Short and Simple Prayers of Oswald Chambers that reflects His devotional life

1.    O Lord, enchain me to Thyself with great bonds of adoring love; en-wheel me around with Thy Providence for Thy Purposes; enlarge me until I am more and more capable of being of  use to Thee.

2.     O Lord, grant that in sweet and gracious likeness to Thyself I might delight Thy heart this   day, perfect my own life, and be an unalloyed blessing to all around me.

3     O Lord, how excellent it is to commune with Thee in the early morning hours. Enable me by patience to reproduce these exalted moments of calm into the activities of the day.

4.     O Lord, this day put Thou Thy touch, great and ennobling  and inspiring upon us all. Save completely our minds from panic and our spirits from undue haste.

 5.     O Lord, in simple dependence on Thy Holy Spirit indwelling in me and uniting me with Thy nature, I look to Thee; cause me to be all Thou wouldst have me be.

6       Lord, breathe on me until my frame is knit to Thy thought. Lift me until I see Thy face and trust   Thine Almightiness without fear or insidious unbelief.

7      O Lord, how I need infilling and invigorating by Thy presence. Give me that buoyant quiet confidence in Thee which is the witness of the Spirit.

8.     O Lord, I would crave more and more to put on love like a garment, that in my contract with men that is what they will most lastingly recognize.

9      I praise Thee that all I am is Thine. Oh, that I could delight Thee as the lily does, or the tree, or   even the sparrows, just living the life Thou has granted.

10    Lord, when I remember all Thy goodness, thy wonders and Thy grace, I alternate between   praise  and apprehension. O Lord, that all Thou seekest in me should be carried out in experimental life is my prayer.

       

Discerning the Fake

"Never allow anything to fuss your relationship to Jesus Christ,neither Christian work, nor Christian blessing, nor Christian anything. Jesus Christ first,second and third; and God Himself by the great indwelling power of the Spirit within will meet the strenuous effort on your part and slowly and surely you will form the mind of Christ and become one with Him as He was one with the Father. The practical test is- "Is Jesus Christ being manifested in my bodily life?"- Oswald Chambers

" My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words,but with a demonstration of the Spiritual power so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power."-1 Corintians 2:4

"The man without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to Him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned." 1 Corinthians 2: 14-15.

 Today the pulpits and Christian television programs are bombarding with so many messages in the name of Christ, but mostly honed towards a self-promoting,  prosperous and successful living. I don't know how many preachers of today can be counted to give such messages as Paul the apostle or Oswald Chambers. Surely there are now  many who preach with power and energy to the extent they jump, shout and sweat. No doubt these preachers  get auditoriums filled audience who are sincere in seeking God and hungry to be inspired and ministered .How do these people discern the ones who are  preaching under the influence of indwelling Holy Spirit from the ones who are fake?

Recently I watched the 'Kumare' documentary on NetFlix where the man faking as the spiritual guru was able get mass followers so quickly because people are ever seeking for love, acceptance and guidance. When they see someone elevated as a spiritual leader providing what they seek, they fall prey to him. Strangely when Kumare revealed himself to his followerd who he really was- a young man from New Jersey donned in Jeans and T-shirt conning them in religious garb and wisdom for a while, his followers didn't run away. They were thankful that Kumare gave them something to hold onto and make them a better person. All human beings want to be loved and to live a decent life. No one wants to become a bad or wicked person.

Unfortunately, circumstances make them to do what they do and who they become. They don't like what they do nor they want to continue to live the mediocre and miserable life they do. So, they seek out remedy. They become vulnerable to false teachers and spiritual gurus who prey on them. We, Christians are in no way better. We smile, we hug, we pray and we counsel for gospel sake. But, when we are pushed to a corner, our masks tend to fall out. When we are called out to the challenge of being real, we hit the floor. We are found to be fake too if we don't manifest Christ in our daily lives. The world is watching us. Unless our  relationship with Christ is like the Vine and the branches, we cannot demonstrate spiritual power to impact lives.

"The religion of Jesus Christ is a religion of personal relationship with God and has nothing to do with possessions. A sense of possessions is sufficient to render us spiritually dense because  what we possess often possess us.....When we no longer seek God for His blessings,we have time to seek Him for Himself." Oswald Chambers.***

It's Mother's Day!

                                                      It's Mother's Day

Yes, it's Mother's Day today and I thanked God this morning for  blessing me to have a wonderful mother who displayed unconditional love and patience all through her life and for blessing me to be the mother of two lovely, intelligent and loving daughters who gave me no tears or heartaches by any misconduct or behaviour. That is truly a God given gift and I'm always indebted to my Lord for that.

