Gathering in Christ

Isaiah 7:14

Therefore, the LORD Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and shall call His name Emmanuel.

Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it…. He is not man becoming God, but God Incarnate, God coming into human flesh, coming into it from the outside. His life is the Highest and the Holiest entering in at the lowliest door. Our LORD’s birth was an advent… He must come into me from the outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a “Bethlehem” for the Son of God?

“You must be born again.” This is not a command; it is a foundation fact. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me. [Ed: Emmanuel!] God made manifest in the flesh -- that is what is made profoundly possible for you and me by the Redemption.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 251 (9/8)

  From My Utmost for His Highest

This photograph is by Liz Burnell.

Gathering in Christ

1 Corinthians 15:45

And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

Jesus Christ came into the human race from the outside, and when we are born again, His life comes into us from the outside… We try to enter the life of Jesus in the wrong way. We do not enter into His life by imitation; we enter into it by its entering into us by means of His death. 

Jesus Christ gives us His life, namely, Holy Spirit. When we ask God for the Holy Spirit, we receive the very nature of God, Holy Spirit….The danger is lest we praise God’s salvation and sovereign grace whole we refuse to manifest His salvation in our human nature.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 250 (9/7)

From The Psychology of Redemption

This photograph is from a Facebook page called Live Life in Color.

Gathering in Christ

1 Corinthians 15:28

Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.

Redemption does not only mean personal salvation and the redemption of our body; it means the absolute and complete redemption of the whole material earth in every iota, and not only the earth, but the whole material universe… It means that all relegated authority shall pass, and God will be the absolute authority… There is a time coming, thank God, when everything shall be under the direct rule of God in every detail. We look for a new heaven and a new earth, and then will the human race stand before God as Jesus Christ stood before Him when He was here. Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, is not a mere individual; He is the One who represents the whole human race…

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 249 (9/6)

From Bringing Sons Unto Glory

This photograph is  by Kristofer Rowe.

Gathering in Christ

Gathering in Christ

1 Corinthians 14:33

For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

A fog is as real as clear sunshine…. It is not a question of right and wrong, but a question of God taking you by a way which in the meantime you do not understand, and it is only by going through the confusions that you will get at what 

God wants.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 248 (9/5)

From My Utmost for His Highest

This photograph is by Liz Burnell.

Gathering in Christ

Psalm 104:34

May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad to the LORD.

Suppose Jesus suddenly lifted the veil from our eyes and let us see angels ministering to us, His own Presence with us, the Holy Ghost in us, the Father around us, how amazed we should be! We have lived in the “muddle” of things instead of in the middle of things. Faith gets us into the middle, which is God and God’s purpose.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 247 (9/4)

From The Moral Foundations of Life

This photograph is by Liz Burnell.

Gathering in Christ

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself; is not puffed up; does not behave rudely; does not seek its own; is not provoked; thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity; but rejoices in the truth; bears all things; believes all things; hopes all things; endures all things.

We see the humor of our heavenly Father in the way He brings around us the type of people who are to us what we have been to Him; now He will watch how we behave to them. How did Jesus treat us? With infinite patience, with amplitude of forgiveness and generosity. Then He says we are to treat them in the same way. “But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 246 (9/3)

From The Place of Help

This photograph is by Charlie Burnell.

Gathering in Christ

1 Corinthians 12:12-14

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body -- so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- whether Jew s or Greeks --whether slaves or free -- and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many.

…Not only is Jesus Christ identified with my sin, but I am identified with Him so that His ruling disposition is in me, and the moral transaction on my part is agreement with God’s verdict on sin in the Cross of Jesus….As long as a man has morality well within his own grasp, Jesus Christ does not amount to anything to him, but when a man get to his wits’ end by agony and says involuntarily, “My God, what am I up against? There is something underneath I never knew was there,” he begins to pay attention to what Jesus Christ says. A moral preparation is necessary before we can believe; truth is a moral vision and does not exist for a man until he sees it. There is a moral frontier outside which Jesus Christ does not tell, but when once we get over that frontier, He becomes all in all. God takes us through circumstances until we enter the moral frontiers where Jesus Christ tells. When you come to your wits’ end, remember there is a way out, namely, personal relationship to God through the Redemption of Jesus Christ.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 245 (9/2)

From The Shadow of an Agony

This photograph is by Jeremy Kappel.

