I flipped open My Utmost for His Highest, randomly:
October 12 and October 13. God's anything-but-random answer to everything I have been so desperately asking Him recently.
From October 12:
"It is a painful business to get through into the stride of God, it means getting your second wind spiritually. In learning to walk with God there is always the difficulty of getting into His stride; but when we have got into it, the only characteristic that manifests itself is the life of God. The individual man is lost sight of in his personal union with God, and the stride and the power of God alone are manifested. ...
...Spiritual truth is learned by atmosphere, not by intellectual reasoning. God’s Spirit alters the atmosphere of our way of looking at things, and things begin to be possible which never were possible before. Getting into the stride of God means nothing less than union with Himself. It takes a long time to get there, but keep at it. Don’t give in because the pain is bad just now, get on with it, and before long you will find you have a new vision and a new purpose."
When Oswald Chambers delivered these words in a lecture a century ago, God was thinking, "My daughter will need these words on November 1, 2013." He even had Mr. Chambers throw in "not by intellectual reasoning" to make sure I would know He was talking right to me. Because, oh yes, I've been trying to work this thing out as though it were a giant logic puzzle. What does God want from me? What if I changed this...? Or this...?
From October 13:
"We have to learn that our individual effort for God is an impertinence; our individuality is to be rendered incandescent by a personal relationship to God (see Matthew 3:17). We fix on the individual aspect of things; we have the vision – 'This is what God wants me to do;' but we have not got into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a big personal enlargement ahead."
I have never heard Oswald Chambers be quite as encouraging as he is on these two pages, nor have I ever heard him explain so succinctly how the fullness of the Christian life begins. It begins when we stop fussing over what will happens to us. When we "obey and to leave all consequences with Him," as he has said elsewhere.
Do whatever Jesus tells you to do, Mary directed the servants at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1-11). This is where it starts (and always continues).
Then begins the struggle, as you watch Him scurry up and down craggy mountains like a mountain goat, disappearing behind cliffs and calling to you, "Come run with Me!"
You try; you fall; it's hopeless.
And then one day you decide to run with Him
and let the consequences
be His
if you fall.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Draw me after you and let us run together!...”
Song of Solomon 1:4a