Super-victors

Paul said this is the reason that “in all these things we are more than conquerors.” We are super-victors with a joy that comes from experiencing the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us.
Huge waves that would frighten an ordinary swimmer produce a tremendous thrill for the surfer who has ridden them. Let’s apply that to our own circumstances. The things we try to avoid and fight against— tribulation, suffering, and persecution— are the very things that produce abundant joy in us. “We are more than conquerors through Him” “in all these things”; not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. - Oswald Chambers

The lesson of Job is how sometimes, inexplicable tragedy happens. There's a lot we don't know - - we can't tell God how to run his universe! When the sufferer has a personal encounter with God, there are no more questions. Corrie Ten Boom said, "Now I know from experience that Jesus' light is stronger than the deepest darkness. There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still."

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Abandonment

I remember submitting a poem to my corporate Christmas newsletter and it made the third page.  I tried to go through the process of explaining what Christmas really was. 

It surprised me for a moment, but with more thought, I knew this was probably normal thinking - in Mongolia.  Someone responded to a radio program and shared their thoughts on Christmas like this --

"When I think of Christmas the first thing that comes into my mind is its significance, especially in relation to the lives of myself and those about me.  I think of what Christmas originally cost, of what its significance costs myself and others today."

Oswald Chambers, in the first of the daily devotions in My Utmost for His Highest, shares this same attitude of complete surrender to God --

  "I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone."

Giving yourself in true abandonment to Him means refusing yourself the luxury of asking questions.  We have no ends of our own to serve.  In fact, it never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the one to whom we abandon ourselves.  He then works through us all the time.

"One of the greatest hindrances in coming to Jesus is the excuse of temperament. We make our temperament and our natural affinities barriers to coming to Jesus. The first thing we realize when we come to Jesus is that He pays no attention whatever to our natural affinities. We have the notion that we can consecrate our gifts to God. You cannot consecrate what is not yours; there is only one thing you can consecrate to God, and that is your right to yourself." (Romans 12:1)...I don’t throw my life away, but I willingly and deliberately lay it down for Him and His interests in other people. And I do this for no cause or purpose of my own. Paul spent his life for only one purpose— that he might win people to Jesus Christ. Paul always attracted people to his Lord, but never to himself. He said, “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).  Chambers

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Intimate Friends

Jesus wants this kind of a relationship - one of special intimacy.

He gave His life for that to happen.  He showed us His own special relationship with His Father.

Unfortunately we like messing relationships up.  We do that because we really do not understand love.  I know that I have caught myself looking for what I could get out of a relationship as opposed to what I can give to it.

Oswald Chambers shared this devotional -

Are you seeking great things for yourself, instead of seeking to be a great person? God wants you to be in a much closer relationship with Himself than simply receiving His gifts— He wants you to get to know Him. Even some large thing we want is only incidental; it comes and it goes. But God never gives us anything incidental. There is nothing easier than getting into the right relationship with God, unless it is not God you seek, but only what He can give you.

There will be only one thing in this world that will sustain you -

 “Continuing a series on the person of Jesus: When Christ was in the world, He was despised by men; in the hour of need He was forsaken by acquaintances and left by friends to the depths of scorn. He was willing to suffer and to be despised; do you dare to complain of anything? He had enemies and defamers; do you want everyone to be your friend, your benefactor? How can your patience be rewarded if no adversity tests it? How can you be a friend of Christ if you are not willing to suffer any hardship? Suffer with Christ and for Christ if you wish to reign with Him. Had you but once entered into perfect communion with Jesus or tasted a little of His ardent love, you would care nothing at all for your own comfort or discomfort but would rejoice in the reproach you suffer; for love of Him makes a man despise himself. ... Thomas à Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ May 11, 2000 Concluding a series on the person of Jesus: Jesus' good news, then, was that the Kingdom of God had come, and that he, Jesus, was its herald and expounder to men. More than that, in some special and mysterious was, he was the kingdom.”

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