the crumpled ones

There are certain devotionals from Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest that simply kick my tail every year. I always tell the kids that one of the functions of the Holy Spirit and of O. Chambers is conviction :)

Try with me to just pull over your daily concerns, interests, plans and pities with THIS blanket of truth:

Being completely aligned and identified with God's interests can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world.

I have to learn that the aim of life is God’s, not mine. God is using me from his great personal standpoint.

All he asks of me is that I have implicit faith in him and in his goodness, such faith that I never say, “Lord, this gives me such heartache.” To talk in that way makes me an impediment to him.

When I stop telling God what I want, he can take me up for what he wants without hindrance. He can crumple me or exalt me. He can do anything he chooses.

Self-pity is of the devil. If I go down that road, I cannot be used by God for his purpose, because I live in my own private sphere, a little “world within the world.”

God will never be able to get me to come out into his world, because I’m too afraid of what I’ll encounter. I have to set aside my selfishness and fear and become entirely identified with him.

It wasn't all that long ago that I was teary-eyed in the kitchen with Hannah, some Wednesday night after the kids were all tucked in bed.

I wasn't nearly as emotional as I was mad. Mad and frustrated and disappointed in myself.

I was lamenting her the same old laments. I was pouring over the same old circles. I was sifting through the same old pities, and I was sick of them.

I was dry and weary and tired of myself, and I remember saying to her, "When did I become so timid and self-pitying and dull? I used to be so bold, so ready, so abandoned. Ready to go, ready to die, ready to fight, ready to go after the Gospel and the sharing it! This season instead has me a SHELL of myself, so cautious and shrunk and shriveled. I'm so tired of being this pinched version of myself that cries and complains about the same things again and again, unable to move on, unable to let go!"

I had lots of good reasons that dark-night-of-the-soul season to go down the road of self-pity, but what a TRAP it was, my own little world, too afraid.

I read it again this year, this morning, and see where and when I DID finally set aside my self-focus and my fear, and learn again that my life--from my hours to my money to my children to my relationships to my experiences to my scars to my rights--is ONLY free and bold and beautiful when I am not nursing it nor naming it or claiming it. Our lives our only lovely and contented when they are truly HIS. Our lives given fully to HIS purposes are finally free. Once I finally was able to lay down MY great personal standpoint....oh, how He freed me again to His own!

What a God we have, mighty on the throne, Lord of Heaven's Armies, to even HAVE and CARE a standpoint on our little lives. To even have a WANT for me.

That freedom, that boldness, that joy I was missing that season returned when I came back to "whatever He wants, without hindrance. He can crumple me! He can exalt me! God be praised."

Reading through those well-underlined words of O Chambers is like walking again through the mountains and valleys. It has been the seasons I have CLUNG to what I wanted for my life that have been the very hardest, the most unfair, the most painful. Can we trust today in His goodness, and therefore give Him without hindrance our lives for whatever HE wants?

Even today? How beautiful are the crumpled ones, in His loving hands.