You Have My Word

For almost a year now I have been in the habit of reading Oswald Chambers' daily devotional My Utmost for His Highest.

The copy I have is from the late 1930's I think, so it is not a modern English updated version.

I like that. It stretches my vocabulary and, by extension, my mind and heart.

He often uses words or phrases which, in his day, meant something more than they do today. Globalization and colloquialism have diluted our language. For example the idea of a "mean person" has come to be only associated with someone who is offensive, cruel, or malicious. But it can also infer humble or lowly; base.

Today's reading finishes with:

We read some things in the Bible three hundred and sixty-five times and they mean nothing to us, then all of a sudden we see what God means, because in some particular we have obeyed God, and instantly His nature is opened up. "All the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen." The "yea" must be born of obedience; when by the obedience of our lives we say "Amen" to a promise, then that promise is ours.

That rings true for me, but just before that he said something else; something more succinct that really caught my attention:

The promises of God are of no value to us until
by obedience we understand the nature of God.

I'm not sure I completely understand just why that struck me, but it did.

I think it has to do with the idea of The Father's promises being absolutely trustworthy; yet Him choosing in vulnerability to hinge their fulfillment on being partnered with oh-so-fallible us, in our mysterious Holy Spirit-mediated loving relationship with fully-God/fully-human Jesus.

~ Keith