Sometimes you read something that opens up a whole new perspective. As part of my daily devotions I sometime read from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. Back in August I flagged the following entry for a blog comment, but only now am finally getting around to writing the post. I will copy the entire entry here so that you can read it. Here is the entry for August 20. . .
Completeness
And I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28. Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once and ask Him to establish rest. Never allow anything to remain which is making the dis-peace. Take every element of disintegration as something to wrestle against, and not to suffer. Say—‘Lord, prove Thy consciousness in me’, and self-consciousness will go and He will be all in all. Beware of allowing selfconsciousness to continue because by slow degrees it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is Satanic. ‘Well, I am not understood; this is a thing they ought to apologize for; that is a point I really must have cleared up.’ Leave others alone and ask the Lord to give you Christ-consciousness, and He will poise you until the completeness is absolute.
The complete life is the life of a child. When I am consciously conscious, there is something wrong. It is the sick man who knows what health is. The child of God is not conscious of the will of God because he is the will of God. When there has been the slightest deviation from the will of God, we begin to ask—‘What is Thy will?’ A child of God never prays to be conscious that God answers prayer, he is so restfully certain that God always does answer prayer.
If we try to overcome self-consciousness by any commonsense method, we develop it tremendously. Jesus says “Come unto Me and I will give you rest,” i.e., Christ-consciousness will take the place of self-consciousness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest, the rest of the perfection of activity that is never conscious of itself.
There is something extremely refreshing about the way that Chambers writes about his faith. Once you get past some of the archaic language, you discover a man who lives his life in a very God-centered way. This stands in sharp contrast to the vast majority of Christian books and music in our time, which are very much focused on our own identity and experience of God. Sometimes it is good to receive a wake up call from saints from an earlier generation.
If you are interested in reading the daily readings from Chambers or receiving them by email, go the the Study Light web site.