March 1984
THOUGHTS ON: THE AIM AND CONTENT WE PASS ON TO YOUNG PEOPLE
"We are not saved to be "channels only", but to be sons and daughters of God." Oswald Chambers
"The end of life is hid in the word obey." H. Drummond
Drummond did not say "obedience is the end of life". We, clearly, from all that I can understand of the Bible and of Christ, the aim is to be more than to do. "To be the sons and daughters of God" and consequently to do God's will.
"Christ was his own message." O.Chambers
Our task is not to make God's Kingdom, but to be God's kingdom. The fruit of this quality of "being" is a remade human society.
Thus one can say that:
- our aims is to be sons and daughters of God;
- our task is to find out and do God's will, to be God's Kingdom;
- the fruit is a remaking of the world, because we live God's Kingdom.
What do we pass on to others as being the food of life?
"Many are spending and being spent in the work for Jesus Christ, but they do not walk with Him. Live a natural life of absolute dependence on Jesus Christ... The certainty that I know I do not know - that is the secret of going with Jesus." O. Chambers
Both the target and the food are "absolute dependence on Jesus Christ". In fact the four standards and the quiet time have as purpose to lead us to absolute dependence on Jesus Christ.
In our teaching it is important that we emphasis clearly enough the difference between tools and the target. For if the four standards become the target, a deadening moralism - with a flood of unwritten rules - ensues.
Well understood, the 4 standards should be an introduction - a meeting ground and a starting point - to the infinitely_richer code of the Bible. (It is a temptation to let them replace the Bible as reference point). Just as the quiet time is meant to be a support to prayer - an aid to make it specific and practical. (But here too, 'the temptation is for the quiet time to replace prayer).
If we let the tool become a target, we are in danger of feeding those around us on a starvation diet. One result is that the knowledge of the Bible, prayer and a deepening relationship to Christ, get left by the wayside. If you find insufficient food where you are, you will soon move elsewhere to find it.
The marks of starvation are always painful to see. What must it do to Christ:
If we learnt - and were capable to help others to learn - how to feed better on the Bible, we could with confidence send people into the field to live by guidance. Without each a feeding source, we risk sending them to a likely spiritual death. Also, it is through the Bible that a love of God is developed. "If ye love me, ye shall keep my commandments."
I have a tremendous love and loyalty to MRA. Mostly for noble reasons, but partly too because it is my security and what often justifies my existence. Can I really love Him? I feel so powerless to love anything but the dreams I have about myself.
"1 deliberately lay my life out for Him and His interest in other people, not for a cause... Many of us are after our own ends... If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to Serve." O. Chambers
Ambition serves a cause; humility Christ and the people of all sorts which he is interested in. Which do I serve and thus pass on?
Together with food, do I pass on a clear sense of the objective?
"My objective, writes Peter Howard in a letter, is at the end of twenty four hours, twenty four days, or twenty four years, certain definite people will have grown in the Lord adequately for the need of the age. Our normal day 100% consists of thinking, planning, praying and pouring ourselves out that those people should grow, and of praising God as they do grow. It is not an ambition, it is a commitment. You never need lose heart. There is no such thing as failure in it. There is only pain if people don't grow. Nothing a person does or does not do can make me peel off from my friends and the fight, but can only draw me closer to them and to the Cross.
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