From My Utmost for His Highest
"O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures. —Luke 24

We sort of take it for granted, don’t we? How great is it that we have a readily available, readable translation bought with the blood of saints who gave their lives to share it?

I’ve often thought about what Jesus might have said to those men on their way to Emmaus. {TWEET} The news was so fresh and their heads must have been turning, like the end of a great movie when everything seems to come together.

Well, here’s a list of some Scripture and what Jesus may have said:

     From My Utmost for His Highest
Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place . . . —Revelation 4

“God has to hide from us what He does, until, due to the growth of our personal character, we get to the level where He is then able to reveal it.” Yea, but how can God hold men accountable for sins of a city and justify such incredible ruthlessness?

EXCERPTED FROM A Rooster Once Crowed: A Commentary on the Greatest Story Ever Told
  Chapter 5-The Prophets (pgs. 75-77):

It was rumored that, on his deathbed, Pancho Villa said, “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”

That desperation of wanting our lives to mean something is . . .

From My Utmost for His Highest
. . . the friend of the bridegroom . . . —John 3

I haven’t told many people this, but I’ve been wracked lately because I’ve been dry.

For most of the last four years, I have had a physical and palpable feeling of the presence of God in my life. I saw His hand at work in the world and I felt His presence all around me.

But then, for the last three months, I’ve been in a dry season—not completely dry, but dry. I’m not talking about salvation. I know that my name is in the Lamb’s Book of Life. But having tasted the cool water of the stream, I thirsted for it again.

At first, I wasn’t worried, but something about the last couple of weeks…

     From My Utmost for His Highest
Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing . . . ? —Genesis 18

Can you be a friend without speaking or listening? Well…

EXCERPTED FROM A Rooster Once Crowed: A Commentary on the Greatest Story Ever Told
  Afterword-Questions from the Front (pgs. 194-196):

Mountains have been written on prayer. We teach our children to begin praying when they are young, but what is prayer’s purpose?

If you view prayer as an opportunity to tap into God’s power to serve you, then not only is prayer frustrating, but it’s boring. The purpose of prayer is not to conform God to our will, but to . . . 

     From My Utmost for His Highest
. . . perfecting holiness in the fear of God —2 Corinthians 7

What’s the one thing that Christ calls us to do, but didn’t model Himself? [Tweet-it]

EXCERPTED FROM A Rooster Once Crowed: A Commentary on the Greatest Story Ever Told
  Chapter 7-Step This Way (pgs. 98-101):

Bruce Waltke, a famous Bible scholar, read the entire Bible looking at the idea of what it means to be righteous (to live justly in the world). He determined that the just or righteous are those who “are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the [unjust] are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”

So where does this meet you today? Whether the world has you by the throat or you own half the city, what does it look like to live righteously and what will you do to get there?

I’ve had a very real experience with this in September of 2012 . . .

     From My Utmost for His Highest
. . . in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses —2 Corinthians 6

This title doesn’t mean what you think.

It’s not about taking it to the next level, breaking through the ceiling, moving past your current state. It’s about taking another step.

And, you guessed it, that’s my struggle lately. In the above linked Scripture, Paul’s talking about real afflictions. He’s been beaten, imprisoned, hungry, cold… There was nothing easy about Paul’s next step.

This may surprise you, but...

     From My Utmost for His Highest
None of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself . . . —Acts 20

Do you know Chambers?

To understand today’s post, it’ll help to know a little bit about the one I identify, regularly as Chambers.

But I’m not talking about Oswald Chambers. To be sure, Oswald Chambers is the man behind the words. He was born in 1874 to a Baptist minister, accepted Jesus at fifteen and searched, like Paul and many others, for God’s will all his life. By 1911, Oswald was living his dream ministering to young pastors at the Bible Training College in London. Two years later a child, Kathleen, came and he was happy. But in 1914, war came to England.

Due to the war, Oswald Chambers’ college closed down and he left for Egypt to minister to British troops there. By all accounts he was a light in the midst of North African wartime darkness. It was hard service. In 1917, Oswald appeared to be recovering from surgery when he died, suddenly, in a Cairo hospital. That wasn't even close to the end for Oswald Chambers.

     From My Utmost for His Highest
Where then do You get that living water? —John 4

I’ve been doing this long enough to know not to bet against Oswald Chambers.

When I first read this, I felt he might have this wrong. Some of the lines he drew didn’t seem to connect to the text, so I kept digging.

Turns out, Chambers was right. It has to do with…

     From My Utmost for His Highest
. . . though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved —2 Corinthians 12

At the risk of oversharing, I’ll say this: A man of my age and situation should not be tweeting as much as I do.

If that offends you, then you’re in a different place than I am. I feel pretty confident that I am waaay over the line. It’s uncomfortable, at times, and I probably look equally foolish to massive and tiny tweeters, alike.

But somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to stand in front of God and say, “I did everything I could do with what You gave me.”

If you’ve read A Rooster Once Crowed, you know that I’m talking about…

    From My Utmost for His Highest

Arise, let us go from here —John 14

I’m glad the Chambers’ chose to rally against the great destructive force of daydreaming in our culture. This must not be allowed to continue, right?

At first, I didn’t get why daydreaming was adverse to Jesus, today. I really didn’t. What’s the harm in daydreaming?

Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one's immediate surroundings, during which a person's contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake. Chambers preached this sometime early in the 1900s and the more I looked into it, the more I realized that it was written more for us today than then. And likely more for me than you.

In order to take initiative against it, we must first understand that the real danger of daydreaming is…