History has proven that no one could outshine the unconditional love of a mother. It is her love, wisdom and patience that had nourished, molded and brought forth great men and women to make history. Her unshakable faith and tears have unbound children caught in rebellious nature and made them to leave great biographies. She cares for no awards or recognition for the mundane service she does within the four walls for the sake of her family. Most of the time, she works behind the scene, goes un-noticed. The sacrifices she makes cannot be numbered. Sadly, many children take no time to notice and show gratitude unless a day like this called Mother's Day.

Today, moms are expected to be super moms taking care of the family as a care giver, chaueffer, cheer leader, counselor etc as well as showing up at work with utter confidence and authority to work, manage and run another kind of duty. To manage the two well, she is on the run gasping for breath and downing coffee or spring water. Meanwhile, she needs to keep in shape physically and mentally to keep her job at work and keep her family proud and happy.

The passive,patient and submissive mother the world portrayed in the past is no more to be seen around except in some closed community of religious background. When the world woke up to liberate women from their defined role and gave them voice to air their opinion and allowed them to join the work force, it failed to calculate their immense potentials. Given opportunity and confidence, women, they themselves were surprised what they were capable of.

Playing different roles and wearing different hats to suit the climate surely takes a toll on anyone. A woman, however super she tries to be tends to break down somewhere. No sooner a crack seems to be visible, the finger is quick to point in her direction. As human she too makes mistakes, looses her temper, barks at her children, have no time to listen to their woes. But do we hear her cry out to God  or see her wet pillows?

As a mother, she still loves her children and wants  the best for them. She may have adapted a different style and mode to suit the expectation and climate of the world today. But,  inside she's still the mom every child or  teenager wants to cuddle with. Her unconditional love lingers to comfort us even after she passes away.

It is because God cannot be everywhere in reality, He must have made Mothers to  to display his unconditional love,So, on this day, I salute all Mothers  -present and the past for making this world a worthy and beautiful place to live by your love, patience and sacrifice.

" Happy Mother's Day to me and to all the Mother's out there!"

                          The Good, Great and the Old to learn from.

Chuck Swindall, the great Bible teacher and author I admire wrote the following about the long gone authors and saints in his book " So you want to be like Christ?".

"Those long-ago authors took a lot of time to turn over a phrase in their mind. They held it up to the light to examine it from one angle, then got underneath it to look at it from the prospective, and then held it against the mirror of Scripture. They were meditating with ink on paper, and the result is marvelous! 
They didn't write to entertain the hurried reader. They couldn't have cared less if their book was marketed or if it sold a hundred copies. They didn't write to make a best seller list, they wrote in order to deepen. And you can tell it! They poured their thoughts on paper, assuming the reader would also take time to turn it over in his or her mind.

Alan Redpath in his book, Blessings Out of Buffeting, writes as follows:

"All the great men of God have been so simple, just as little children. I could bring in an array of them to your mind-Isaiah and Paul from the Word of God, Bunyan, William Carey, Handley Moule, Hudson Taylor, D.L.Moody, Adoniram Judson to mention just a few, but these men with brilliant minds were basically as simple as little children in their walk with God.
A man may be a saint without having many of the qualities which the world today rates very highly, but he will never be a saint without simplicity of soul, a simplicity that is in Christ. It was this that burned in the heart of Martin Luther in the days of the Reformation when he said, " Let us get through to God. Give us a basic, dynamic personal simplicity of faith in Jesus Christ." "

" Live with the steady superiority over life. Don't be afraid of misfortune. Do not yearn after happiness. It is , after all, all the same. The bitter doesn't last forever. And the sweet never fills  the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold. And if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides, if your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk and your arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom...whom should you envy?"
                                                           Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Oh, my friends, don't we yearn to learn from these great saints of God and choose to slow down and simplify our lives in our ever hurrying and material consuming  world we live in.
I truly yearn to be like the authors of the old who Swindall writes about-the Christian author who don't write to make a best seller list and cared less about how many copies his book got sold. Instead, I want to be the author who wants to deepen the faith and strengthen the walk of the readers with God. But, to make my want and wishing to become a reality, I need to examine the depth of my devotion to God. Otherwise, I become a hypocrite. My knowledge of scripture and life experiences and writing skill may carry me some distance to earn dollars and reputation. But, to dig deep and bring out beautiful outcome of Christlikeness, my heart need to burn with passion for Christ and have the depth I strive to bring in my readers.