Friday, September 2, 2011

Self-expenditure

Below are a smattering of quotes from Oswalt Chambers, for the past two days. They are so convicting! This is the life God wants for us. Are you willing?

"Continually restate to yourself what the purpose of your life is. The destined end of man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness .... Do I believe I need to be holy? ...God has one destined end for mankind, holiness. His one aim is the production of saints. God is not an eternal blessing-machine for men; He did not come to save men out of pity: He came to save men because He had created them to be holy."

Jesus did not say, "He that believeth in Me shall realize the blessing of the fulness of God," but, "he that believeth in Me out of him shall escape everything he receives." Our Lord's teaching is always anti-self-realization.... His purpose is to make a man exactly like Himself, and the characteristic of the Son of God is self-expenditure .... Spiritually, we cannot measure our life by success, but only by what God pours through us, and we cannot measure that at all."

"It is time now to break the life, to cease craving for satisfaction, and to spill the thing. Our Lord is asking who of us will do it for Him?"

I know for some of my friends, this is hard to read, because you are already very hard on yourselves, and perhaps are already pouring out your lives for others. But Mr. Chambers's words are for those of us who, in our selfishness, have a hard time giving anything up. We want self-realization. We want personal happiness. We insist on our own goals for our lives. We say we are God's children, but we rebel against His will for us.

Self-expenditure. What an excellent reminder of what we should be about! How hard it is to do!

3 comments:

Scooter said...

MK - this has been part of my personal journey for the last couple of years. In our culture where happiness rules the day, it is difficult to remember that God doesn't call us to be happy, He calls us to be holy. He calls me to be obedient. I can choose to find joy in that obedience, or I can choose to be miserable in that obedience. The point is to be holy, inasmuch as I am capable of that.

I so appreciate the affirmative words from Chambers!

Joslyn said...

MK
Today is day 2 of this devotional with my beloved Oswald Chambers reading and I have truly been convicted of my wrong thinking. I praise God for this devotional b/c it always point us to the essence of what Christ is trying to teach us. I actually stumbled across this blog while looking up the technical definition of "self-expenditure" ....that very statement above really stuck with me. As of late I've been having my own little pity party regarding this season of life. I can truly say I've been reminded of the bigger picture! Glad these particular 2 days of devotionals blessed others in the same way. God bless!

M.K. said...

Joslyn, thanks for stopping by and reading, and I'm glad this post was helpful. Chambers is so very good, and I don't read him as often as I should. Good reminder.