CHRISTIAN WORKER?

Having been in Christian service for more than two decades, I would like to share some quotes and concepts that have served, warned, encouraged and focused me in my efforts to help others...

QUOTES
by Oswald Chambers
from his classic devotional: "My Utmost for His Highest"

  • If you have received a call to ministry from the Lord, you will know that the need is never the call. The need is the opportunity.
  • Many workers have gone out with high courage and fine impulses…but no intimate fellowship with Jesus--and before long, they are crushed.
  • Our Lord's first obedience was to God…not to the needs of men.
  • Be devoted to a person…not a cause
  • Workers break down because their desire is for their own whiteness, & not for God.
  • Bible characters fell on their strong points, not their weak ones
  • To say that we are called to preach holiness or sanctification, is to get into a side eddy. We are called to proclaim Christ.
  • The mainspring of Paul's service is not love for men, but love for Jesus Christ. O.C.
  • Jesus Christ is interested in every kind of man there is. O.C.
  • God continually introduces us to people for whom we have no affinity…and unless we are worshipping God, the most natural thing to do is to treat them heartlessly--to give them a text, like a jab of a spear---or leave them with a rapped-out counsel of God and go. A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to our Lord.
  • Before God's message can liberate other souls, the liberation must be real in you
  • My worth to God in public is what I am in private.
  • Beware of anything that competes with your loyalty to Christ. O.C.

o GOD'S LEADING

  • Never try to help God fulfill His Word.
    Oswald Chambers
  • What hinders me from hearing God's voice is that I am taken up with other things.
    Oswald Chambers
  • If our hopes are being disappointed now, it means they are being purified.
    Oswald Chambers
  • Fretting springs from our determination to get our own way. All our fretting and worry is caused by calculating without God.
    Oswald Chambers
  • Faith never knows where it is being led. But it knows the One doing the leading.
    Oswald Chambers
  • “The thing is to understand…to see what God really wishes me to do…to find the idea for which I can live and die.”
    Soren Keirkegard

o SUBMISSION and SURRENDER

  • "Hold everything in your hands lightly…otherwise it hurts when God has to pry your fingers open, to make you let it go…"
    Corrie Ten Boom

  • If you do not cut the moorings, God will have to break them by a storm and send you out.
    Oswald Chambers
  • Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness.
    Oswald Chambers
  • Sanctification will cost an intense narrowing of all OUR interests, and an immense broadening of all our interests in God. Sanctification means intense concentration on God's point of view.
    Oswald Chambers
  • The test of spiritual concentration is bringing the imagination into captivity.
    Oswald Chambers
  • Imagination is the greatest gift God has given us & it ought to be devoted entirely to Him.
    Oswald Chambers
  • We are never free from the recurring tide of this encroachment: the deceitfulness of wealth and the lust of other things.
    Oswald Chambers
  • Troubles nearly always make us look to God.
    Oswald Chambers
  • You may see Jesus wreck a life, before He saves it.
    Oswald Chambers
  • The one thing for which we are being disciplined, is to know that God is real.
    Oswald Chambers

PRESSURES ON PASTORS

"From my own observation…when we put leaders on the front line--pastors, priests, missionaries, other public representatives--we demand too much. We exert extraordinary pressures on them to fit into our preconceptions of spirituality. When they fall short, instead of gracious acceptance and forgiveness, we respond with rejection. We give them no chance to "limp". I caution such leaders to surround themselves with hypersensitive friends and associates who can detect signals of damaging stress and bring about whatever changes are necessary to redistribute those pressures.

To my great surprise, my research proved that the subtle, less dramatic forces of REPETITIVE stress holds greater peril for my patients than the obvious hazards of laceration or burning. Similarly, we must not overlook the cumulative effect of hundreds of everyday stresses in the lives of pastors: incessant phone calls, a fractious board, financial pressures, the burdens of counseling, loneliness, the vulnerability of public speaking, social ostracism. These represent far greater dangers than spectacular crises in the church."
Dr. Paul Brand… from his book "In His Image"

NOT A CHRISTIAN?
I am so grateful you would choose to visit my site…thank you for your interest in my ministry. Make no mistake though, my ministry efforts are not geared toward self improvement, or even recovery from life controlling problems. Though such outcomes are worthy goals, I view them as beneficial by-products or consequences of the real point! :::click to read more::

CHRISTIAN AND STRUGGLING WITH YOUR WEAKNESSES?
I have learned years ago that I cannot solve people's problems…and I have plenty of my own weaknesses and faults to work on. However…:::click to read more::