God's Worksmaship

By Oswald Chambers

We need constantly to remember that the work of God in us is the foundation of our Christian experience and faith, and as constantly do we need to remember that we never can experience the ground and spring of our Christian experience. In other words, our faith must be in the reality of the Redemption and never in what God has done in us and for us. What is experienced in our individual lives is the efficacious working of salvation, but we never can experience the God who gives us that experience. We are delighted with our experience, it is the thing we can talk about, but unless our faith is in the God who gives us the experience it ends in pietistic jargon; I try to pack all God’s tremendous redemptive energy into a side eddy—“I have got all this to myself.” If you know on what ground your experience has arisen you say, like Paul did, “I know whom I have believed,” not “I know what I have got.”

The thing to pay attention to is the miracle created in human experience, not on the ground of my reason, but on the ground of the Redemption, and it begins exactly as our Lord describes—“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8 rv). Whenever I say “I want to reason this thing out before I can trust,” I will never trust. The reasoning out and the perfection of knowledge come after the response to God has been made. If we would learn on the threshold of our life with God to put away as impertinent, and even iniquitous, the debates as to whether or not we will trust God, we would not remain under the delusions we do; we would abandon without the slightest hesitation, cut the shore lines, burn our bridges behind us, and realise that what has happened is the positive miracle of the Redemption at work—we know with a knowledge which passeth knowledge. The whole of the New Testament exposition in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is in order that we might know where we have been placed by Almighty God’s Redemption. Immediately we come in contact with Reality our thinking is based on revelation all the time, and as we maintain our relation to Reality we will find new revelations of truth flashing out continually from the word of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CrossReach Publications
• Release date: Mar 22, 2022

Oswald Chambers

Oswald Chambers (1874--1917) was a Bible teacher, conference leader, and YMCA chaplain. After his death, his widow compiled his writings in a number of popular daily devotional books, including My Utmost for His Highest, an enduring classic of the Christian faith that continues to inspire men and women the world over.

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Reality

The existence of a truth is nothing to me until I am brought into the current of events where that particular truth is a living reality to me because it speaks the language of my conscious life. Reality must have its source outside me; my conscious experience is the sphere of Reality in me, but I must be careful never to confound the reality of my experience with Reality itself.

1. Response to God

And without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is. . . . (Hebrews 11:6 rv)

Religion confronts God, not in scrutiny or criticism, but in response, in welcome, in obedience to His visitation. Religion is only possible to revelation. Religion is not aspiration, it is not temperament, it is not subjectivity, its roots are in God moving to man more than in man moving to God.

Forsyth

We need constantly to remember that the work of God in us is the foundation of our Christian experience and faith, and as constantly do we need to remember that we never can experience the ground and spring of our Christian experience. In other words, our faith must be in the reality of the Redemption and never in what God has done in us and for us. What is experienced in our individual lives is the efficacious working of salvation, but we never can experience the God who gives us that experience. We are delighted with our experience, it is the thing we can talk about, but unless our faith is in the God who gives us the experience it ends in pietistic jargon; I try to pack all God’s tremendous redemptive energy into a side eddy—I have got all this to myself. If you know on what ground your experience has arisen you say, like Paul did, I know whom I have believed, not I know what I have got.

The thing to pay attention to is the miracle created in human experience, not on the ground of my reason, but on the ground of the Redemption, and it begins exactly as our Lord describes—The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit (John 3:8 rv). Whenever I say I want to reason this thing out before I can trust, I will never trust. The reasoning out and the perfection of knowledge come after the response to God has been made. If we would learn on the threshold of our life with God to put away as impertinent, and even iniquitous, the debates as to whether or not we will trust God, we would not remain under the delusions we do; we would abandon without the slightest hesitation, cut the shore lines, burn our bridges behind us, and realise that what has happened is the positive miracle of the Redemption at work—we know with a knowledge which passeth knowledge. The whole of the New Testament exposition in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is in order that we might know where we have been placed by Almighty God’s Redemption. Immediately we come in contact with Reality our thinking is based on revelation all the time, and as we maintain our relation to Reality we will find new revelations of truth flashing out continually from the word of God.

Faith is not a faculty; if religion were the function of one particular faculty, it would claim but one side of life. Each faculty implies the rest because it is the action of the whole person.

Forsyth

Our response to God is the response of our whole nature. To speak of faith as a faculty is unfortunate; faith is not a faculty, if we mean by that something added on to what we have already got. The result of the idea that we are a bundle of separate faculties, the faculty of faith having nothing to do with the faculty of conscience, makes it possible for a man to do the most unrighteous things in his business all the week and the most devout things on Sunday. Watch the thing you are inclined to succumb over—That will do for a knock-up job; it’s only that, it doesn’t matter. It is never only that, it is the same with everything you do, and is certainly what you will do in the exercise of the highest powers of your personality, viz., in your relationship to God, only it is not traced so readily there because the spiritual domain is so vast and mysterious. Bring it to the test in the ordinary everyday things of life, eating and drinking, cleaning your boots, writing an essay—is it slovenly? is it careless and indifferent? does self-indulgence come in? That little pinhole exhibits the dry rot that runs all through everything you do, and when you trust in God, you trust in a shabby way, in a way that is defective—I will have faith in God about this matter, but not about that; then you don’t trust God at all. If we will examine ourselves in the light of the things that can be seen we will realise that that is how God sees us all through, if only we will take the humiliating gibe to ourselves.

