June 30: Do It Now

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0630.html

Even after fifteen years of reading this daily devotional, this lesson is still hard for me to live out. "From our Lord's standpoint it does not matter whether I am defrauded or not; what does matter is that I do not defraud. ...Our insistence in proving that we are right is nearly always an indication that there has been some point of disobedience." Double ouch!!

June 29: Direction of Discipline

Today inMy Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0629.html

I have had people argue with me that the Christian is "free" to do all things. I refuse to argue back about what is 'right' or 'wrong' or 'sin'. I simply maintain that I am free to NOT do those things.

What's right or what's wrong, that's not my cue,
But rather it is, what's the WISE thing to do!!

June 28: Apprehended by God

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0628.html

June 27: The Overshadowing Personal Deliverance

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0627.html

How do you deal with unfairness? That has been a real stumbling block for me. If things weren't "fair", my blood pressure would rise and my temper would explode. Fortunately, I've read today's lesson several times over the past 15 years which has opened my eyes to these lessons as they appear in Scripture. Yes, what Chambers writes is true: "Jesus says, in effect, Do not be bothered with whether you are being justly dealt with or not. To look for justice is a sign of deflection from devotion to Him." If that statement stirs up indignation within you (like it did for me when I first read it), then all I can say is TRY IT!! I can now tell you from experience that it is the only way to live!!!

June 26: Always Now

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0626.html

The last part of this reading is the most powerful, starting with "One of the greatest proofs that you are drawing on the grace of God is that you can be humiliated without manifesting the slightest trace of anything but His grace." After you have absorbed that, read the last paragraph and chew on that a while. WARNING --- it might take all day!!!

June 25: Receiving One's Self in the Fires of Sorrow

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0625.html

This lesson is so appropriate right now to a lot of us in Martin. There is a lot of grieving going on, so it is great to think that "the way to find your self in in the fires of sorrow" so that "God will make [us] nourishment for other people."

June 24: Reconciling One's Self to the Fact of Sin

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0624.htm.

June 23: Acquaintance with Grief

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0623.html

"In our mental outlook we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin as the only explanaton as to why Jesus Christ came, and as the explanation of the grief and sorrow in life."

June 22: The Undeviating Test

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0622.html

"...do we believe this statement, that the things we criticize in others we are guilty of ourselves? [Romans 2:1] The reason we see hypocrisy and fraud and unreality in others is because they are all in our own hearts." Double OUCH!!

June 21: The Ministry of the Interior

Today in My utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0621.html

"How long is it going to take God to free us from this morbid habit of thinking about ourselves?... There is only one place where we are right, and thiat is in Christ Jesus."

June 20: Have You Come to "When" Yet

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0620.html

June 19: Service of Passionate Devotion

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0619.html

This is the KEY to true Christianity: "Jesus Christ calls service what we are to Him, not what we do for Him. Discipleship is based on devotion to Jesus Christ, not on adherence to a belief or a creed."

June 18: Don't Think Now, Take the Road

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0618.html

June 17: The Uncritical Temper

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0617.html

Ouch! This lesson reminds me of how far I need to go before I am uncritical of people, not just in my words, but also in my deepest thoughts. I hope to remember this: "Every wrong thing that I see in you, God locates in me. Every time I judge, I condemn myself."

June 16: What Do You Make of This?

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0616.html

June 15: Get a Move On

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0615.html

June 14: Get a Move On

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0614.html

At first, using your determination to learn to think like Jesus - bringing "every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" - that is the hardest part of choosing to be with Him in all aspects of life. But please don't let that stop you. It gets easier every day, and the benefits are too numerous to mention!!!

June 13: Getting There

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0613.html

Chew on this amazing sentence: "Where the selective affinity dies and the sanctified abandon lives." I had to sit and think on that one a while before I could even go on to the rest of the lesson. Oh, but Oswald didn' stop there. There's also "The one mark of a saint is the moral originality which springs from abandonment to Jesus Christ." Deep stuff!!

June 12: Getting There

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0612.html

"Spiritual measles" - hmmm. You'll just have to read today's lesson to understand that one.

June 11: Getting There

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0611.html

An amazing thing happened once the mindset of my life was simply to KNOW Jesus! Instead of striving to obey rules, rules, rules (that was my teenage impression of Christianity), the steps of living the way the Bible instructs became so incredibly easy. Instead of every decision involving a conscious choice of obedience or rebellion, following the way of Jesus now seems absolutely natural. I finally completely understood "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free!"

June 10: The Next Best Thing to Do

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0610.html

June 9: The Next Best Thing to Do

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0609.html

I'm sitting here pondering how much time I spend rationalizing why I shouldn't ask for God's help in so many things, when that time would have been so much better spent just dropping all pretenses and humbly praying to Him. May I willing be like the pauper and unashamed to beg. "Blessed are the paupers in spirit."

June 8: What Next?

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0608.html

"When you know you should do a thing, and do it, immediately you know more." Unfortunately, we don't have the privilege of picking and choosing which of God's directives we will obey -- not if we want to develop an ever closer intimacy with Him. "Beware of harking back to what you were once when God wants you to be something you have never been."

June 7: Don't Slack Off

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://ww.myutmost.org/06/0607.html


"There is no snare or any danger of infatuation or pride in intercession; it is a hidden ministry that brings forth fruit whereby the Father is glorified." Intercessory prayer is the one area where we least need to worry if our motives are right, but because we are humans who gravitate to outward displays that impress other people, we struggle to make the time to intercede. May we all simply strive to KNOW JESUS, realizing that "The disciple who abides in Jesus is the will of God, and his apparently free choices are God's foreordained decrees."

June 6: Work Out What God Works In

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0606.html

"Obstinacy is an unintelligent "wadge" that refuses to be enlightened: the only thing is for it to be blown up with dynamite, and the dynamite is obedience to the Holy Spirit."

June 5: God's Say-So

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0605.html

"The Lord is my helper, I will not fear -- ... This does not mean that I will not be tempted to fear, but I will remember God's say-so."

June 4: The Never-Failing God

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0604.html

I have learned over the years of reading My Utmost that the passages that I don't seem to understand are the areas where I most need to grow in the Lord. Chambers says something in today's lesson that I don't exactly understand: "Am I learning to say not what God says, but to say something after I have heard what He says?" Hopefully, I going to grow in this area very soon!!

June 3: The Secret of the Lord

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0603.html

The NIV says, "The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes His covenant known to them." If we want to be true intercessors, we have to develop such a close relationship with Jesus that He trusts us to tell us God's Secrets.

As Chambers says, "If we are saved and sanctified God guides us by our ordinary choices, and if we are going to choose what He does not want, He will check, and we much heed. Whenever there is doubt, stop at once. Never reason it out and say --'I wonder why I shouldn't?' "

June 2: What Are You Haunted By?

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0602.html

How I wish that everyone would at least try to live in this relationship with God for a season. Most of us don't really trust God with those things so important to us that we are afraid that God might take them away. Please, just try Him!! It is amazingly wonderful to get to the place where "if we are haunted by God, nothing else can get in, no cares, no tribulation, no anxieties."

June 1: The Staggering Question

Today in My Utmost for His Highest: http://www.myutmost.org/06/0601.html

This lesson came at just the right time in my life to keep me from giving out well-meaning, but wrong, advice. The bottom line is TRUST GOD. He WILL be faithful to direct us and fix us. We have to remember that we can't do it ourselves!!