"My Utmost for His Highest" applied for busy Christians

The Scripture passage for today is Philippians 1:20: I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

     Right out of the box I'm surprised by stuff I should have known but didn't. That's why Oswald Chambers never gets old; his writing, teaching, and rhetoric feel like he's following me around taking notes on how to fix me. Trust me, if you take this journey, you'll think he's following you, too.

     Take today's essay, for example: Nearly all of us know Philippians 1:21, the "for me to live is Christ" passage. But in typical Chambers' style, he backs up one step before the obvious to pick up the trail that leads to the truth of the key passages. It's no accident the apostle Paul is using the word "courage" in this text; after all, many of the Philippians were military families and the word "courage" would resonate with them.

     OW's text challenges us to strip ourselves of the two things that most often trip Christians up: Preoccupation with self (for the self-centered) and preoccupation with others (for the altruistic). He's right, of course. A couple of years ago, my wife drew a diagram that summarizes life in dramatically simple fashion: (G=God; 0=people in our lives)

     The one constant, regardless of the number of zeroes in our journey, is God; and yet we live as if He isn't there or is simply a bit player in the drama. What Chambers understood was that unless we grasped the importance of a vibrant relationship with God at every stage of life, we would always find ourselves terribly lonely and alone even with lots of "zeroes" around us. So Chambers' answer was always that we live life as if God were a constant companion; constant coworker, constant friend. Not only does He become our priority when we live like that, but He also becomes more real.

     And the added joy of that "more real" feel is that He not only feels more real to us, but He feels "more real" to every one of the "zeroes" around us. (I know, I know, that seems like a poor choice of symbols, but let's face it: we're all so busy these days that we frequently have zero impact on each other, so I chose to keep it in there. The beauty of a spiritual journey is we get to discover God considers no one a zero. Hang out with Him close enough, for long enough, and that attitude will rub off; it's the only real path to "loving others" in the Great Commandment, because we sure can't do it ourselves.

     Sigh! This is too long! Oh well; the good news is that not every day will I be able to post this much, but it seems appropriate to be long-winded on the first day. One last thing that sticks out to me in today's essay by Chambers' (and passage by Paul) is they are both calling for us to be brave enough to want to not embarrass God with our lives.