In today’s My Utmost For His Highest, Oswald Chambers demands we “Get Moving – Begin to Abide Now!”
This sounds so counter-intuitive! “Get moving . . . Begin to abide now!” Chambers says we’re to “Abide in Me”— in intellectual matters, in money matters, in every one of the matters that make human life what it is.” My immediate perception of abiding is that it is a passive condition and not really associated with action on my part; It’s more like deliberate inaction. How can Chambers demand we “Get moving!?” His language is emphatically active.
He makes another statement that seems a bit contradictory. Chambers says “Jesus never chose His own circumstances.” But He did, didn’t He? Jesus said, “Let’s go to the other side . . .” (Luke 8:22). He went to the synagogue (Mark 3:1). He healed people, He called people to Himself. He went off alone to pray. He was constantly on the move – and yet according to Chambers, He lived an “amazingly relaxed life.”
Jesus’ life of abiding, His amazingly relaxed life was a product of his relationship with His Father. He was in constant communion with the Father. He said He did only what He saw the Father doing. Circumstances didn’t affect that seeing; the physical events in His daily living were simply components in the great mixture of life that unveiled opportunities to display the majesty of the Father’s work in that place at that time.
We Are Hidden With Christ
If our lives are truly “hidden with Christ in God,” doesn’t that mean that our union with Him makes possible this same life? That as we abide in Him, any physical events (circumstances) that occur in our own lives are designed, foreknown, predestined opportunities to demonstrate the Father’s majesty?
How often we miss these opportunities because our focus is on ourselves rather than on looking to see what the Father is doing. So I guess Chambers is right again . . . we, I, need to get moving and focus on abiding.
Lord, today I enter into a deliberate posture of claiming my identity as Your child, as being in complete union with You, according to Your own promises. Would You please show me today what You’re doing in every circumstance that might arise around me? Show me what it means to abide in You in “every one of the matters that make human life what it is.”