Thursday, October 12, 2006

Getting into God's Stride

For the past month or so, I've been doing my nightly devotionals out of Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest. I found tonight's devotional to be particularly good and thought-provoking. Mr. Chambers writes:

"The true test of a person's spiritual life and character is not what he does in the extraordinary moments of life, but what he does during the ordinary times when there is nothing tremendous or exciting happening. A person's worth is revealed in his attitude toward the ordinary things of life when he is not under the spotlight (see John 1:35-37 and 3:30). It is painful work to get in step with God and to keep pace with Him - it means getting your second wind spiritually. In learning to walk with God, there is always the difficulty of getting into His stride, but once we have done so, the only characteristic that exhibits itself is the very life of God Himself. The individual person is merged into a personal oneness with God, and God's stride and His power alone are exhibited.

It is difficult to get into stride with God, because as soon as we start walking with Him we find that His pace has surpassed us before we have even taken three steps. He has different ways of doing things, and we have to be trained and disciplined in His ways. It was said of Jesus - "He will not fail nor be discouraged..." (Isaiah 42:4) because He never worked from His own individual standpoint, but always worked from the standpoint of His Father. And we must learn to do the same. Spiritual truth is learned through the atmosphere that surrounds us, not through intellectual reasoning. It is God's Spirit that changes the atmosphere of our way of looking at things, and then things begin to be possible which before were impossible. Getting into God's stride means nothing less than oneness with Him. It takes a long time to get there, but keep at it. Don't give up because the pain is intense right now - get on with it, and before long you will find that you have a new vision and a new purpose."

Genesis 5:24 "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."

3 comments:

Dani said...

AMEN!

You don't know me but I stumbled across you through a friend of a friend sorta thing. I just thought I'd say I enjoy reading your stuff.

strem said...

Great excerpt, Lydia. I will have to turn back to this one often.

And, thanks for posting, Dani. I know Lydia will very much welcome your comments. If you don't already know each other, I hope you will be able to meet each other soon.

lydia said...

Dani, I'm glad you posted a comment. I have heard about you through Strem, and I do hope to meet you soon.