Daily Life With my Master

I am challenged at the day-to-day level of living out my faith.  Daily stuff seems well within my ability to manage, so I don’t give much thought to reliance (and therefore submission) to my Master within it.  But that lack shows in my relationships with my daughter, my wife, co-workers, and my community.  They are part of the setting of my daily life, and, in the eyes of my Master, just as vital a part of that setting as I am.

I guess that really gets at the heart of the issue with me.  When I rely on my own abilities and perspectives throughout my day, then I become master of the day-to-day.  I begin to treat people from my own store of love, grace, mercy, and gentleness… Some of you already know how “deep” those stores are.  What I really need is the fruit of my Master’s Spirit to live out those qualities in me throughout my daily routine, every day.  Those qualities are only present in me as my Master stores them up.  They aren’t my stores at all, but His; on deposit as it were.

The idea should be that I am a steward (as a knight and servant should be to his King) of the qualities my Master invests in me.  I don’t rely on my stores of mercy, gentleness, goodness, peace and so on.  And, perhaps more importantly, I don’t develop the expectation that I somehow grow my own reserves of such qualities.  Mine just aren’t the same level quality of personal quality.  I can’t live as if I practice with my Master’s stores so that I can learn to grow my own. 

If I want “the good stuff” in my life, why wouldn’t I continue to rely on His qualities?  Because I desire home-grown control.  I want to be king.  There’s no other reason I would.  And such desire for power is earthly, fleshly, born of fear, and stark rebellion against my Master.  It is also how I currently live out much of my daily life.  So, what do I do?

To an extent, I’m doing something in writing these blog entries.  But I really need more.  I need to practice reaching out to my Master throughout the day.  I need to practice invoking His name as I answer the phone or place a call.  I need to consider my Master’s perspective as I read email and type responses. 

Today, I demonstrate one product line for some of my team mates.  This is an opportunity to reach out to my Master as to encourage my co-workers up against an insurmountable challenge.  It is also an opportunity to show off.  In considering my Master’s perspective, these people are just as important element to the setting of my life as I am.  So, my focus should be on honoring His desire for them, His interest in their lives, His love and grace for them.  He may not be interested in making their lives easy (this is earth not heaven), but He is interested in their lives about Him.  Therein is peace, patience, gentleness, and goodness.  Maybe if those qualities come out through me, they will inquire about where I got them.

My day should be about my Master’s perspective on my daily routine.  There are no heroics in barracks life, but most of my time is there, not in the amazing events of life.  How I live in the barracks will make life on the battlefield better.  Discipline in my daily duties will carry over to discipline on the battlefield.  So what I do today has importance for the rest of my life.  It’s not just another day…well, actually it is, but this ordinary day is a setup for the extraordinary one around the corner.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, October 12

Is The Silence of my Master Good or Just Fine?

I have never considered the silence of my Master in answer to prayer as a gracious gift.  I now know better to wait and rest in those times, I had to in Texas before moving west.  But even then, I wouldn’t have characterized the silence as a gift.  It was more frustrating even then.

I believe my Master is able to handle my frustrations, but frustrations are not the best way to grow deeper with Him.  I learned that in the silence is peace, and when the turmoil of life is what I bring to Him, peace is exactly what I need.  If it comes in the silences of my Master then I will take it that way, but I would rather find peace in His words and attention.

It’s not that in the silence I don’t have His attention.  What I don’t have is the communication of either His direction or perspective.  In some sense I have to operate on the last command given, resting in the assurance that when a new one is needed, He will give it.  In another sense I have to rest in the basics of worship, prayer, and Bible reading.  I do those things to be ready to hear when He speaks, not so He will speak.

I understand more of what can be found in silence in and through the silence of my Master, but I don’t know I would characterize what I find as more profound or grander than at other times.  I find that I’m really strong enough to endure the silence because I have a history with Him to rely on.  I have found that my Master is present with me even in the silence, although I have to trust that rather than rely on feelings or other senses.

I have to admit that even in writing about my Master I still feel the presence of the desires of my flesh.  My wife has just left on a long trip or sequence of trips, and the loneliness is saddening.  I texted a friend of mine who helps me through these times, relying on someone else in my weakness.  It is my Master who provided him, and it is an act of faith to reach out to him.  It is also a confession of weakness, and therefore very important to do.  I can’t forget that I am weak, or I will never be able to find that peace in the silences of my Master.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, October 11

Learning to Learn from my Master

Not to down-play my education too much, but it really hasn’t brought me closer to my Master.  I like it, and enjoy using the skills and things I have learned, but it’s not like it makes me more spiritual or gave me a closer walk with my Master.  The only thing that has moved me deeper into my relationship with my Master is obedience.

