MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST 3RD FEBRUARY 2025 BY OSWALD CHAMBERS
Read My Utmost for His Highest 3rd February 2025 (Oswald Chambers Devotional) Monday Inspirational Message.
TOPIC: The Demand of the Call
We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world. —1 Corinthians 4:13
Paul’s words here are not an exaggeration. If they are not true for us, it’s because we refuse to allow ourselves to become garbage. Our preference for the finer things of the world, and for our own place among them, prevents us from being “set apart for the gospel” in the way Paul describes (Romans 1:1). When he writes of using his own flesh to “fill up . . . what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions,” he means being willing to put himself, in person, anywhere Christ’s gospel is needed (Colossians 1:24).
“Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening” (1 Peter 4:12). If we do find the things we encounter strange, it’s because we’re cowardly and pretentious. We allow our worldly affinities and aspirations to keep us out of the muck: “I won’t stoop,” we say. “I won’t bend.” God won’t force us. If we want, we can refuse to let Jesus count us as one of his servants.
Related Post
A servant of Jesus is someone who is willing to become a martyr for the gospel. Martyrdom is a calling that lies beyond mere morality. When a merely moral man or woman comes in contact with baseness and immorality and treachery, they instinctively recoil. What they’ve seen is so desperately offensive to their sense of human goodness that their heart shuts up in despair.
But the marvel of the redemptive reality of God is that his love is bottomless: the worst and vilest can never exhaust it. Paul doesn’t say that God set him apart in order to make him a shining example. It was, Paul writes, “to reveal his Son in me” (Galatians 1:16).
Further Reading: Exodus 31-33; Matthew 22:1-22
Wisdom from Oswald
We can understand the attributes of God in other ways, but we can only understand the Father’s heart in the Cross of Christ.
The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 558 L
