Tag: The Cure of Souls

Sifting

September 28th 

“”Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Luke 22:31-32 (NIV)

…be prepared first to be dealt with by God…

Set a thief to catch a thief, that is the method of the world; but when God Almighty sends a worker He sends one whom He has literally turned inside out, in a spiritual sense, one whose disposition He has altered and allowed the man or woman to know what He has done. There is no false knowledge in that worker’s life. That worker goes straight for one purpose, the conviction of the sinner, not to show his discernment, but that he may bring the soul out of its duplicity, out of its hypocrisy, into the light of God.

One more thing—if you are going to work for the cure of souls, you cannot choose the kind of souls you are going to work with, and when God brings you face to face with a two-­faced life, an inwardly hypocritical life, then you will understand what the examination of God’s Spirit is in you.

from Oswald Chambers’ The Cure of Souls

…and here’s Michael Card’s The Things We Leave Behind on Youtube and Spotify

Some of us are a little slow, okay?

September 11th 

 “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” 

Luke 24:25 (ESV)

How did Jesus Christ deal with the foolishness of the stupidity of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus? These disciples were good, simple souls, honest and true, but they had become stupid, blinded by their own grief, their own point of view.

The word “fool” is often used in the New Testament, but not always in the same way, here it means literally, “My little imbecile children, when will you believe all that the prophets have spoken?” This is stupidity of a totally different order, a stupidity that Jesus deals with very pointedly, but very patiently. It is a stupidity that has obliterated the interpretation of the word of God because of personal grief and perplexity. Is Jesus Christ coming to you by the Spirit and saying, “My little imbecile child, when will you believe what I say?” Is there any particular thing in your life, Christian worker, that you have become slow of heart to believe? Do not let the stupidity grow. Get the word of God for it.

Oh, if there ever was a need, it is for people to search and ransack this Book and get at what God says. How much time have you given to finding out what the Bible has to say? An hour a day? “Oh, I cannot give an hour.” Half an hour? “Oh no, I cannot give that.” Five minutes? “Yes, I could do that.” Well, have you done it? Five minutes a day out of twenty- four hours to find out what the word of God says!

No wonder God says, “My people doth not consider.”

from Oswald Chambers’ The Cure of Souls (Ch. 7)