#oswaldchambers

all the rest is reputation.

What God looks at is what we are in the dark—

the imaginations of our minds;

the thoughts of our heart;

the habits of our bodies;

these are the things that mark us in God’s sight.

“February 10

“Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things . . . .” ISAIAH 40:26 The people of God in Isaiah’s time had starved their imagination by looking on the face of idols. But Isaiah made them look up at the heavens; that is, he made them begin to use their imagination correctly. If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in nature and will realize that it is holy and sacred. We will see God reaching out to us in every wind that blows, every sunrise and sunset, every cloud in the sky, every flower that blooms, and every leaf that fades, if we will only begin to use our starved imagination to visualize it. The real test of spiritual focus is being able to bring your thoughts and imagination under control. Is your mind focused on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Is it your work? Is it your idea of what a servant should be, or maybe your experience of salvation and sanctification? If so, then your ability to see God is blinded. You will be powerless when faced with difficulties and will be forced to endure in darkness. If your power to see has been blinded, don’t look back on your own experiences, but look to God. It is God you need. Go beyond yourself and away from the faces of your idols and away from everything else that has been blinding your thinking, your imagination. Wake up and accept the ridicule that Isaiah gave to his people, and deliberately turn your thoughts and your eyes to God. One of the reasons for our sense of futility in prayer is that we have lost our power to visualize. We can no longer even imagine putting ourselves deliberately before God. It is actually more important to be broken bread and poured-out wine in the area of intercession than in our personal contact with others. The power of imagination is what God gives a saint so that he can go beyond himself and be firmly placed into relationships he never before experienced.

Our Lord in his teaching regarding prayer never once referred to unanswered prayer; He said that God always answers prayer. If our prayers are in the name of Jesus, that is, in accordance with His nature, the answers will not be in accordance with our nature, but with His. We are apt to forget this, and to say without thinking that God does not always answer prayer. He does every time, and when we are in close communion with Him, we realize that we have not been misled.

Whenever we stop short in prayer and say—“Well, I don’t know; perhaps it is not God’s will,” there is still another stage to go. We are not so intimately acquainted with God as Jesus was, and as He wants us to be.

Reflection Question: Am I close enough to God to recognize His answers to prayer?

Quotations taken from If You Will Ask and My Utmost for His Highest, © Discovery House Publishers

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Prayer is not to be used as the privilege of a spoiled child seeking ideal conditions in which to indulge spiritual propensities without restraint. The purpose of prayer is the maintenance of fitness in an ideal relationship with God amid conditions which ought not to be merely ideal but real. Circumstances are not to be idealized, but to be realized, while by prayer we lay hold on God and He unites us into His consciousness.

Prayer is the vital breath of Christians; not the thing that makes us alive, but the evidence that we are alive.

Reflection Question: Do I pray so that I will be spiritually fit or do I throw spiritual fits when I pray?