Once again, I’m going to refer to, and hopefully expand upon, some thoughts from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest. For a daily devotional, Mr. Chambers has some thoughts that go far deeper than most daily devotionals I’ve read, so I hope you get as much out of this as I did.
One of the topics Mr. Chambers discusses is creating a disturbance with your faith and asking for the Lord’s help instead of simply staying passive. Here are his thoughts on why creating a disturbance is importance (followed by my thoughts on his thoughts…lots of thoughts). Chambers refers to verses in Luke 18, in which a blind man in a crowd of people is healed by calling out and asking Jesus to give him back his sight. Chambers mentions the man’s persistence to keep calling out to the Lord even though the people in front of him in the crowd, as mentioned in verse 39, all told him to be quiet. To this point, Chambers advises us,
“Be persistent with your disturbance until you get face to face with the Lord himself… To sit calmly by, instead of creating a disturbance, serves only to deify our common sense… We think, ‘It is ridiculous to ask God to do this.’ If it is an impossibility, it is the very thing for which we have to ask… This man received his sight. But the most impossible thing for you is to be so closely identified with the Lord that there is literally nothing of your old life remaining.” (My Utmost for His Highest, Feb. 29)
The way I see it, a lot of people are afraid to make a disturbance with their faith. As Chambers mentions, we’ll find ourselves thinking “It’s ridiculous to ask God to do this.” So we let common sense tell us what to do. Common sense says God isn’t worried about this tiny facet of our lives. Common sense says there a million other people praying for something more important, so why even speak up?
Why we SHOULD speak up…
Let’s think about the man in the crowd whose sight Jesus restored. He was one of hundreds (maybe even thousands) gathered in Jericho that day as Jesus came through. And I’m willing to bet that he wasn’t the ONLY person gathered there who was suffering from an affliction of some sort. But all of the other people seemed to stay quiet, didn’t they? The only time some of them even spoke at all was to tell the blind man to shut up. Talk about approaching it all wrong.
Imagine how many other people might have been healed of their sicknesses and cleansed of their sins if they had been willing to create a disturbance like the blind man. None of them were willing to ask Jesus for what they considered to be “an impossibility.” Looking back on it, that blind man who was given back his sight doesn’t seem quite so crazy, right?
Out with the old, in with the new…
I also think the last sentiment Chambers reflects above is DEFINITELY worth noting. Can you imagine a life where we are SO closely identified with the Lord that our old life doesn’t even matter anymore? A life where you and Jesus have such a strong connection that your past actions and decisions are irrelevant, that the sins of your former life are forgotten and that everything in the world that kept you away from the Lord is lost to the past? Of course not. It seems impossible.
Which is exactly why we should be asking the Lord to get us to that point. Think about how much more enjoyable life would be if we were only concerned with God and his love for us. A little nicer than worrying about the stresses of our lives as they are now. At least, I believe that would be the case.
What do you think?
-Mike
