Oswald Chambers

I've been sporadically reading Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest over the past year(s), and I think that it usually has good things to say. Although today I came across this one. I'm putting up the whole thing, and therefore I guess you can skip it if you want.

The Delight of Sacrifice

"I will very gladly spend and be spent for you."
2nd Corinthians 12:15

"When the Spirit of God has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, we begin deliberately to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ's interests in other people, and Jesus Christ is interested in every kind of man there is. We have no right in Christian work to be guided by our affinities; this is one of the biggest tests of our relationship to Jesus Christ. The delight of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, not fling it away, but deliberately lay my life out for Him and His interests in other people, not for a cause. Paul spent himself for one purpose only - that he might win men to Jesus Christ. Paul attracted to Jesus all the time, never to himself. 'I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.'

When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, his is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a pedestal, away from the common run of men. Paul became a sacramental personality; wherever he went, Jesus Christ helped Himself to his life. Many of us are after our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help Himself to our lives. If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve. Paul said he knew how to be a 'doormat' without resenting it, because the mainspring of his life was devotion to Jesus. We are apt to be devoted, not to Jesus Christ, but to the things which emancipate us spiritually. That was not Paul's motive. 'I could wish myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren' - wild extravagant - is it? When a man is in love it is not an exaggeration to talk in that way, and Paul is in love with Jesus Christ."


I would love to be the type of person that lived like this. You've met her before - the girl who simply exudes godliness in every action, word, and even expression. The girl who never says anything mean, and the girl who is truly beautiful because her devotion to Christ is absolutely evident as the focal point of her identity. For my part, I have occasionally said that I do not want to be the main character of my life; instead, I want others to be pointed to God through everything I do and say. It's something I aspire to, and yet something at which I fail miserably every single day to the point that I feel like a hypocrite for even thinking about it.


And so I start to wonder - is Oswald Chambers right about this? If you are to leave your own interests behind, how should you deal with spiritual gifts, or are those only applicable to relationships or ministry and not to personal enjoyment? Is it biblical to constantly be a doormat - to sometimes be taken advantage of without complaining and without arguing? Is that what Jesus would have done? At what point do you draw boundaries to prevent yourself from becoming bitter and resentful, or do you eliminate even a hint of a boundary and be so devoted to God that being in a state of doormat-ness is unimaginable? ("So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.") A strong and continual lesson in humility has left me realizing that every single situation that calls your character and responses into question has multiple sides, and that nothing is as simple as it seems from your own perspective. It seems to me that Chambers is saying that admitting personal need and weakness means that I am not trusting in or devoted to God enough, and maybe that's true, but I could be completely off-base. I would love to hear what you think about this question....