where am I? - Chambers, Oswald
A Spiritual Stock-Taking
Why do i want to work? (Romans 10:15)
The christian worker must be sent; he must not elect to go. Nowadays that is the last thing thought of; it is a determination on the part of the individual this is something i can do, and i am going to do it. Beware of demanding that people go into work, it is a craze; the majority of saved souls are not fit to feed themselves yet. How am i to know i have been sent of god? Firstly, by the realisation that i am utterly weak and powerless and if i am to be of any use to god, god must do it all the time. Is this the humiliating certainty of my soul, or merely a sentimental phrase? Secondly, because i know i have to point men to Jesus Christ, not to get them to think what a holy man i am. The only way to be sent is to let god lift us right out of any sense of fitness in ourselves and place us where he will. The man whose work tells for god is the one who not only realises what god has done for him but who realises his own utter unfitness and overwhelming unsuitabilitythe impossibility of god ever calling me. God allows us to scrutinise ourselves in order to understand what paul said: we also are weak in him.
Occasionally it may happen in your life as a worker that all you have been trying honestly and eagerly to do for god falls about your ears in ruins, and in your utterly crushed and discouraged condition god brings slowly to your mind this truthi have been using your work as scaffolding to perfect you to be a worker for myself; now arise, shake off the dust, and it shall Be told you what you must do. Before ever god can use us as workers he has to bring us to a place of entire poverty, where we shall have no doubt as to where we are, here i am, absolutely no good! Then god can send us, but not until then. We put hindrances in the way of gods working by trying to do things for him. The impatience of modern life has so crept into christian work that we will not settle down before god and find out what he wants us to do.
Where do i live? (psalm 91:1). No one can tell you where the shadow of the almighty is, you must find that out for yourself. When you have found out where it is, stay there; under that shadow no evil can ever befall you. The intensity of the moments spent under the shadow of the almighty is the measure of your usefulness as a worker. Intensity of communion is not in feelings or emotions or in special places, but in quiet, fixed, confident centring on god. Never allow anything to hinder you from being in the place where your spiritual life is maintained. The expression of our lips must correspond with our communion with god. It is easy to say good and true things without troubling to live up to them; consequently the christian talker is more likely to be a hypocrite than any other kind of worker. In all probability you will find you could express things better a few months or years ago than you can now, because the spirit of god has been making you realise since then what you are talking about, and through the consequent distress that laid hold of mind and heart you have been driven to find out the secret place of the most high. The strange thing is that a worker will more often exhibit ugly characteristics than one who is not a worker. There is an irritability and an impatience and a dogmatism about the average christian worker that is never seen in those who are not engaged in that kind of work.
What do i know about judgement? (1 peter 4:17)
Peter is talking about suffering, and he says the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of god. Where is the house of god? My body. As a child of god i have no right to go through a dispensation of suffering without asking my father the rea- son for it. It may be suffering because of a purpose of god which he cannot explain to you, but he makes you know in your inmost heart that all is well (see verse 19). Or it may be suffering for chastisement and discipline. An undisciplined saint is inclined either to despise the chastening and say it is of the devil, or else to faint when he is rebuked, and cave in. The writer to the Hebrews says: if you are a saint you will be chastened, be careful, see that you dont despise it. Or it may be suffering as Jesus suffered (see Hebrews 5:8; 2 Corinthians 1:5). In all these ways we have to learn how to let judgement begin at the house of god. We escape judgement in a hundred and one ways, consequently we do not develop.
If you are a worker whom god has sent, and have learned to live under his shadow, you will find that scarcely a day goes by without your father revealing the need of further chastening. If any child of god is free from the goads of god, he is not in the line of the succession of Jesus Christ. If we suffer as he suffered, we are in the right line (see 1 peter 4:13). We have to learn to bring the scrutiny of gods judgement upon ourselves. When we talk about suffering we are apt to think only of bodily pain, or of suffering because we have given up something for god, which is paltry nonsense. Joy and peace and delight all come into the life of the saint but they are so on the surface that he never heeds them; they are simply complements. The one central point for the saint is being absolutely right with god, and the only way he gets there is by this personal experience of judgement