Chosen by God
"Many people do deliberately choose to be God’s workers, but they have nothing in them of God’s mighty grace, nothing of his mighty word. Unless we have the right things in our minds intellectually and the right things in our hearts affectionately, we will be useless to God...“I have chosen you.” Keep that note of greatness in your creed. It is not that you have got God, but that He has got you." Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Oct 25
Chambers has described well the difference between someone who God has chosen versus someone who has chosen God. When God choses us, we are not our own any longer but we have been bought with a price, and our sole purpose is to "glorify God in our bodies" 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. His work, becomes our work. If He doesn't enable us with the "right things in our minds intellectually and the right things in our hearts affectionately, then we are quite literally "useless to God". Useless is a shocking word; it is a expansive word without equivocation. It's not that we are less effective, or less productive which would be a more polite, but incorrect way to say it.
Useless is the right word even if it feels at first demeaning. It somehow becomes comforting after the initial shock because now we are "His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10) and not just people who chose to follow Christ who are trying their best to get other people saved and hopefully keep them saved. We are those who are walking with the Lord Jesus Christ in the victorious train of His captives (2 Corinthians 2:14), calling others who are also chosen to join us, to surrender all in order to find salvation in Him, until we all reach that heavenly city prepared in advance for His people, the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2). May we rejoice that Christ has chosen us and now leads us in triumph by His grace in all we do today.
Chambers has described well the difference between someone who God has chosen versus someone who has chosen God. When God choses us, we are not our own any longer but we have been bought with a price, and our sole purpose is to "glorify God in our bodies" 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. His work, becomes our work. If He doesn't enable us with the "right things in our minds intellectually and the right things in our hearts affectionately, then we are quite literally "useless to God". Useless is a shocking word; it is a expansive word without equivocation. It's not that we are less effective, or less productive which would be a more polite, but incorrect way to say it.
Useless is the right word even if it feels at first demeaning. It somehow becomes comforting after the initial shock because now we are "His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10) and not just people who chose to follow Christ who are trying their best to get other people saved and hopefully keep them saved. We are those who are walking with the Lord Jesus Christ in the victorious train of His captives (2 Corinthians 2:14), calling others who are also chosen to join us, to surrender all in order to find salvation in Him, until we all reach that heavenly city prepared in advance for His people, the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2). May we rejoice that Christ has chosen us and now leads us in triumph by His grace in all we do today.
Posted in 1 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Revelation
Posted in Salvation, Chosen, Evangelism, Good Works, Surrender, Heaven
Posted in Salvation, Chosen, Evangelism, Good Works, Surrender, Heaven