Joy - Strength in the Lord / Day 23 by Oswald Chambers

Oswald Chambers: Joy - Strength In The Lord

Day 23 of 30 In certain stages of spiritual life we get the morbid conception that everything we have, we must give up. In the Bible the meaning of sacrifice is the deliberate giving of the best I have to God that He may make it His and mine for ever: if I cling to it I lose it, and so does God. God told Abraham to offer up Isaac for a burnt offering, and Abraham interpreted it to mean that he was to kill his son. But on Mount Moriah Abraham lost a wrong tradition about God and got a right insight as to what a burnt offering meant: a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2). It looks as if we had to give up everything, lose all we have, and instead of Christianity bringing joy and simplicity, it makes us miserable; until suddenly we realize what God’s aim is that we have to take part in our own moral development, and we do this through the sacrifice of the natural to the spiritual by obedience, not denying the natural, but sacrificing it. Reflection Question: What wrong concepts about God am I holding on to that keep me from experiencing joy? Quotation taken from He Shall Glorify Me, © Discovery House Publishers Matthew 16:24-25 Matthew 16:24-25 NKJV 24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  25For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.