Faith Inspiration - Oswald Chambers - Our Great Capacity for God - Part 1
Oswald Chamber’s devotional book My Utmost for His Highest has been one of my most used devotionals over a span of nearly three decades. The book, put together by his wife after his death at the young age of 43, gives 365 devotions taken from her notes of his sermons, talks and writings. Each devotion emphasizes a verse or two from the Scripture, and my personal habit is to read the entire chapter where the verse or verses are found. This has been a great exercise in learning more from God’s word and understanding the context of certain passages. Today I want to look at a quote from the devotional that struck me as profound and has stimulated a good deal of additional thought and study.
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“We are designed with a great capacity for God, but sin, our own individuality, and wrong thinking keep us from getting to Him. God delivers us from sin——we have to deliver ourselves from our individuality. This means offering our natural life to God and sacrificing it to Him, so He may transform it into spiritual life through our obedience...We must see to it that we aid and assist God, and not stand against Him...we must discipline ourselves. God will not bring our ‘arguments...and every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 10:5)——we have to do it.””
There are three things, Oswald lists that keep us from God. I want to take the next few months of these Faith Inspiration posts to look at these in depth and talk about steps we can take to get closer to our amazing God. Before we take an in depth look at the first of these deterrents, sin, next month, I want to talk about what it means to be “designed with a great capacity for God.”
We learn in the very first book of the Old Testament that we are creations of God. Not only are we His artistic work, we are made with His image stamped on our beings.
“26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
We also see evidence of this Creator/creation connection in the New Testament.
“10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
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Just as an artist, or a craftsman puts a bit of themselves into the things they make: the pictures they paint, the statues they mold, the beautiful furniture they carve, God put a bit of Himself in each of us. It is in this imprint where our great capacity for Him lies. This image of Him we are created in enables us to know Him intimately, and to enjoy a pure and beautiful relationship with Him. This frontier is wide open, and yet we know so little. Just as many of the Israelites stood at the edge of the Promised land, but were denied access due to their stubborn sin of pride and lack of trust in God, we too stand at the edge of our great capacity to dive into the deeper layers of God, but fear, mistrust and pride keep us from jumping off the precipice.
The Psalmist also recognized our position before God. We are not His equal. We are His possession, but not a possession to be taken advantage of or abused. We are a possession He longs to come along side and care for.
“6 Come, let us worship and bow down,
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7 For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.
Today, if you would hear His voice,”
“1 Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come before Him with joyful singing.
3 Know that the Lord Himself is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
4 Enter His gates with thanksgiving
And His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him, bless His name.
5 For the Lord is good;
His lovingkindness is everlasting
And His faithfulness to all generations.”
Sheep do not care for themselves. They are cared for by a shepherd and Christ described Himself as our Good Shepherd. It is not the fact that we are truly like sheep. We can certainly take care of ourselves. Our humanity demands that we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and do what we have to do. Unfortunately, this independent spirit limits our capacity for God, and we will talk more about that when we look at the idea of our own individuality. No, we are not sheep, but perhaps the Psalmist and our Savior are making the same point, we should be.
“11 “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
13 He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me,
15 even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. ”
I believe to truly understand, as Oswald states, “our great capacity for God,” we must learn the ins and outs of humility and trust. We will look at these more fully next time as we delve into how sin keeps us from truly experiencing what that great capacity is. I hope you will follow along.
