If it were not so
by Amy Carmichael
I thought I heard my Savior say to me:
“My love will never weary, child, of thee.”
Then, in me, whispering doubtfully and low:
How can that be?
He answered me,
“But if it were not so,
I would have told thee.”
I thought I heard my Savior say to me:
“My strength encamps on weakness – so on thee.”
And when a wind of fear did through me blow –
How can that be?
He answered me,
“But if it were not so,
I would have told thee.”
O most fine Gold
That naught in me can dim,
Eternal Love
That hath her home in Him
Whom, seeing not, I love,
I worship Thee!
Selah.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Ability for obedience: salvation and new power
Less teaching, more doing
The great tendency of today is that we are looking for another teacher. The world is sick of teachers and of ideals; the point is, have we ever lived up to any of our ideals? It is not more ideals we want, put the power to live up to what we know we ought to and don't. It is shallowness, not ability, that makes people say we want more teaching and higher ideals -- model Sunday school classes, model Bible classes; it is all model. 'Do this and don't do that,' but where is it being carried out? Jesus Christ does not add one burden to the lives of men; He imparts the power to live up to what we know we ought -- that is the meaning of salvation.
Oswald Chambers
The great tendency of today is that we are looking for another teacher. The world is sick of teachers and of ideals; the point is, have we ever lived up to any of our ideals? It is not more ideals we want, put the power to live up to what we know we ought to and don't. It is shallowness, not ability, that makes people say we want more teaching and higher ideals -- model Sunday school classes, model Bible classes; it is all model. 'Do this and don't do that,' but where is it being carried out? Jesus Christ does not add one burden to the lives of men; He imparts the power to live up to what we know we ought -- that is the meaning of salvation.
Oswald Chambers
Friday, July 01, 2011
A cosmic war, unseen & radically real
THE INVISIBLE BATTLEFIELD
by Johann Christoph Blumhardt
There is a battle taking place outside of human society. There is a battle taking place in the spiritual regions surrounding us. There is, on the one side, the bright, clear light of God which presses toward people, allowing them to lift themselves from the ground to experience new spiritual development time and again, to come, time and again, to moral growth and achievement—all of this being the great and mighty working of the good in the midst of humanity... And on the other side, there is always the enemy of the good and of mankind, the enemy of God and his people.
Selah.
Because our human world displays increasing activity in its resistance to God, there is a battle. It is a battle taking place primarily in inwardness, in the invisible life-impulses of man. However, the expectation is that, once the invisible has been swept clear of all hindrance, then visible change also can show itself in clear and true manifestations of life... If, through the stirring and moving of their lives toward the truth, the people of God achieve victory over this unjust and untrue interior existence, then the outward—as far as this age will allow—can immediately be formed as new, true, and eternal.
Selah.
Johann Christoph Blumhardt, "The Invisible Battlefield," Thy Kingdom Come, edited by Vernard Vellar [Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 1980].
by Johann Christoph Blumhardt
There is a battle taking place outside of human society. There is a battle taking place in the spiritual regions surrounding us. There is, on the one side, the bright, clear light of God which presses toward people, allowing them to lift themselves from the ground to experience new spiritual development time and again, to come, time and again, to moral growth and achievement—all of this being the great and mighty working of the good in the midst of humanity... And on the other side, there is always the enemy of the good and of mankind, the enemy of God and his people.
Selah.
Because our human world displays increasing activity in its resistance to God, there is a battle. It is a battle taking place primarily in inwardness, in the invisible life-impulses of man. However, the expectation is that, once the invisible has been swept clear of all hindrance, then visible change also can show itself in clear and true manifestations of life... If, through the stirring and moving of their lives toward the truth, the people of God achieve victory over this unjust and untrue interior existence, then the outward—as far as this age will allow—can immediately be formed as new, true, and eternal.
Selah.
Johann Christoph Blumhardt, "The Invisible Battlefield," Thy Kingdom Come, edited by Vernard Vellar [Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 1980].