Thursday, August 30, 2007

Mr. Chambers on the "The Primacy of Being"

These entries can be found in Mr. Chamber's book My Utmost for His Highest. My Jesa Juva entry, "The Primacy of Being," can be found here.
(Note: My emphasis is in bold.)

From the October 19th entry entitled "The Unheeded Secret":

The great enemy to the Lord Jesus Christ in the present day is the conception of practical work that has not come from the New Testament, but from the systems of the world in which endless energy and activities are insisted upon, but no private life with God. The emphasis is put on the wrong thing. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observations, for lo the kingdom of God is within you," a hidden, obscure thing. An active Christian worker too often lives in the shop windows. It is the innermost of the innermost that reveals the power of the life.
We have to get rid of the plague of the spirit of the religious age in which we live. In our Lord's life there was none of the press and rush of tremendous activity that we regard so highly, and the disciple is to be as His Master. The central thing about the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship to Himself, not public usefulness to men.
It is not its practical activities that are the strength of this Bible Training College, its whole strength lies in the fact that here you are put into soak before God.
You have no idea of where God is going to engineer your circumstances, no knowledge of what strain is going to be put on you wither at home or abroad, and if you waste your time in overactive energies instead of getting into soak on the great fundamental truths of God's Redemption, you will snap when the strain comes; but if this time of soaking before God is being spent in getting rooted and grounded in God on the unpractical line, you will remain true to Him whatever happens.

From the December 18th entry entitled "The Test of Loyalty":

Loyalty to Jesus Christ is the thing we "stick at" today. We will be loyal to work, service, to anything, but do not ask us to be loyal to Jesus Christ. Many Christians are intensely impatient of talking about loyalty to Jesus. Our Lord is dethroned more emphatically by Christian workers than by the world. God is made a machine for blessing men, and Jesus Christ is made a Worker among workers. The idea is not that we do work for God, but that we are so loyal to Him that He can do His work through us.

Finally, from the October 9th entry entitled "Pull Yourself Together":

I cannot save and sanctify myself; I cannot atone for sin; I cannot redeem the world; I cannot make right what is wrong, pure what is impure, holy what is unholy. That is all the sovereign work of God. have I faith in what Jesus Christ has done? He has made a perfect Atonement, am I in the habit of constantly realizing it? The great need is not to do things, but to believe things.

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