My experience has not been quite like Chambers describes though.  As I obey, my Master hasn’t immediately opened up the next thing.  Sometimes He has been teaching me patience and the peace found in waiting on Him.  In those instances, the obedience was drawn out over a period of time. 

What I have learned in the past ten months has been much more valuable that what I learned in the previous fourteen years.  At school I learned how to learn as well as accumulated a lot of facts and some skills.  None of it really prepared me for life with my Master, or, as it turns out, in church ministry.

In my experience, my Master has revealed that He is Master of circumstances, Master of timing, and Master of means.  That’s great and all, but the resulting knowledge came, as Chambers points out, as I obeyed.  When I submitted to His change of circumstances (or clearer revelation of what was really going on all along), I felt peace; but He didn’t immediately reveal the next circumstance.

When the house sold three months before we expected, my Master revealed Himself as Master of timing, but this still came after expectantly waiting for the next thing.  We submitted to His timing and He opened up a place to live, but He showed that to us before the house closed.  Again, it was not so much obedience to my Master as it was adapting to circumstances He orchestrated.

When all my attempts at coming up with a new job at my company failed, I just put the problem of provision in my Master’s lap.  He immediately provided a job I hadn’t expected; the one I had done differently.  He revealed Himself as Master of means, but that had been going on with my wife’s job even before I was offered mine.

I guess what I am learning is that as Master of timing, El Shaddai sometimes waits for me to obey, and sometimes waits well after I obey, depending on the lesson.  I see Him as Master of timing, but the truth is He is really the Master Teacher.  So, when my education prepared me to learn, in some ways, I was prepared to learn from my Master.  It just has taken me a long time to pick the right teacher to listen to.

I am a learner, a student, an apprentice, a servant.  I am all these to my Master to some degree; some more than others.  I doubt my apprenticeship will include stellar ignition or subatomic reorganization.  But I suspect that love and grace and mercy will definitely fit within the apprenticeship role.  I suspect that servant will be a role somewhat like “practicum” or when Jesus sent out the 12 and 72. 

So, as a student of my Master, I have a role to fill requiring submission first.  That is one of the things I learned from school: I had to do the homework.  Today, I don’t know what the homework is beyond doing my job well, but as anything develops beyond that, I will endeavor to submit to it, and complete it.  I think I hear the recess bell, I better get back inside!

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, October 10

Every Sunday is Atonement Sunday!

Today’s MUFHH post is perfect for a Sunday.  This is the day of the week where I am most easily aware of the work of my Master.  Sunday’s are the easiest day to remember the Atonement for my deepest problem, my hereditary problem.  Each Sunday, our church holds communion.  It was a bit strange at first, and is a task to keep it fresh each week, but the pastor does a wonderful job by getting different men to share a devotional before we  partake.  It is fresh for them, and so, it is fresh for us.  And each Sunday I am reminded of the work of my Master on my behalf, and I share that remembrance with a hundred others.

I can do nothing for my own salvation.  Even my choice of my Master was part of what I was designed with from before birth.  I was wired that way, and I was placed in that environment.  It isn’t fair when I consider so many who weren’t given that environment.  I pray that they were at least wired to receive from the Universal Master, but I also have a responsibility to share what I have been given.  I have a responsibility to go after those who were not given the environmental advantage I had.  I go after them with the intent of displaying what my Master has given me, and might be giving them.

I play a video game based on movies but with Lego characters.  There is no dialogue, instead they play a form of charades in short video vignettes as segues to the next game area.  In some sense my sharing of my faith is like those charade vignettes.  What I do means more than the  noise I make doing it.  It all should be communicating the Atonement.  As Chambers asks, “where is the discernment of the Atonement in this thing, and in that?”

If the work of my Master takes center stage in my life, then it forms the cornerstone for the rest of the building of my day.  All the people I touch in the various parts of the country and world should be somehow impacted by the work of my Master on their behalf.

I translated the passage for this morning from Romans 6.  The message of that passage is that I am a slave to something, but I am free to choose my master.  I can choose either the Universal Master, or I can choose to serve my fleshly nature of desires and emotions.  In it is verse 20 where Paul says that while the Romans were slaves to sin they were also free to righteousness.  I had to really think this over until I realized that they weren’t free to both, nor enslaved to both.  They had, at some point, chosen being enslaved to sin.  So in verse 21 he asks what benefit they derived from their choice. 

