical Psychology
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