A Morning With Oswald

I read my first devotional from "My Utmost for His Highest"  47 years ago.  I remember my introduction to this book by Oswald Chambers at a time when I was searching for a lost faith.   Many a college student gets afflicted with thinking that he knows more than he really knows and I had a double dose of it.  Oswald Chambers was one of those influences which helped me get my faith back on track and my heart re-oriented.  For all these decades, he has been a constant companion who has spoken to my heart about abandonment to God and challenged me to reach toward spiritual heights I never would have thought to seek.

 

This morning I was spending a few minutes with Oswald when I ran into something read dozens of times, but today, it was like new.  Anyone who journeys in faith has had such moments.  If you were in some other devotional reading today, allow me the joy of sharing a word from my morning with Oswald.  "The great dominant note is not the needs of men, but the command of Jesus...We forget that the one great reason  underneath  all missionary enterprise is not first the elevation of the people, nor the education of the people, nor their needs; but first and foremost the command of Jesus Christ--'Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.' "  It is a word which challenged me, and perhaps others who read these words today, to give thought to the reason for a life of service.  I remember well in the beginning a sense of being swept away by an awareness of human need around me.  Chambers reminded me this morning that had I been gripped by nothing else, I would have burned out and given up long ago.

 

I suppose it is a backward way to come to a place of thanksgiving, but my journey of faith has seldom taken me to a place of insight without some travel through confusion.  Jesus warned against doing the right thing with the wrong motivation as did the Apostle Paul when he wrote those Spirit inspired words about the gift of love. (I Corinthians 13:1-3)  In my morning with Oswald I was once again reminded to look inward at my heart.  Nothing is more important than Who is there.