2. Readjustment in God

The first [commandment] is . . . thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. (Mark 12:29-30; from all thy heart , etc., rv mg)

We do not know how good God’s claim is till we have met it, and long lived in surrender to it, we must taste and see. We do not assent and then trust, that would reduce grace to persuasion, and faith to being talked over or argued down, and from grace and faith alike the divine element of miracle would disappear.

Forsyth

My relationship to God embraces every faculty, I am to love Him with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, all my strength, every detail is instinct with devotion to Him; if it is not I am disjointed somewhere. Think what you do for someone you love! The most amazingly minute details are perfectly transfigured because your whole nature is embraced, not one faculty only. You don’t love a person with your heart and leave the rest of your nature out, you love with your whole being, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. That is the attitude of the New Testament all through. In 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul has been speaking about the stupendous mystery of the resurrection, and suddenly, like a swinging lamp in a mine, he rushes it right straight down and says, Now concerning the collection. . . . The New Testament is continually doing it—Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands . . . began to wash the disciples’ feet. It takes God Incarnate to wash feet properly. It takes God Incarnate to do anything properly.

Never limit God by remembering what you have done in the past. When you come into relation with the Reality of Redemption God creates something in you that was never there before, it is the active working of the life of God in you, consequently you can do now what you could not do before. Character is always revealed in crises. There are lives that seem selfish and self-centred until a crisis occurs and they manifest the most disinterested concern and self-effacement. On the other hand, there are lives that appear unselfish and noble and when the crisis comes they are revealed as mean and despicable. In the early stages of our Christian experience we are inclined to hunt in an overplus of delight for the commandments of our Lord in order to obey them out of our love for Him, but when that conscious obedience is assimilated and we begin to mature in our life with God, we obey His commandments unconsciously, until in the maturest stage of all we are simply children of God through whom God does His will, for the most part unconsciously to us.

Partakers of Grace

For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Ephesians 2:8 rv

No man can be saved by praying, by believing, by obeying, or by consecration; salvation is a free gift of God’s almighty grace. We have the sneaking idea that we earn things and get into God’s favour by what we do—by our praying, by our repentance: the only way we get into God’s favour is by the sheer gift of His grace. The first thing we consciously experience is a sense of undeserving-ness, but it does take some of us a long while to know we don’t deserve to be saved. I really am sorry for what I have done wrong; I really am sick of myself—if only I am sick enough of myself, I will be sick to death; I am driven to despair, I can do nothing; then I am exactly in the place where I can receive the overflowing grace of God.

In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace. (Ephesians 1:7)

Think what God’s forgiveness means: it means that He forgets away every sin. Forgetting in the Divine mind is an attribute, in the human mind it is a defect, consequently God never illustrates His Divine forgetfulness by human pictures, but by pictures taken from His own creation—As far as east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12); I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions . . . (Isaiah 44:22). The reason God never uses the human illustration is that a human being is incapable of forgiving as God does until he is made like God through regeneration. We take the forgiveness of sins to mean something we can understand, it is such a tremendous thing that it takes the Holy Spirit to enable us to begin to understand what is made ours through the grace of God. The forgiveness of God means that we are forgiven into a new relationship with God in Christ so that the forgiven man is the holy man.

God is able to make all grace abound unto you. . . . (2 Corinthians 9:8 rv)

In talking to people you will be amazed to find that they much more readily listen if you talk on the line of suffering, of the attacks of the devil; but get on the triumphant line of the Apostle Paul, talk about the super-conquering life, about God making all His Divine grace to abound, and they lose interest—That is all in the clouds, a sheer indication that they have never begun to taste the unfathomable joy that is awaiting them if they will only take it. All the great prevailing grace of God is ours for the drawing on, and it scarcely needs any drawing on, take out the stopper and it comes out in torrents; and yet we just manage to squeeze out enough grace for the day—sinning in thought, word and deed every day! You don’t find that note in the New Testament. We have to keep in the light as God is in the light and the grace of God will supply supernatural life all the time. Thank God there is no end to His grace if we will keep in the humble place. The overflowing grace of God has no limits, and we have to set no limits to it, but grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

How to Go On

Colossians 2:6-7 (rv)

1. How to Think of Our State

As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord . . . (rv)

We all start with thinking about what we have to do; Paul goes a step further back, and says, Think of how you stand in God’s sight through receiving Jesus. It will have a tremendous influence. Have I received Christ Jesus the Lord as my Saviour? Then He is my Saviour from everything that is not of God; that I enter into this realisation is another thing. We can always claim our union with Jesus Christ in thinking: . . . that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. We know that we are not perfect yet in outer manifestation, but in thinking we have to remember what we received Jesus for, to be absolute Lord, absolute Saviour. When once we bring our minds to think of our state fundamentally, everything else becomes amazingly easy. We are apt to begin by thinking of our obedience, how we are going to work it out, and we forget the first thing, viz., that we have to receive Christ Jesus the Lord. Think what that means! It means we can go straight to the very heart of God and tell Him what we want, not because we are obedient, but because we have access into the holy place by the new and living way which Jesus dedicated (rv) for us. To think of what Jesus is to us always encourages our faith;