Oswald

I am a couple of days into using Oswald Chamber's My Utmost For His Highest as a daily reading and devotional guide. I switched to this book cause my friend Steve uses it and we wanted something we could kinda do in parallel so we could talk about it from time to time, kinda challenge each other.

You gotta know that I approach most things as a cynic but I try to be an optimistic cynic. An example of this is the book in question. It seems to me that Oswald fits a phrase of a verse of scripture to fit his devotional thought, kinda like when authors start every chapter of their book with quotes. Now, I want to be optimistic about this cause even the little of what I have read of his thoughts show intimate knowledge of and an intimate relationship with God. I respect people with that, especially the intimate relationship part. So, I won't let this "make scripture fit your thoughts" idea get to me. Instead, I'll follow Steve's advice and read the phrase or verse in context. It proved helpful for yesterdays devotional - Sept 3 for those of you who are using the same book.

One other thing that I have noticed is that Oswald packs a whole wack of thoughts in one devotional - some that don't seem to support or highlight others in the devotional. I have read some and thought "now what did that have to do with what he is really trying to say?" But, I think this will be good for me cause I'll have more to chew on and wrestle with, even if it doesn't have to do with the big idea of his devotional.

Now after saying all that, today's devotional is intense.

If anyone come to me and hate not . . . , he cannot be My disciple," not, he cannot be good and upright, but, he cannot be one over whom Jesus writes the word "Mine." Any one of the relationships Our Lord mentions may be a competitive relationship. I may prefer to belong to my mother, or to my wife or to myself; then, says Jesus, you cannot be My disciple. This does not mean I will not be saved, but it does mean that I cannot be "His."

Here Oswald is quoting from Luke 26:14. Now I try to put myself in the shoes of the people hearing this at the time Jesus spoke. Many of them would want to be called by Jesus himself to be his disciple but becoming one's disciple in that day was not easy. You had to know the books of the Law of Moses by heart, be able to wrestle with the text, and possess great knowledge of Israel's history among a pile of other things. And even if you met those requirements you couldn't be a disciple of a rabbi unless he choose you. And once chosen, you literally followed the rabbi wherever he went and learned from him. It was a huge honor to be called by a rabbi to be his disciple. So, I think many of Jesus listeners that day were perhaps secretly hoping that Jesus would say "hey, you, come follow me and be my disciple." Perhaps foreseeing this desire, Jesus cut to the heart of it to say yeah, you can follow me, but you gotta leave your father, mother, wife and children, to be my disciple. Literally. You gotta drop it all, cause I am not going to stay in one place and teach, I'm gunna travel and do God things and you might miss something if you have to run back home. You gotta be like these 12 guys here, they left it all to follow me, literally.

I want to be called 'His'. I want to be God's. I do know that often my relationships keep me from being 'present' and following hard after God. Often, I am more Angela and my kids than God. I don't blame them. I am not saying it is their fault, but sometimes they take my time. According to Oswald, Jesus would not call me 'His'. Well, that sucks.

A verse that comes to mind is John 10:14 in which Jesus says: "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me." Here is what I think: I think the point of all this is that I need to know Jesus. I need to know his voice. I need to be following him. I need to be with him. If I am hearing his voice and am following him, "the good shepherd" would say "I know him. He belongs to me."

So, like I said, my relationships, and really, I, myself, get in the way of being a disciple of Jesus, but I don't want it to. I want to have both my wife and kids, and still be called 'His' and I think I can if I still know Jesus. I don't think that if I take my family to the waterpark, having fun with them, that I am not His. Yeah, I put them between God and I sometimes, but I forget that I can have them and be God's. So, I don't know if I entirely agree with Oswald here, but agree that I, myself, can be a 'competitive relationship' and is usually the one that would keep Jesus from saying I belong to him. But through God's Spirit, I wrestle through this cause in the end, I do wanna be His. I want Jesus to point to me and say: "Yeah, that guy Chris, he's with me. He's mine."

Thanks Oswald for the thoughts. I won't always agree but I will learn.