BUT A POOR REFLECTION: A Call to Die

Friday, December 19, 2008

A Call to Die

Not a very attractive book title... But I am reading this devotional book/ forty days journal written by David Nasser right now and, although I am only at page 116 (from 350 pages), I think this book conveys an important message. "To live is Christ, and to die is gain..." as Paul puts it in Philippians 1:21. Intense words and thoughts - easy to repeat, hard to live by!
Paul is writing about his desire to depart physcially and be with Jesus. But he was able to think and write like this because he was willing to die spiritually to self. It is so easy to sing: "I surrender all", but it is so difficult to really give everything to God. It's so tempting - and so natural - to keep some areas and 'secret treasures' in our lives where we don't allow God to reign and be LORD! Do you recognize this?

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God loves us

Have you ever wondered why God gives so much? We could exist on far less. He could have left the world flat and grey; we wouldn’t have known the difference. But he didn’t. He splashed orange in the sunrise and cast the sky in blue. And if you love to see geese as they gather, chances are you’ll see that too. Did he have to make the squirrel’s tail furry? Was he obliged to make the birds sing? And the funny way that chickens scurry or the majesty of thunder when it rings? Why give a flower fragrance? Why give food its taste? Could it be he loves to see that look upon your face?

Max Lucado - He Chose the Nails

Sadhu Sundar Singh

I do not condemn theologians wholesale, but it is unfortunately the fashion in Western thinking to doubt and deny everything. I protest this tendency. I never advise anyone to consult theologians, because all too often they have completely lost all sense of spiritual reality. They can explain Greek words and all that, but they spend too much time among their books and not enough time with the Master in prayer. It is not that I oppose all education, but education without life is certainly dangerous. You must stop examining spiritual truths like dry bones! You must break open the bones and take in the life-giving marrow.

Oswald Chambers

In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. "The clouds are the dust of His feet" (Nahum 1:3). They are a sign that God is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds— He does not come in clear-shining brightness. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, July 29th)