I have lived like that for years.  Until I finally surrendered my need to be “healthy” and my need for independence from whatever, I was enslaved to my fleshly weaknesses.  Once I gave up that “need” I found freedom I have never known before.  It took surrendering something I never expected to have to surrender.  I wanted to surrender my sin, my attitudes toward others, and so on.  Instead it was my fear of falling into the diseases of my family that had to go.  I have a family that has suffered multiple sclerosis, dementia, heart disease, and, so it seems, depression.  It was my fear of those that led me to avoid health issues, fear them and doctors.

The way our world goes, I will probably die of some sort of cancer, but I will only go, by whatever means, at the time appointed by my Master.  If, before I go, I suffer dementia, or multiple sclerosis then I will receive from my Master’s hand as I have received the other blessings He has given.  I have often wondered where those with dementia and Alzheimer's go before they die; perhaps I’ll find out before I die. That’s a brave face on a terribly frightening thing for me.  But perhaps my prideful hold on my own mind is one of those things I will need to learn to let go of.

Whatever my destiny in the mind of my Master, I am redeemed by the Atonement paid by my Master.  He has made up what I could not in His own requirement of justice and holiness.  He made it possible for me to relate to Him and has drawn me to Himself.  The degree to which I swim against the currents of His Spirit is the degree to which I suffer spiritual exhaustion.  When I swim with the current in the river of His Spirit, I am exhilarated and invigorated.  Why I try to swim upstream I have no idea.  What is it I think I missed up there that makes me want to go back?

Well, I have a day to jump into.  My family returns today and I have a little work to do before they arrive.  Blessings on you, and I pray you are reminded of the Atonement you have received this Lord’s Day.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, October 9

Come to The Master for Peace and Rest

This is one of the entries in MUFHH where I just want to go and sit quietly with my Master for a while.  My powers of concentration lack much that looks like power, so I will probably be right back.

In Matthew 11 Jesus’ call to “Come to Me” directed at those to whom He has revealed the Father, those considered foolish or infants, and those He called out of that generation and those cities.  In other gospels, He calls out those words at a festival.  The call is still directed at those who are spent and carrying heavy loads.  He promises rest, a refreshing rest for the whole person, not just the muscles or bones or mind or heart; His rest is for the whole soul.

I’m doing well, even though I have this weekend to myself.  I have things to do, places to go, and people to hang out with.  It is silent right now, but even that is relative.  I still hear the hum and buzz of the actions of other people.  I am not alone, per se, just alone in the sense that I am not in the house with anyone.  But even here, I hear my Master call me to come to Him.  As Chambers says, it’s not to do something of consequence, but rather to be somewhere of magnitude.  What can I come up with that is better than the presence of the Universal Master of protons and stars, galaxies and quarks?

Today I have work to do that will put me with other believers.  I have a family to help that will put me with other believers.  And I have a festival to attend that will put me with all sorts of people.  Somewhere in there I hope to clean the livingroom.  These make up my short todo list for the day.  In all of them is the opportunity to come to my Master, and from the foot of His throne to minister and be ministered to.  I have need of both, since others are blessed in both.

I feel a sense of peace over this day, but it is an energetic peace.  I am excited to jump into it.  But first things first.  Breakfast is a necessary element if I am to work much.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, October 8

Living Life: That’s the Hard Part

Seeing death as relational rather than physical I thought was pretty radical.  But it makes even more sense when I put sin in the same relational basket.  Now the reason death is relational is explained.  If sin is choosing independence from the Master of the universe, then sin would be death; being out of relationship with the Master of the universe.  On the other hand, since I can’t bridge the gulf in that relationship, I would have to be dependent upon what the Universal Master would do on my behalf.  So, Jesus is the solution placed before me.  The terms, “redemption” and “rebellion” now fit better into my understanding of the solution and problem with the world.

I don’t like dependence.  I don’t like going to the doctor or dentist for that reason and more.  I don’t like not being able to direct my destiny.  But, on the other hand, by giving up my independence and my destiny to the Universal Master, I gain access to Him.  So which is better, directing my destiny on this lump of space rock, or sitting down with the One having created space and everything in it and learning about Him?  Sure, as an American, I want independence, I was born to it, I have a sense of entitlement to it.  But I have another human condition which places me independent where I was never intended to be.  I belong in a garden.

