Tag Archives: My Utmost for His Highest

March 25
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Good Friday

Today’s words of encouragement comes special for the remembrance of Good Friday, and is taken from today’s reflection by Oswald Chambers in “My Utmost for His Highest”:

“. . . who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree . . .”  (1 Peter 2:24)

“The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross— He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God. He made redemption the foundation of human life; that is, He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.

“The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus— He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He is ‘the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’ (Revelation 13:8).  The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating ‘God was manifested in the flesh. . .’ from . . . ‘He made Him. . . to be sin for us. . .’ (1 Timothy 3:16 ; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. God came in the flesh to take sin away, not to accomplish something for Himself. The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.

“The Cross is not the cross of a man, but the Cross of God, and it can never be fully comprehended through human experience. The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. But it is not a gate we pass right through; it is one where we abide in the life that is found there.

“The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.”

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February 18
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Today’s note is a bit longer than usual; and it is from the works of Oswald Chambers (1874-1917). However, I hope that you will find its encouragement to press-on after missed or ignored opportunities of great help.  – Luther 

“Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!” (Matthew 26:46, NIV)

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair. 

The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, “Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying anymore.” If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. 

It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, “Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing.” In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.

There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. 

The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright unthinkable thing — they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus. But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, “Get up, and do the next thing.” 

If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis of His redemption.

Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.

(Oswald Chambers, “My Utmost for His Highest”)

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