Oswald Chambers Daily Devotional – Utmost for His Highest 18 August  2024 Topic: Have You Ever Been Speechless with Sadness?

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Have You Ever Been Speechless with Sadness?

By Oswald Chambers

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. — Luke 18:23

The rich young ruler went away speechless with sorrow. He had no confusion about what Jesus Christ had told him, no doubt about what it meant, and it produced a sadness beyond words.

Have you ever been in this place of speechless sadness? Has God’s word come to you about something you’re very rich in and told you to “sell everything you have” (Luke 18:22)? Perhaps you are rich in your temperament or in your personal relationships of heart and mind. Perhaps God has told you to give them up, and you haven’t done it. If so, you’ve often been speechless with sorrow. The Lord won’t plead with you, but every time he meets you on that point, he will repeat, “If you want to follow me, these are the conditions.”

“Sell everything you have.” Strip yourself of everything that might be considered a possession, until you stand before God as a mere conscious being, and then offer yourself. This is where the battle is fought: in the domain of the will before God.

Are you more devoted to your idea of what Jesus wants than to Jesus himself? Then you are likely to hear him say something to you that will produce sorrow. What Jesus says is hard, but to those who have his disposition inside them, it’s easy. Beware of allowing anything to soften the hard things Jesus says.

You can be so rich in the consciousness that you are somebody that you will never be a disciple of Jesus. Or you can be so rich in the consciousness that you are nobody, so convinced of your poverty, that you’ll never be a disciple. Are you willing to give up the idea that you have nothing to give up? If not, you are bound to be discouraged. Discouragement is disenchanted self-love, and self-love may be love of your devotion to Jesus.

Psalms 100-102; 1 Corinthians 1

Wisdom from Oswald

Christianity is not consistency to conscience or to convictions; Christianity is being true to Jesus Christ. Biblical Ethics, 111 L

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