Astounding

This devotional reminded me of the verses in Psalm 19.

"Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults.
Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins;
Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless,
And I shall be innocent of great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer." (vs.12-14)

It truly is "astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves!"

"HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ALONE WITH GOD?
"When they were alone, He expounded all things to His disciples." Mark 4:34 Our Solitude with Him. Jesus does not take us alone and expound things to us all the time; He expounds things to us as we can understand them. Other lives are parables. God is making us spell out our own souls. It is slow work, so slow that it takes God all time and eternity to make a man and woman after His own purpose. The only way we can be of use to God is to let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our own characters. It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves! We do not know envy when we see it, or laziness, or pride. Jesus reveals to us all that this body has been harbouring before His grace began to work. How many of us have learned to look in with courage? We have to get rid of the idea that we understand ourselves, it is the last conceit to go. The only One Who understands us is God. The greatest curse in spiritual life is conceit. If we have ever had a glimpse of what we are like in the sight of God, we shall never say - "Oh, I am so unworthy," because we shall know we are, beyond the possibility of stating it. As long as we are not quite sure that we are unworthy, God will keep narrowing us in until He gets us alone. Wherever there is any element of pride or of conceit, Jesus cannot expound a thing. He will take us through the disappointment of a wounded pride of intellect, through disappointment of heart. He will reveal inordinate affection - things over which we never thought He would have to get us alone. We listen to many things in classes, but they are not an exposition to us yet. They will be when God gets us alone over them." -Oswald Chambers

May the words of my mouth....the thoughts of my mind....the meditations of my heart.....the actions that I do....be pleasing in my Lord's sight.


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Loyal in Obedience

"Are we going to remain loyal in our obedience to God and go through the humiliation of refusing to be independent, or are we going to take the other line and say - I will not cost other people suffering? We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but we shall be a grief to our Lord. Whereas if we obey God, He will look after those who have been pressed into the consequences of our obedience. We have simply to obey and to leave all consequences with Him.

Beware of the inclination to dictate to God as to what you will allow to happen if you obey Him."

-Oswald Chambers

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1 January 2010

"Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him."
Oswald Chambers

I am so looking forward to the future....to all that the Lord has in store for me in 2010....2009 was amazing, such a journey, full of ups and downs and surprises! I began the year in Cali and ended it here in my beloved Romania. Ironically enough, both January in Cali and December in Romania have been pretty warm...not as much snow as I had been promised by everyone, but that's ok, it has been beautiful none the less.

I spent the evening with friends last night just hanging out, eating and playing games, then watching the fireworks over the city from my friend's balcony. It was beautiful and memorable. This year has once again fit perfectly with Proverbs 16:9,

"A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps."

My days have been full of my plans....and the Lord has taken those plans and molded them to His own...when I moved to Brasov in March, I never thought I would be working so much with teen Roma (gyspy) girls, but the Lord opened up that door and it has been great. It was also cool to see how the Lord answered my heart's desire to work with the elderly by giving me an elderly neighbor to spend time with!

Such a big part of being a missionary is relationships. I think people get it all wrong when they try to make the big part about a program....or doing doing doing....the Romanian people are a culture of "being"...they like to hang out, they want a friend, they want to know you are not just some American coming in with your ideas to "fix" the "poor Romanians" but that you are here to love them and be there for them. Being light and salt in the world is just that...being a friend, being there and having a real relationship with people.....something that will make a lasting impression.

Well anyway, it's a new year...2010...I can't believe that....I am not really a "goal" person...so I have no new year's resolutions....other than to continue following my Savior wherever He may lead me, to be obedient to His Word and to grow in my relationship with Him....I think everything else will find it's place in my life if I seek Him first.

