7.22.2008

Living Hopes Best Bumper Sticker & Oswald Chambers


Off to Portland this morning to look at some new possibilities for our campus (exciting)!

Two of my Oswald Chambers' quotes will have to wait (and that LH bumper sticker), BUT . . . today's OC was very good, especially the last paragraph.

This is why I've been reading this guy for 11 years (The same book . . . Laura's going on 8 years and Gordon 9)!

"When I pray, 'Lord, show me what sanctification means for me,' He will show me. It means being made one with Jesus. Sanctification is not something Jesus puts in me— it is Himself in me ( 1 Corinthians 1:30 ).

This is opposite of what most of the "big boys" who wrote in England and America in the 19th and 20th century taught. When I was a boy, I was taught (in our little clap-board church) that this BIG word "Sanctification" meant that someday I would have my character so like Jesus that I would be able to stand alone (without the Holy Spirit) for a "short while" before Jesus returned.

Even today many churches focus on "becoming" like Jesus. We tend to want to "work" at overcoming something. "I need to get rid of . . ." and we end up focusing even more on what we want to be free of; we end up looking and worshiping ourselves. Our love and care for others lessons and we become proud, stiff, and very useless when we get caught up in this deadly self-absorption.

Being holy (the Greek word for Sanctification) is not something Jesus gives us or puts in us! It's a relationship! Jesus in us! Read John 15 and you will see - go back to John chapter one and it will all become easy.

Later: Great pictures from the weekend. Two more amazing OC ideas (they so fit The Shack), and that LH bumper sticker we should resurrect!

1 comment:

Tim Reed said...

you're such a blessing Bruce!!! Keep it up brother.