MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 1ST FEBRUARY 2025 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 1st February 2025 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Saturday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: The Call of God
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Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. —1 Corinthians 1:17
If we are going to preach the gospel, we need to be clear about what the gospel is. In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul says that the gospel—the message God has called on him to deliver—is the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The gospel isn’t Paul’s personal transformation or experience; it isn’t his salvation or sanctification. Paul shares his personal story, but only as an illustration: certain things happened to Paul because of the redemption, but they were not the ultimate reason for it. The ultimate reason Jesus suffered in redemption was to redeem the whole world and place it unimpaired and rehabilitated before the throne of God. This is the gospel, and the only thing we are commissioned to preach.
The difference between Jesus’s act of redemption and our personal holiness is stark: one is cause and the other effect. When we preach, we must be careful where we place the emphasis. Are we placing it on Jesus, or on ourselves? Are we lifting up his holiness, or our own?
When we truly understand the reality of the gospel, we will stop bothering God with questions about ourselves. Imagine, if God were human, how heartsick and tired he would be, listening to the constant requests for our salvation and sanctification! We trouble him day and night, when we should be thanking him. Paul welcomed heartbreak, disillusionment, and tribulation for one reason only: they kept him in unmoved devotion to the gospel of God.
FURTHER READING: Exodus 27-28; Matthew 21:1-22
Wisdom from Oswald
The great word of Jesus to His disciples is Abandon. When God has brought us into the relationship of disciples, we have to venture on His word; trust entirely to Him and watch that when He brings us to the venture, we take it.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
