| Author | Message | ||
| Helovesme2 Registered user Username: Helovesme2 Post Number: 367 Registered: 8-2004  |
"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 2 Timothy 2:15 " If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can. If you do not, someone will be the poorer all the days of his life. Struggle to reexpress some truth of God to yourself, and God will use that expression to somone else. Go through the winepress of God where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle to get expression experimentally, then there will come a time when that expression will become the very wine of strengthening to someone else; but if you say lazily - "I am not going to struggle to express this thing for myself, I will borrow what I say," the expression will not only be of no use to you, but of no use to anyone. Try to state to yourself what you feel implicitly to be God's truth, and you give God a chance to pass it on to someone else through you. "Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that had been dumbly struggling in you for utterance." -Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest | ||
| Riverfonz Registered user Username: Riverfonz Post Number: 1103 Registered: 3-2005 |
I like that Mary. "Go through the winepress of God where the grapes are crushed...then there will come a time when that expression will become the very wine of strengthening to someone else..." What a great analogy. Thanks for another very profound Chambers devotional! Stan | ||
| Debbie2 Registered user Username: Debbie2 Post Number: 43 Registered: 11-2005 |
Yes, thank you from me as well. But, here's a question: how do you know if your audience is wanting to hear what you are struggling to express? Debbie | ||
| Helovesme2 Registered user Username: Helovesme2 Post Number: 368 Registered: 8-2004 |
I understood this to mean that you struggle to express it to yourself, like in a journal, for instance, or as part of a personal Bible study. Then once you've gone thru that agony (and joy), God can direct you when to share it and when to be silent - in fact, when he DOES use you to get some point or other communicated you will probably not even notice. It will be so natural that you won't think twice about it. Mr. Chambers' devotionals are taken from his lectures at the Bible Training School where he taught for many years, and from his evening talks at the YMCA in Huts, Zeitoun, Egypt. I can picture his students, when preparing their own sermons and studies, being tempted to fall back on the commentaries and writings of others than themselves when needing to explain a point. Thinking that they might just quote the other person instead of doing the hard work of putting it into their own experience in their own words. There is a place for learning from others (and quoting them!), but there is also an important place for writing down what you believe and testing it by God's Word! Blessings, Mary |