Gathering in Christ

Song of Solomon 2:2

Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

The above illustration is as if a traveler were passing a field and suddenly a fragrant aroma was wafted to him from a bush…. What a beautiful influence comes from that [place]. But begin to draw aside the ordinary commonplace things of that [place], and you discover that tucked away somewhere is “a lily” of the LORD…. someone our LORD speaks of as a “root out of dry ground”…

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 244 (9/1)

From The Love of God

This photograph is by Jo Chaney.

Gathering in Christ

Ecclesiastes 12:5

Also they are afraid of height and of terrors in the way; when the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper is a burden, and desire fails. For man goes to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets.

Every man has the power to slay his own weariness, not by “bucking up” as you do physically, but by suddenly looking at things from a different standpoint… It is a tremendous thing to know that God reigns and rules and rejoices, and that His joy is our strength.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 243 (8/31)

From The Place of Help

This photograph is by Eric Jonas Swensson of Sound Shore Media.

Gathering in Christ

Ecclesiastes 9:3-4

There is an evil in all that is done under the sun; that one thing happens to all. Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But for him who is joined to all the living there is hope for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

It is a haphazard life, and we have to bank on God’s wisdom, not on our own… A Bohemian is careless about everything, and neither Jesus Christ nor Solomon teaches that. Jesus Christ taught that a man is to be carefully careless about everything except his relationship to God. The great care of the life, Jesus says, is to make the relationship to God the one care. Most of us are careful about everything except that. 

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 242 (8/30)

From Shade of His Hand.

This photograph is by Eric Jonas Swensson of Sound Shore Media. 

Gathering in Christ

Ecclesiastes 7:7

Surely oppression destroys a wise man’s reason, and a bribe debases the heart.

The wisdom of God is arrant stupidity to the wisdom of the world, until all of a sudden God makes the wisdom of the world foolish (see 1 Corinthians 1:23-25)…. You will come across extortioners -- cunning, crafty people who use their wits instead of worshipping God, and you will appear a fool. Are you prepared to appear a fool for Christ’s sake? To suffer for Christ’s sake is to suffer because of being personally related to Him.

…If you are going to be true to God, you will appear a fool among those who do not believe in God, and must lay your account with this. Jesus said, “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men…” and it tests a man for all he is worth to confess Jesus Christ because the confession has to be made in the set to which he belongs and esteems. [It’s the] “shame of the gospel.” “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,” says Paul.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 241 (8/29)

From Shade of His Hand

This is one of two paintings ever done by me, Jeanette Ze Artiste!

Gathering in Christ

Ecclesiastes 4:4

Again, I saw that for all toil and every skillful work, a man is envied by his neighbor. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.

If you go back to the origin of civilization, you find it was founded by a murderer. Among the good things, the shielding and protecting things, that are the outcome of civilization, what Solomon mentions is always to be found -- the crushing of someone in order to get gain. It may be done kindly or brutally, but the basis of success must be the crushing of something or someone. There is a rivalry between men, and we have made it a good thing; we have made ambition and competition the very essence of civilized life. No wonder there is no room for Jesus Christ and no room for the Bible. We are all so scientifically orthodox nowadays, so materialistic and certain that rationalism is the basis of things, that we make the Bible out to be the most revolutionary, unorthodox and heretical of books. Jesus Christ echoes Solomon’s attitude: “For one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses.”

At the basis of trade and civilized life lie oppression and tyranny. Whether you are king or subject, says Solomon, you cannot find joy in any system of civilized life -- or in trade or commerce --for underneath, there is a rivalry that stings and bites, and the kindest man will put his heel on his greatest friend. These are not the blind statements of a disappointed man, but statements of facts discerned by the wisest man that ever lived.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 240 (8/28)

From Shade of His Hand

I found this photograph once on Facebook, but I forgot to note who took it -- sorry!

