Reality - Chambers, Oswald
The existence of a truth is nothing to me until i am brought into the current of events where that particular truth is a living reality to me because it speaks the language of my conscious life. Reality must have its source outside me; my conscious experience is the sphere of reality in me, but i must be careful never to confound the reality of my experience with reality itself.
1. Response to God
And without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto him: for he that cometh to god must believe that he is. . . . (Hebrews 11:6 RV )
Religion confronts god, not in scrutiny or criticism, but in response, in welcome, in obedience to his visitation. Religion is only possible to revelation. Religion is not aspiration, it is not temperament, it is not subjectivity, its roots are in god moving to man more than in man moving to god.
Forsyth2
We need constantly to remember that the work of god in us is the foundation of our christian experience and faith, and as constantly do we need to remember that we never can experience the ground and spring of our christian experience. In other words, our faith must be in the reality of the redemption and never in what god has done in us and for us. What is experienced in our individual lives is the efficacious working of salvation, but we never can experience the god who gives us that experience. We are delighted with our experience, it is the thing we can talk about, but unless our faith is in the god who gives us the experience it ends in pietistic jargon; i try to pack all gods tremendous redemptive energy into a side eddy i have got all this to myself. If you know on what ground your experience has arisen you say, like paul did, i know whom i have believed, not i know what i have got.
The thing to pay attention to is the miracle created in human experience, not on the ground of my reason, but on the ground of the redemption, and it begins exactly as our lord describesthe wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the spirit ( john 3:8 rv ). Whenever i say i want to rea- son this thing out before i can trust, i will never trust. The reasoning out and the perfection of knowl- edge come after the response to god has been made. If we would learn on the threshold of our life with god to put away as impertinent, and even iniqui- tous, the debates as to whether or not we will trust god, we would not remain under the delusions we do; we would abandon without the slightest hesita- tion, cut the shore lines, burn our bridges behind us, and realise that what has happened is the positive miracle of the redemption at workwe know with a knowledge which passeth knowledge. The whole of the new testament exposition in the inspiration of the holy spirit is in order that we might know where we have been placed by almighty gods redemp- tion. Immediately we come in contact with reality our thinking is based on revelation all the time, and as we maintain our relation to reality we will find new revelations of truth flashing out continually from the word of god.
Faith is not a faculty; if religion were the function of one particular faculty, it would claim but one side of life. Each faculty implies the rest because it is the action of the whole person.
Forsyth
Our response to god is the response of our whole nature. To speak of faith as a faculty is unfortunate; faith is not a faculty, if we mean by that something added on to what we have already got. The result of the idea that we are a bundle of separate faculties, the faculty of faith having nothing to do with the faculty of conscience, makes it possible for a man to do the most unrighteous things in his business all the week and the most devout things on Sunday. Watch the thing you are inclined to succumb overt hat will do for a knock-up job;3 its only that, it doesnt matter. It is never only that, it is the same with everything you do, and is certainly what you will do in the exercise of the highest powers of your personality, viz. , in your relationship to god, only it is not traced so read- ily there because the spiritual domain is so vast and mysterious. Bring it to the test in the ordinary every- day things of life, eating and drinking, cleaning your boots, writing an essayis it slovenly? Is it careless and indifferent? Does self-indulgence come in? That
The complete works of Oswald chambers 415 little pinhole exhibits the dry rot that runs all through everything you do, and when you trust in god, you trust in a shabby way, in a way that is defective i will have faith in god about this matter, but not about that; then you dont trust god at all. If we will exam- ine ourselves in the light of the things that can be seen we will realise that that is how god sees us all through, if only we will take the humiliating gibe to ourselves.
2. Readjustment
In god the first [commandment] is . . . Thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. (mark 12:2930; from all thy heart, etc. , rv mg) we do not know how good gods claim is till we have met it, and long lived in surrender to it, we must taste and see.
We do not assent and then trust, that would reduce grace to persuasion, and faith to being talked over or argued down, and from grace and faith alike the divine element of miracle would disappear.
Forsyth
My relationship to god embraces every faculty, i am to love him with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, all my strength, every detail is instinct with devotion to him; if it is not i am disjointed somewhere. Think what you do for someone you love! The most amazingly minute details are perfectly transfigured because your whole nature is embraced, not one faculty only. You don’t love a person with your heart and leave the rest of your nature out, you love with your whole being, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. That is the attitude of the new testament all through. In 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul has been speaking about the stupendous mystery of the resurrection, and suddenly, like a swinging lamp in a mine, he rushes it right straight down and says, now concerning the collection . . . The new testament is continually doing it jesus knowing that the father had given all things into his hands . . . Began to wash the disciples feet. It takes god incarnate to wash feet properly. It takes god incarnate to do anything properly.
Never limit god by remembering what you have done in the past. When you come into relation with the reality of redemption god creates something in you that was never there before, it is the active working of the life of god in you, consequently you can do now what you could not do before. Character is always revealed in crises. There are lives that seem selfish and self-centred until a crisis occurs and they manifest the most disinterested concern and self-effacement. On the other hand, there are lives that appear unselfish and noble and when the crisis comes they are revealed as mean4 and despicable. In the early stages of our christian experience we are inclined to hunt in an over plus of delight for the commandments of our lord in order to obey them out of our love for him, but when that conscious obedience is assimilated and we begin to mature in our life with god, we obey his command- ments unconsciously, until in the maturest stage of all we are simply children of god through whom god does his will, for the most part unconsciously to us.