Oswald Chambers October 28
For those of you not familiar with Oswald Chambers, I would highly recommend this tiny devotional. Almost every day I do find something in his writing that is right on target. In fact, some days I find myself wary of reading it simply because it is so penetrating.
The last two days have been exactly like this. In the midst of all the turmoil of deciding what to do in my circumstances, Chambers simply points me to the fundamental truth that my success or failure in life’s ventures is not the final issue. I would like to share his words with you.
“We are acceptable with God not because we have obeyed, or because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and in no other way.”
“I am not saved by believing; I realize I am saved by believing. It is not repentance that saves me, repentance is the sign that I realize what God has done in Christ Jesus. . . . I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my sin, not because I have repented, but because of what Jesus has done.”
It is often very difficult for me to grasp the true significance of this. I grew up believing that doing well was the mark of worthiness. Often I think that the success emphasis of our culture leads us to believe that somehow we are better if we succeed than if we fail. But that just isn’t true. Failure is the grist out of which I learn the truth that God’s care for me is utterly independent of my success. If I were never to fail, what would have ever brought me to my knees, facing my own unholiness? Failure is such an important part of living – without it I would not recognize the hand of the divine guiding the circumstances of my life. We are so fortunate to have failed so that we might yet succeed, knowing all the while that who we are, to ourselves, to each other and to God, is not the least bit conditioned by our circumstances.
Chambers says, “I am not saved by believing.” How often have I misunderstood this! My salvation does not depend on me. It does not even depend on me believing. Salvation is not a part of my success story. It belongs to my failure.
Salvation depends on only one thing – the already accomplished death of Jesus on the cross. God is not waiting for me to believe in order that salvation may be mine. Jesus has already taken care of everything about my salvation. And my believing or not believing will not alter that finished work. My act of believing is the act of illumination that accompanies realizing I have failed. Jesus died for my failure. He did the work necessary to place me before the Father. Believing is waking up to that fact. Believing is not figuring out a way to add some points to my moral balance sheet so that I look better before God. Believing credits me nothing. It is not about credit. It is about understanding that I have nothing to offer at all.
If you are like me, you have spent countless hours trying to be good enough for God. You and I have suffered over the guilt of sin. We have agonized about our past. We have knelt in pleadings, searching for that magic formula of faith that will make us OK. Even if we have acknowledged Christ, we still operate as though we need to get God’s attention by working the faith. More prayer. More fasting. More church time. God, fix my problems. Can’t you see how hard am I trying to be good? We have not discovered the rest that Jesus promised. “Come to me and I will give you rest.” All we did was transform pre-conversion striving into post-conversion striving. We changed language games. We did not change our understanding of life. We did not accept failure as the fundamental fact of our lives.
These days God is pressing me to realize that rest is His plan. Oh, there is a lot to do for Him. But it is not frenzy. It is not stress. It is not obligation. It is appreciation. It is worship – that act of self that cries out, “Lord, I am grateful. You did it all. I was a failure. You rescued me.”
You cannot be free until your life rests on failure. God is not in the remodeling business. He is in the regenerating business. He does need you to be a spiritual success. He just wants you to wake up to the funeral – and let Him start over.
Great post. I was noticing parallels of some of what Watchman Nee wrote with Chambers and wonder if Nee hadn’t read some of Chambers’s writings, but couldn’t find anything that implicitly stated so, nor do any of his books which do describe his influences mention him. On the other hand, I did find several posts from individuals who had made this observation as well, and ended up trashing both them in the process, and are now on the web essentially advising that others do the same. Problem is, I found both Nee and Chambers entirely on my own apart from ever hearing about them, and found that in my Experience (and it was a very long and painful road), that in much of his writings (Chambers is a bit easier to understand, and I’m thinking it is because of translation issues going from Chinese to english), what Chambers is writing is what I already found to be true (!) so how could I argue it? I do ‘get’ what some of the criticisms are about, but I think that folks are over-looking some tremendous truths in tossing it away. No one ever asked us, Nee and Chambers included, to ‘believe them..or to ‘trust them’, they’d never do that. I think what you’ve cited in this writing (above) and what Chambers is saying is straight out of what Jesus said: …John 6:4 5It is written in the prophets: ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has Heard The Father and learned from Him comes to Me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except The One Who is from God; only He has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I tell you, he who believes HAS Eternal life.…”