MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 22 AUGUST 2024 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 22 August 2024 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Thursday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: I Indeed . . . but He
I indeed baptize you with water . . . but he . . . shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. — Matthew 3:11 kjv
Have I ever come to a place in my experience where I can say, “I indeed . . . but he”? Until that moment comes, I will never know what the baptism of the Holy Spirit means. It means that “I indeed” am at an end; I can do nothing more. “But he” begins right there—he does what no one else can do.
“But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry” (Matthew 3:11). Am I prepared for his coming? Jesus cannot come to me as long as there’s something inside me blocking his way. It doesn’t matter whether the thing is bad or good, sin or something I consider a personal quality. When he comes, I must be prepared for him to drag everything into the light.
Wherever I know I am unclean, he will put his feet. Wherever I think I am clean, he will withdraw them. Repentance doesn’t bring a sense of sin but a sense of total unworthiness. When I repent, I realize that I am completely helpless; I know that no part of me is worthy even to carry his sandals. Have I repented like that? Or do I have a lingering urge to defend myself? The reason God cannot come into my life is because I haven’t entered completely into repentance.
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11). John doesn’t speak of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as an experience. He speaks of it as a work performed by Jesus Christ. The only conscious experience those who are baptized with the Holy Spirit ever have is a sense of being absolutely unworthy.
“I indeed” was unworthy, “but he” came, and a marvelous thing happened. Get to the place in the margin where he does everything.
FURTHER READING: Psalms 110-112; 1 Corinthians 5
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
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