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The Drawing Of The Father
"No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him." John vi. 44.
"When God draws me, the issue of my will comes in at once--- will I react on the revelation which God gives---will I come to Him? Discussion on spiritual matters is an impertinence. Never discuss with anyone when God speaks. Belief is not an intellectual act; belief is a moral act whereby I deliberately commit myself. Will I dump myself down absolutely on God and transact on what He says? If I will, I shall find I am based on Reality that is as sure as God's throne.
In preaching the gospel, always push an issue of will. Belief must be the will to believe. There must be a surrender of the will, not a surrender to persuasive power, a deliberate launching forth on God and on what He says until I am no longer confident in what I have done, I am confident only in God. The hindrance is that I will not trust God, but only my mental understanding. As far as feelings go, I must stake all blindly. I must will to believe, and this can never be done without a violent effort on my part to disassociate myself from my old ways of looking at things, and by putting myself right over to Him.
Every man is made to reach out beyond his grasp. It is God who draws me, and my relationship to Him in the first place is a personal one, not an intellectual one. I am introduced into the relationship by the miracle of God and my own will to believe, then I begin to get an intelligent appreciation and understanding of the wonder of the transaction."
-Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest pg. 357
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This really blew me away. It is God who draws us, and when He calls we must not discuss it; we must go. No time to sit and decide whether or not He has called; He has, and we must obey. Belief is not understanding of the mind, but of the heart. Will we abandon unto Him? We must forsake all; we must pick up our cross. He has left it up to us to decide, but it is He that will do it. And He will so get us out of the way that it is only obvious that it is He that did it, and not anything that we accomplished. We pray to fall in love; He draws us, and then He shows us what He has done by gently revealing to us the Wisdom of His ways and giving us His Spirit of understanding. Then all that we can to is praise Him. Oh, and the Love that comes with understanding! I think that the heavenly pattern for love is that when we love someone, we seek to know everything there is to know about the person. We note the things they love, the things they hate, the things that make their eyes shine, or make them laugh. Our eyes follow theirs to see what they care about. We love to listen to them talk about the things they delight in. We seek to know the things that make them weep so that we might weep with them. And we do not study them just for head knowledge about them! We take it to our heart, and then the end result is meant to be one thing: greater love.
Such is how our relationship with God is meant to be. That our love "may abound still more and more in knowledge and discernment." That we may approve the things that are excellent!!!
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