Oswald Chambers Daily Devotional – Utmost for His Highest 12 February 2025 Topic: Must I Listen?

Must I Listen?

By Oswald Chambers

They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” — Exodus 20:18-19

There are times when we’re not consciously disobeying God; we’re just not paying attention. God has given us his commandments: there they are, set down in Scripture, along with a clear directive that we should follow them. “If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15). And still, we look the other way. We don’t do this out of willful disobedience. We do it because we don’t love and respect God.

“Speak to us yourself,” the Israelites told Moses. “But do not have God speak to us.” We show God how little we love him when we prefer to listen only to his servants. We’ll listen to personal testimonies, but we won’t listen to God himself. Why are we so terrified of him speaking directly to us? Because we know that if he does, we’ll have a choice to make: obey or disobey. If it’s only a servant’s voice we hear, we feel free to disregard it. “Well, that’s just your own idea,” we say. “Even though I don’t deny it’s probably God’s truth.”

Am I putting God in the humiliating position of having treated me as his child, while I’ve been ignoring him? When I do finally listen, the humiliation I’ve been putting on him comes back on me, and my delight at hearing him is tempered by the shame of having shut him out for so long.

Leviticus 13; Matthew 26:26-50

Wisdom from Oswald

Jesus Christ reveals, not an embarrassed God, not a confused God, not a God who stands apart from the problems, but One who stands in the thick of the whole thing with man.

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