Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life-gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.
Oswald ChambersRead
At the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself--the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of surrendering one's personal desires to follow a higher spiritual calling.
Oswald Chambers highlights the conflict between personal will and the requirements of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. He suggests that true discipleship involves relinquishing a stubborn grip on one's own rights and desires in order to align with God's intentions. This implies that spiritual growth requires humility and a willingness to embrace what may not be comfortable or desirable from a personal standpoint.
In practice
A sermon discussing the need for self-sacrifice in faith.
Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life-gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.
Never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer your prayer.
Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion. But strictly speaking, there is no call to that. Service is what I bring to the relationship and is the reflection of my identification with the nature of God.
When we preach the love of God there is a danger of forgetting that the Bible reveals not first the love of God but the intense, blazing holiness of God, with His love at the center of that holiness.
It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we mistake panic for inspiration.
Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion.
If nations perish, it is not because of their devotion to liberty, but for their disregard of its requirements.
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen. I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number. I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me. I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider.
Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to.
Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.
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