This night, after crawling into bed, I picked up my trusty copy of My Utmost For His Highest for the first time in nearly a week. I was planning on reading a bit and then catching some shut eye in preparation of a Saturday spent inside grading papers and writing lesson plans. However, after reading the excerpt for this 28th day of November I felt compelled to do something I haven't done in several months which is to blog. I was reassured of God's grace after this passage and therefore I am posting it so others may benefit as well. Anyway, here are the words of Oswald Chambers as only he can express.
The Bounty of the Destitute
"The Gospel of the grace of God awakens an intense longing in human souls and an equally intense resentment, because the revelation which it brings is not palatable. There is a certain pride in man that will give and give, but to come and accept is another thing. I will give myself in consecration, I will do anything, but do not humiliate me to the level of the most hell-deserving sinner and tell me that all I have to do is to accept the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.
We have to realize that we cannot earn or win anything from God; we must either receive it as a gift or do without it. The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute; until we get there Our Lord is powerless. He can do nothing for us if we think we are sufficient of ourselves; we have to enter into His Kingdom through the door of destitution. As long as we are rich, possessed of anything in the way of pride or independence, God cannot do anything for us. It is only when we get hungry spiritually that we receive the Holy Spirit. The gift of the essential nature of God is made effectual in us by the Holy Spirit; He imparts to us the quickening life of Jesus, which puts "the beyond" within, and immediately "the beyond" has come within, it rises up to "the above," and we are lifted into the domain where Jesus lives."