Oswald Chambers Daily Devotional – Utmost for His Highest 22 May 2024 Topic: Now This Explains It

Now This Explains It

BY OSWALD CHAMBERS

. . . that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.— John 17:21

If you are walking a lonely path just now, read John 17. It explains exactly why you are where you are: Jesus has prayed that you may be one with him, as he is one with the Father. Jesus isn’t leaving you all alone; he is getting you alone with him, so that his prayer for oneness might be answered. Are you helping God to answer Jesus’s prayer? Or do you have some other goal for your life? Since you became a disciple, you cannot be as independent as you used to be.

Some of us think God’s entire purpose is to answer our prayers. But there is only one prayer that God must answer, and that is the prayer of Jesus: “. . . that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” Are you this intimate with Jesus?

God isn’t concerned about our plans. He doesn’t say, “Do you want to go through this trial? Do you want to suffer this loss?” He allows things to happen to us for his own purposes. Either the things we go through make us sweeter, better, and nobler, or they make us more critical and fault-finding, more insistent on having our own way. Either trials and difficulties make us fiends, or they make us saints; it depends entirely on our relationship with God. If our relationship to him is one in which we always say, “Your will be done,” then we will have the consolation of John 17. We will know that our Father is working according to his wisdom and toward his ends, and this will prevent us from becoming mean and cynical.

Jesus has prayed for nothing less than absolute oneness with him. Some of us are far from this state of oneness, but we can be sure that, because Jesus has prayed that it may be so, God won’t leave us alone until it is.

1 Chronicles 16-18; John 7:28-53

WISDOM FROM OSWALD

Jesus Christ is always unyielding to my claim to my right to myself. The one essential element in all our Lord’s teaching about discipleship is abandon, no calculation, no trace of self-interest

ALSO READ: CLICK HERE TO FOLLOW US ON TWITTER ⊗ OPEN HEAVEN ⊗ JOEL OSTEEN DEVOTIONAL⊗ ABOVE ONLY ⊗ OUR DAILY BREAD ⊗ SEEDS OF DESTINY ⊗ JOYCE MEYER DEVOTIONAL ⊗ RHAPSODY OF REALITIES ⊗ JOHN HAGEE ⊗ MFM DAILY DEVOTIONALUTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST⊗DCLM DAILY MANNA ⊗ JOHN PIPER DEVOTIONAL ⊗