MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 17TH FEBRUARY 2025 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 17th February 2025 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Monday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: The Initiative against Discouragement
An angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” — 1 Kings 19:5
When the angel came to Elijah, the prophet was in a terrible state, huddled under a bush in the wilderness, afraid and miserable and wanting to die: “‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life’” (1 Kings 19:4).
How did the angel respond? He didn’t give Elijah a vision or an explanation of Scripture; he told him to get up and eat. When we are feeling discouraged, we often turn away from ordinary activities. But most of the time, when God comes to us, he doesn’t bring visions. He gives us the inspiration to do the simplest, most natural things— things we would never have imagined he was in. As we do them, we discover him there.
Discouragement is an inevitable part of human experience. It’s in the nature of a rock to never be sad, not of a human being. If we were never sorrowful, we would never be overjoyed. We have a capacity for delight and sadness both, and it is only normal that we should be brought low by certain things.
In times of difficulty, our safeguard lies in doing what God asks of us, however small and insignificant his request may seem. If instead we try to block out our sadness, if we ignore it or push it down, we will only succeed in deepening it. But if we sense intuitively that the Spirit wants us to do something and we do it, our sadness begins to lift. Immediately we arise and obey; we enter a higher plane of life.
Further Reading: Leviticus 21-22; Matthew 28
Wisdom from Oswald
God created man to be master of the life in the earth and sea and sky, and the reason he is not is because he took the law into his own hands, and became master of himself, but of nothing else.
The Shadow of an Agony, 1163 L