Happy 2010 friends.

xo



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My Utmost...

from My Utmost for His Highest this morning:
:)

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"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 2 Timothy 2:15

If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can. If you do not, someone will be the poorer all the days of his life. Struggle to re-express some truth of God to yourself, and God will use that expression to someone else. Go through the winepress of God where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle to get expression experimentally, then there will come a time when that expression will become the very wine of strengthening to someone else; but if you say lazily - "I am not going to struggle to express this thing for myself, I will borrow what I say," the expression will not only be of no use to you, but of no use to anyone. Try to state to yourself what you feel implicitly to be God's truth, and you give God a chance to pass it on to someone else through you.

Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.


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The Secret of a Disciple's Life

Just some things that stood out to me in my devo this morning.
:)

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"We count as service what we do in the way of Christian work; Jesus Christ calls service what we are to Him, not what we do for Him...People do not want to be devoted to Jesus, but only to the cause He started...

Our Lord's first obedience was to the will of His Father, not to the needs of men; the saving of men was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father. If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a doormat.

The secret of a disciple's life is devotion to Jesus Christ..."

Oswald Chambers

Mary, Martha and Abiding

So this concept of Mary and Martha has really been on my mind this past week or 2. A lot of times in the ministry there is almost an expectation that you need to be constantly busy, that running around like crazy is a sign that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing....and other times we ourselves seem to put that onto us. Some of us are of that personality type, where we see a need and so we assume it is "our job" to fix it. Like Martha, she saw that she had a group of people coming over, and a very important guest, Jesus Himself, and so she was running around being busy, preparing things, which is all good if that is what the Lord has for you to be doing at that moment. But I wonder how often we see a need and want to "fix it" out of our own strength. We don't seek the Lord's will in the matter at all.

Mary was the one who choose the better thing, to sit at the feet of Jesus. To abide in Him and in His presence. How often we choose work and being busy "for the Lord" over actually just being "WITH the Lord". Obviously there is work to be done, the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few, the Lord wants to use us, but He doesn't NEED to use us. He wants US. He wants us to know Him and abide in Him, and that is more important to Him than the work.

As we grow in Him and as we abide in Him the work we end up doing for the Lord will come out of our time with Him, it will overflow with His Spirit. Because after all, anything we do "for the Lord" should be done FOR HIS GLORY, not for our own glory, and the more time we spend in His presence the more of Him we will want to share as we go out, and the less of us. Everything we do in His name, should be about Him, not how good we are, or how busy we are, or how many people say we are "good". We should always be pointing the way to Him, not to ourselves and not to the work. It matters very little if we feed the world if we don't tell them who Jesus is. To be blunt, what difference will a full stomach make in Hell?

It can be a dangerous position when that balance gets upset and we are "serving the Lord" to seek our own glory. But no matter where He places us, whether it is at school, sitting in an office 9-5 or out on the missions field, if we are constantly abiding in Him, and taking that time to sit at His feet, we will be able to truly shine for Him and to give Him the glory.

Anyway, below is a little clip from My Utmost For His Highest from my devo time this morning...it's what got me thinking again about the Mary and Martha thing.

Be blessed!

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" It does not matter what my circumstances are. I can be as much assured of abiding in Jesus in any one of them as I am in any prayer meeting. It is unnecessary to change and arrange my circumstances myself. Our Lord’s inner abiding was pure and unblemished. He was at home with God wherever His body was. He never chose His own circumstances, but was meek, submitting to His Father’s plans and directions for Him. Just think of how amazingly relaxed our Lord’s life was! But we tend to keep God at a fever pitch in our lives. We have none of the serenity of the life which is "hidden with Christ in God" ( Colossians 3:3 ).

Think of the things that take you out of the position of abiding in Christ. You say, "Yes, Lord, just a minute— I still have this to do. Yes, I will abide as soon as this is finished, or as soon as this week is over. It will be all right, Lord. I will abide then." Get moving— begin to abide now. In the initial stages it will be a continual effort to abide, but as you continue, it will become so much a part of your life that you will abide in Him without any conscious effort. Determine to abide in Jesus wherever you are placed."

-Oswald Chambers