by Oswald Chambers
06/24/2018
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This is your hour, and the power of darkness. Luke 22:53
Not
being reconciled to the fact of sin— not recognizing it and refusing to
deal with it— produces all the disasters in life. You may talk about
the lofty virtues of human nature, but there is something in human
nature that will mockingly laugh in the face of every principle you
have. If you refuse to agree with the fact that there is wickedness and
selfishness, something downright hateful and wrong, in human beings,
when it attacks your life, instead of reconciling yourself to it, you
will compromise with it and say that it is of no use to battle against
it. Have you taken this “hour, and the power of darkness” into account,
or do you have a view of yourself which includes no recognition of sin
whatsoever? In your human relationships and friendships, have you
reconciled yourself to the fact of sin? If not, just around the next
corner you will find yourself trapped and you will compromise with it.
But if you will reconcile yourself to the fact of sin, you will realize
the danger immediately and say, “Yes, I see what this sin would mean.”
The recognition of sin does not destroy the basis of friendship— it
simply establishes a mutual respect for the fact that the basis of
sinful life is disastrous. Always beware of any assessment of life which
does not recognize the fact that there is sin.
Jesus
Christ never trusted human nature, yet He was never cynical nor
suspicious, because He had absolute trust in what He could do for human
nature. The pure man or woman is the one who is shielded from harm, not
the innocent person. The so-called innocent man or woman is never safe.
Men and women have no business trying to be innocent; God demands that
they be pure and virtuous. Innocence is the characteristic of a child.
Any person is deserving of blame if he is unwilling to reconcile himself
to the fact of sin. From My Utmost for His Highest Updated Edition
Bible in One Year: Job 1-2; Acts 7:22-43
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We
are not fundamentally free; external circumstances are not in our
hands, they are in God’s hands, the one thing in which we are free is in
our personal relationship to God. We are not responsible for the
circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow
those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top
of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to
be.
from Conformed to His Image, 354 L
More from My Utmost for His Highest, here
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