MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 17TH NOVEMBER 2024 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 17th November 2024 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Sunday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: The Eternal Goal
I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son . . . I will surely bless you. —Genesis 22:16-17
Because you have done this . . .” Abraham had reached the place where he was in touch with the very nature of God. He understood the reality of God and obeyed instantly when God demanded his son.
If I want to reach the place Abraham reached—if I want to see who God is—I can only do it through obedience. Obedience is the key to developing my character.
It is my character, not God’s, which determines God’s revelation of himself to me.
’Tis because I am mean,
Thy ways so oft look mean to me.
—George MacDonald
Prompt obedience is the evidence that God’s nature is inside me. If God, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, is inside me, there’s no possibility of my questioning or refusing when he speaks, because he speaks to his own nature. When Jesus says, “Come,” I come. When he says, “Let go,” I let go. When he says, “Trust God in this matter,” I trust.
God’s promises are of no value to us until by obedience we understand his nature. We can read a certain passage of the Bible three hundred and sixty-five times without understanding it. Then all of a sudden, because we have obeyed God in some particular thing, the passage becomes clear. Our obedience has opened God’s nature to us, and we see what he means.
“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God”(2 Corinthians 1:20). The “yes” must be born of obedience. When, by obedience, we say “amen” to a promise, the promise becomes ours. I never have a real God until I come face-to-face with him in Jesus Christ. Then I know that “earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25).
Further Reading: Ezekiel 5-7; Hebrews 12
Wisdom from Oswald
The truth is we have nothing to fear and nothing to overcome because He is all in all and we are more than conquerors through Him. The recognition of this truth is not flattering to the worker’s sense of heroics, but it is amazingly glorifying to the work of Christ.
Approved Unto God, 4 R