Today's devotion from Oswald Chambers, My
Utmost for His Highest. is so good that I want to share it
with you. Pay close attention to the last paragraph.
Where the self-interest sleeps and the real
interest awakens: Master, where
dwellest Thou?. . .
Come and see. .
. . Come
with Me.
John 1:39.
“They abode with Him that day.” That is about
all some of us ever do, then we wake up to actualities,
self-interest arises and the abiding is passed. There is no
condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus.
“Thou art Simon, thou shalt be called Cephas.”
God writes the new name on those places only in our lives where
He has erased the pride and self-sufficiency and self-interest.
Some of us have the new name in spots only, like spiritual
measles. In sections we look all right. When we have our best
spiritual mood on, you would think we were very high-toned
saints; but don’t look at us when we are not in that mood. The
disciple is one who has the new name written all over him;
self-interest and pride and self-sufficiency have been
completely erased.
Pride is the deification of self, and this
to-day in some of us is not of the order of the Pharisee, but of
the publican. To say ‘Oh, I’m no saint,’ is acceptable to human
pride, but it is unconscious blasphemy against God. It literally
means that you defy God to make you a a saint. ‘I am much too
weak and hopeless, I am outside the reach of the Atonement.’
Humility before men may be unconscious blasphemy before God.
Why are you not a saint? It is either that you do not want to be
a saint, or that you do not believe God can make you one. It
would be all right, you say, if God saved you and took you
straight to heaven. That is just what He will do! “We will come
unto Him, and make our abode with Him.” Make no conditions, let
Jesus be everything, and He will take you home with Him not only
for a day, but for ever.
