Today, I am baffled by the devotion in My Utmost For His Highest. What Chambers is talking about makes little sense to me. I think I agree with a spot somewhere below the middle, but then I get lost again. The point he is making is about carnality in my life. But he states that no "natural man knows about it" and then that it comes from the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit where one "lusts" after the other. It is at that point my eyebrows furrow and my eyes narrow, and my mind goes, "huh?" He uses a capital S Spirit, so is referring to the Spirit of my Master who took up residence in me when I confessed Jesus as Lord and believed in Him as raised from the dead. It is difficult to wrap my mind around the Spirit of my Master "lusting after" my flesh. Seriously? Lusting? And after my flesh?
He continues into a monologue about setting the mind on the Spirit and not carrying out the deeds of the flesh, and I am no longer in 1 Corinthians 3:3 where he first references, and am now squarely in Romans 7 and 8. In those chapters most translators do not necessarily agree whether the references to spirit are references to the Spirit of God which desires total influence over the person, or the spirit of the person which would the part of a person desiring to please the Master. So, the confusion is not just here, but remains and is fairly common. Chambers clearly falls on the side of the reference to the Spirit of God.
So, the monologue continues into confession being a mark of the non-carnal believer. What is going on here is that Chambers is referring to the response to conviction by the Spirit of God, the internal response. In pyschological terms, it would be the question of responding versus reacting. So, if I react to conviction from something I read in Scripture then I am being carnal. If I respond in confession, then I am being spiritual. After the confession it is my Master who makes the necessary change in me. So this part I get, the first, not so much, and he looses me again at the end.
In the last paragraph he says that the proof that the "carnality" is gone is the surprise at my change in behavior or attitude. Saying, "I would have been resentful over this in the past" or something like that is the indicator that carnality is leaving the body. But isn't that a progressive experience rather than the mark of an event? Or is it that carnality comes and goes? If it does that, then does it ever truly leave or does it just go dormant? Or is that a semantic question of little value?
Either way, I agree with the reacting versus responding position as an indicator of whether I am being ruled more by the Spirit of my Master or my own silly passions. And I suppose that being surprised by the changes that my Master is making in me would be evidence that, at least, my silly passions have less sway than they used to. And I believe that I am experiencing that more lately than I have in a long time. I have experienced more spiritual victory recently than I have at any other time in my past. I think that is because I have a long way to go out of the spiritual hole I have dug over the last 20 years, but it's still progress up. And progress up is good. The credit goes to the Spirit of my Master, because my only part in this has been to make myself more available to Him. The positive changes are His, and I have been recently surprised by them.
Part of what I have taken on as a responsibility on my part is the ritual actions of holiness (in a modern setting, rather than the ancient Temple setting). These don't actually make me more fit for my Master, just make me more available to Him. They don't make me qualitatively better than anyone else, just different. They include the daily discipline of writing these blog entries, praying using the phrases, "You love me, You have my back, and I am at Your service." The initials below my signature are part of it. These are just a few obvious ones, and as I said, they don't change me qualitatively, just make me more aware of my status before my Master on a more consistent basis. In the blog I have confessed when my Master brings out deficiencies in my character and done so publically. That helps me remain accountable to being submissive to Him in these areas. I believe that actions of "ritual holiness" done right will look very different for different believers, so I don't recommend these particular ones for anyone else. I found them when I sought the areas that my Master wants to grow me, and in response to those areas of growth, came up with actions I could take to increase my availability to my Master to bring about that growth. If I were to make a recommendation (and I don't), that would be it. My only recommendation is to love the Master. The rest sort of falls out of that, whatever "the rest" might be.
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