This morning as I was reading my daily devotional by Oswald Chamber and what he wrote really hit home. So, I decided to share it with you just as he wrote it. I trust it will impact you as it did me and challenge you to keep our relationship with Jesus in perspective.
John 15:11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. ESV
“What was the joy that Jesus had? It is an insult to use the word happiness in connection with Jesus Christ. the joy of Jesus was the absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice of Himself to His Father, the joy of doing that which the Father sent Him to do. ‘I delight to do Thy will.’ Jesus prayed that our joy might go on fulfilling itself until it was the same joy as His. Have I allowed Jesus Christ to introduce His joy to me?”
“The full flood of my life is not in bodily health, not in external happenings, not in seeing God’s work succeed, but in the perfect understanding of God, and in the communion with Him that Jesus Himself had. The first thing that will hinder this joy is the captious irritation of thinking out circumstances. The cares of this world, said Jesus, will choke God’s word. Before we know where we are, we are caught up in the shows of things. All that Go’d has done for us is the mere threshold; He wants to get us to the place where we will be His witnesses and proclaim Who Jesus Is.”
“Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. Be a center for Jesus Christ to pour living water through. Stop being self-conscious, stop being a sanctified prig, and live the life hid with Christ. The life that is rightly related to God is as natural as breathing wherever it goes. The lives that have been of most blessing to you are those who were unconscious of it.”
That’s something to think about. When we are rightly related to God we need to remember that wherever we are, we have been put there by God; and only by our reaction to the circumstances will we fulfill His purpose. As long as we keep in the light as God is in the light.
This Wednesday’s Video Challenge
012 To Walk or Not to Walk