My Utmost For His Highest.

One of my fellow staff members spoke about this devotional in class the other day and since then I have been reading it and letting it guide my prayers for the day. The devotional is called "My Utmost For His Highest" and it is by Oswald Chambers, who I guess is some old guy who was pretty smart. You can find it online by this web-site http://utmost.org/.

The reason I bring this up is because today's devotional is really good and I just felt like it was something that needed to be shared. So here it is. (Also, when he says "missionary" I believe that he is talking about all Christians because we are to be living as missionaries in an unbelieving world.)

. . . they went forth for His name’s sake . . . —3 John 7

Our Lord told us how our love for Him is to exhibit itself when He asked, “Do you love Me?” (John 21:17). And then He said, “Feed My sheep.” In effect, He said, “Identify yourself with Myinterests in other people,” not, “Identify Me with your interests in other people.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 shows us the characteristics of this love— it is actually the love of God expressing itself. The true test of my love for Jesus is a very practical one, and all the rest is sentimental talk.

Faithfulness to Jesus Christ is the supernatural work of redemption that has been performed in me by the Holy Spirit— “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit . . .” (Romans 5:5). And it is that love in me that effectively works through me and comes in contact with everyone I meet. I remain faithful to His name, even though the commonsense view of my life may seemingly deny that, and may appear to be declaring that He has no more power than the morning mist.

The key to the missionary’s devotion is that he is attached to nothing and to no one except our Lord Himself. It does not mean simply being detached from the external things surrounding us. Our Lord was amazingly in touch with the ordinary things of life, but He had an inner detachment except toward God. External detachment is often an actual indication of a secret, growing, inner attachment to the things we stay away from externally.

The duty of a faithful missionary is to concentrate on keeping his soul completely and continually open to the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. The men and women our Lord sends out on His endeavors are ordinary human people, but people who are controlled by their devotion to Him, which has been brought about through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now that is some good stuff! It opened my eyes to remember that everyone is loved by God and thus they need to be respected and cared for with my full effort. 

Lord, help me love better and love with your heart and not mine.