The Circle-drawer

“As the Deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalms. 42: 1-2)

“The sound of the Shofar could be heard coming from the wall surrounding Jerusalem, echoing across the sun-scorched valley. The blowing of the trumpet heralded great public distress and was used to summon the people. It was the 1^st century B.C. and severe drought was threatening the very existence of the city. So the city elders called for the people to gather outside the city walls. Then they sent for Honi.

    Honi was an old man who, after this day, became known as the Circle-Drawer, because when he was summoned, the elders asked him: ‘Pray that rain may fall.’ Honi prayed but nothing happened. So he drew a circle around himself in the dust of the ground, and prayed again. ‘O Lord of the world, Your children have turned their faces to me….I swear by Your great name that I will not stir from here until You have pity on Your children.’

   The rain began to fall, one large drop at a time. But Honi protested. ‘Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain that will fill the cisterns, pits, and caverns.’ In answer to his prayer, the heavens opened and the waters descended in a violent gully-washer that threatened to flood the city. So once again, Honi pleaded. ‘Not for such rain have I prayed, but for a rain of goodwill, blessing and graciousness.’ It is said, and recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus, that in response to Honi’s third prayer, a long soaking rain began to fall that ended the three-year drought. Honi had prevailed in prayer.” (The Daniel Prayer, chapter 7, Anne Graham Lotz)

We serve a prayer-answering God. Cry out to him today to prepare our hearts for the new year that our Lord has given to us.

1. Pray for our national and church leaders that they will be guided you your Holy Spirit and will have the wisdom that comes from God and not of this world..

 2. Pray for our hearts to be tender to the things of God.

3. Help us to be faithful in prayer daily for our loved ones that do not know you as there Savior and for others that You put in our path.

4. Pray for marriages to be strengthened and restored.

Go on Knowing

  “ Jesus answered them and said, ‘My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent me. If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.” (John 7:16-18)

     In the last post I talked a little about Oswald Chambers and the impact his short life has had upon thousands and maybe millions of Christians worldwide due to the books that were published after he had gone home to his Father in heaven. In 1998 someone gave me a copy of “The Utmost Devotional Bible” and it has been the Bible that I have endeavored to read every day since. I have not always been successful but I have read through it many times and not only have I benefited from the truth of the Word of God, but I have been challenged by the short commentaries on particular Scriptures give by Mr. Chambers.

     Just as I would have a hard time saying a certain Scripture was my favorite, I would not want to say that one of Mr. Chambers’ quotes was my favorite. But I will say that the one that spoke to my heart the first time I heard it and has spoken to me again and again is the one I will share with you today.

    “If you believe in Jesus, you will not spend all your time in the smooth waters just inside the harbor, full of exhilaration and delight, but always moored; you will have to go out through the harbor bar into the great deeps of God and begin to know for yourself, begin to get spiritual discernment. If you do not cut the moorings, God will have break them with a storm and send you out. Why not unloosen and launch all on God and go out on the great swelling tide of His purpose?

    ‘If anyone wills to do His will , he shall know…’ When you know you should do a thing and you do it, you will know more. If you revise where you are stodgy spiritually, you will find it goes back to the point where there was one thing you knew you should do, but you did not do it because there seemed no immediate call to, and now you have no perception, no discernment. Instead of being spiritually self-possessed at the time of crisis, you are spiritually distracted. It is a dangerous thing to refuse to go on knowing.” (Reading 142, “Utmost Devotional Bible, Oswald Chambers)

   What are you doing that the Lord has called you to do? What are you not doing that He has called you to do? Seek His face. Ask Him to open the eyes of your heart that you can be obedient to all that He has called you to do, not just some of it. He wants our complete and utter submission to His will and abandonment for the tasks He had prepared for each of us before the foundation of the world.

Pray

1.     Lord open my eyes and make my feet quick to be obedient to your commandments and direction for my life. 

2.     Help me to see the people whom I have wronged or hurt and to seek their forgiveness. If there is any unforgiveness in my heart show me and help me to repent and to forgive.

2.     Help me to be extravagant in giving of myself, and my resources, which you have given to me for the advancement of Your Kingdom.

The Lion and the Lamb

   “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the World!”  (John 1:29)

  “and said to the mountains and rocks,  “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” (Revelation 6:16)

  Oswald Chambers is one to the heroes of the faith. He was a Scot who came to know the Lord under the preaching of Charles Spurgeon and was challenged to have his life turned over completely to the Holy Spirit by F.B. Meyer. In 1911, he felt God had called him to start a school for men desiring to be preachers of the Word of God and from his prolific writing and teaching we have over 30 books that were only published by his wife after he died, the most famous of which is “Utmost for His Highest.” He died from appendicitis while ministering to the soldiers of Great Britain from England, Australia, and New Zealand in Egypt during World War I as those soldiers prepared to take the land of Palestine and Transjordan from the Turkish Empire, countries we know as Israel and Jordan today.

   Mr. Chambers does an outstanding job of talking about the paradox of the Lion and the Lamb of God:

      “In the days of His flesh Jesus Christ exhibited the divine paradox of the Lion and the Lamb. He is the Lion in majesty, rebuking the winds and demons: He was the Lamb in meekness, ‘who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return.’ He was the Lion in power, raising the dead; He was the Lamb in patience—who was ‘led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.’ He was the Lion in authority, ‘You have heard that it was said…But I say to you,…’: He was the Lamb in gentleness, ‘Let the little children come to Me…and He took them in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.’

     In our personal lives Jesus Christ proves Himself to be all this—He is the Lamb to expiate our sins, to lift us out of condemnation and plant within us His own heredity of holiness: He is the Lion to rule over us, so that we gladly say, ‘the government of this life shall be on His shoulders.’ And what is true in individual life is to be true in the universe at large. The time is coming when the Lion of the Tribe of Judah shall reign, and when ‘the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ.’

    One remaining paradox---In Revelation 6:16 ‘the wrath of the Lamb’ is mentioned. We know what the wrath of a lion is like—but the wrath of the Lamb!—it is beyond our conception. All one can say about it is that the wrath of God is the obverse side of the love of God. (Reading 349, The Utmost Devotional Bible, originally in 'Conformed to His Image,' Oswald Chambers)

    God has given all of us the opportunity in one way or another to accept Him as our Lord and Savior and to serve Him completely. He has also given us the ability to ignore Him and not accept His free gift of salvation or to completely surrender our lives to serve Him with our whole heart. Where are you today and what would He have you do?

Pray

1.     Lord thank you for dying on that cross in order to take the penalty of my sin and all those who accept your free gift of salvation.

2.     Help me this day to live for You. Help me to seek your face in the Scriptures and to examine my life to see if I am living for you every day.

3.     Forgive me of my laziness and casual attitude I take toward You. You are my Commander, my Father, and my King. Help me to live this day filled with Your Spirit