Gathering in Christ

Ecclesiastes 3:3

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up…

God will not prevent my disobeying Him; if He did, my obedience would not be worth anything. Some of us complain that God should have made the universe and human life like a foolproof machine, so simple that there would be no possibility of going wrong. If He had, we would have been like jellyfish. If there is no possibility of being damned, there is no need for salvation…

In time, between life and death, most of us are in our “shell.” There is something that makes us “peck” and when the crack comes, instead of its being the gentle light and dawn of a new day, its’ like a lightning flash… If we make our life a muddle, it is to a large extent because we have not discerned the great underlying relationship to God.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 239 (8/27)

From Shade of His Hand

This photograph is by Eric Jonas Swensson of Sound Shore Media.

Gathering in Christ

Ecclesiastes 1:13

And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven…

No man who thinks and faces life as it actually is can be other than pessimistic.There is no way out unless he finds it by religious faith or is blinded by his temperament. The summing up of all practical life is that the basis of things is tragic. Sum up your life as it actually is, and, unless you look at actual things from a religious or temperamental or intellectual standpoint, everything is to be said for this philosophy: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” If rationalism is the basis of things, that is undoubtedly the most reasonable thing to do.

But if the basis of things is tragic, then the Bible standpoint comes nearer the solution, and Nietzsche is nearer the truth than any rationalist. Neitzsche declares that the basis of things is tragic, and that the way out is by the merciless superman; the Bible reveals that the basis of life is tragic and that the way out is by redemption. We say that man is in the process of evolution -- a magnificent promise of what he is going to be! The wisdom of the Bible looks at man’s history and attainments and says, “What a magnificent ruin of what he was created to be!”

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 238 (8/26)

From The Shade of His Hand

This photograph is by Charlie Burnell.

Gathering in Christ

Job 42:1-3

I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, “Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?” Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

Sin is not man’s problem but God’s. God has taken the problem of sin into His own hands and solved it, and the proof that He has is the cross of Calvary….The New Testament revelation is that now I am saved by God’s grace, I must allow God In me to work on that basis and keep flowing myself clean. The essential truth of Christianity is that I can “wash my robes and makes them clean in the blood of the Lamb.” That is the exposition of the Redemption in actual experience. Are we thinking along this line, or on the pagan line that claims the basis of things is rational, leaving out God and Jesus Christ and the Redemption altogether.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 237 (8/25)

From Baffled to Fight Better

This photograph is by Liz Burnell.

Gathering in Christ

Job 40:23-24

Indeed the river may rage, yet he is not disturbed; he is confident, though the Jordan gushes into his mouth, though he takes it in his eyes, or one pierces his nose with a snare.

In these verses, the whole of the universe is symbolized, and whatever the universe it, it is not tame…. And yet in the beginning, God intended man to control it; the reason he cannot is because he twisted God’s order; instead of recognizing God’s dominion over himself, man became his own god, and by doing so, lost control of everything else….

[What God intended is] mirrored in Jesus Christ -- a perfect oneness between God and man; there is no gap… In the meantime, there is a gap, and the universe is wild, not tame. Every type of superstition pretends it can rule the universe; the scientific quack proclaims he can control the weather, that he has occult powers, and can take the untamable universe and tame it. God says it cannot be done.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 236 (8/24)

From Baffled to Fight Better

This photograph is by Liz Burnell.

Gathering in Christ

Job 37:23-24

As for the Almighty, we cannot find Him; He is excellent in power, in judgment and abundant justice; He does not oppress. Therefore men fear Him; He shows no partiality to any who are wise of heart.

Job will not accept anything blindly; he says, “I must see that it does not contradict what I know.” The apostle Paul speaks of “the foolishness of God” as pitted against  the wisdom of men… When the Judaic ritualists saw Jesus Christ, they said, “You are a blasphemer; You do not express God at all.” Anna and Simeon were the only two of the descendants of Abraham who recognized who Jesus was, hence the condemnation of the crowd… which did not see Him because they had become blinded on the line of absolute authority, the line of symbolism or creed….and when that which was symbolized [actually] appeared, they could not see Him.

Excerpts from Oswald Chambers

Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 235 (8/23)

From Baffled to Fight Better

This photograph is by Liz Burnell.