So, when I consider the solution of the Universal Master to this human condition, I see a burden as massive as the shear crush of history and future of the human creatures crawling over this terrestrial ball.  All that hereditary isolation from the Creator, couched in the terms of independence, was summed up and consumed in the penalty paid by my Master.  For me, the event of Jesus’ death is more than an event of physical suffering; the physical suffering was almost a parable compared to the unthinkable amount of suffering at its climatic end.  When my Master, having revealed Himself as Three, suffers a separation within Himself, then suffering is redefined, and I cannot wrap my mind around the enormity of it.  That separation is the undeserved, substitutionary death which bought my access back into the garden.

But I’m not there yet.  This redemption I have gained the benefit of which was so expensive is not yet complete.  So, here in this place, I am directed to model my life after this indescribable gift.  I have been redeemed, and I am to live in this universe as such.  What does that look like as I relate to my wife, my daughter, my friends here in this community, and my church?  Claiming to understand life and death, dependence and sin, blessings and curses is all well and good.  But understanding is borne out in living.  If I really understand, then I will live in this world.  If I behave as if I’m dead, then what do I really understand?  And why do would I live as if I were dead?  For me, it is usually out of fear.  How ridiculous is that?  I have life but am afraid to live because of what the dead people might think.  Really? Seriously?

I am a fool, that much is clear.  I just need to become fine with being a fool for my Master, considered such by the dead around me.  I have spent too much time being a fool before my Master, acting foolish in His eyes.  How much that has cost me I will not know until I give an account of myself before His throne, but one day I will know.  The irony that strikes me to the heart is that, even as I played the fool, His love and grace never waivered.  He hated the sight of what I did, yet His love and desire for me never dimmed.  Even in those times, He had my back, keeping me from the deadly deep waters around which I played.  He kept me from things I can’t imagine, and the enemy was never able to snatch me from His hand.  Unbelievable, yet I am a testimony to its truth.

Today, my wife and daughter head to the Sierra Nevada’s for a weekend retreat.  I will be here holding the home for their return.  I will be alone in one sense, but I will be communing with the Universal Master in another.  The question is will I give into my compulsion for independence or will I surrender my right to myself to my Master.  It’s easy to choose life on the front end of the day, in the beauty and cool of the dawn.  It is another to hold that choice in the heat of the afternoon when reality bears down hard.  I hope to be able to post tomorrow that I enjoyed victory in my Master today, and then to post that again on Sunday.  That’s what I hope, I pray for that hope to be a fertile seedbed for faith, and that faith to lead me to love as I am loved.  Life is relational, and so my Master leads me to live.  I may be visiting you later, just humor me, I’m following the lead of my Master; I’m just not as graceful at it as He is.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, October 7

Holy Heredity, Matt-Man!

Today’s entry in MUFHH is right at what I have been working on or moving toward these past ten months.  I get this entry, and I really like the way he put it.  The basic idea here is repentance.  Unlike much of the teaching in church today, repentance isn’t something I do, but a choice I make.  Repentance doesn’t mean that I start or stop doing something; that unit of measure is used by others to evaluate my repentance.  Repentance means I change my mind to agree with my Master about my sin.

One of the keys often missed here is that sin is not always what I do.  Sometimes it is simply a disposition.  I can do the good things for the wrong reason, and be sinning without anyone knowing, sometimes without me knowing.  The unit of measure for sin is my obedience to my Master, not the moral sensitivities of my fellow believers or human beings.  I have struggled with people pleasing for so long, I really find it difficult to change my unit of measure.  When I care more about what others think than I do about what my Master directs me to do, I’m in real danger.

In such a mindset, how can I not keep sinning?  And the stress level of that mindset is terrible.  The saying goes that I can please some of the people all of the time, all the people some of the time, but I can’t please all the people all the time.  Trying that is stressful.  I reduce the stress by trying to limit the population I try to please, but if their happiness depends on me, again, I’m in real trouble.  I don’t have that sort of power to make it work.

The way Chambers describes sanctification as realizing my need for His sanctification (process of being made holy), the Spirit of my Master acts to impart His heredity of holiness to me.  I fulfill the moral imperatives of my Master only when I own my need for His help, accept the work of His cross to pay my debt, and submit to the work of His Spirit in my own.  Then those impossible moral imperatives (like in Matthew 5) become second nature; His nature in me.

The work on my part in my salvation is submission, first and last.  I confess Him to be my Master on the frontend, and I live in submission to Him throughout the rest.  Somewhere in the eternity I have, sanctification becomes complete and I see Him face-to-face.  But right now, in this tiny scrap of time I have on this space rock I’m glued to, I’m still submitting imperfectly, living imperfectly, and struggling to focus on my Master more perfectly. 

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, October 6