"Study" - OC

[Jim Watt]

“*TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE” MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

*Tel: 253-517-9195 - Email: jmbetter at gmail.com*

*Web: www.2rbetter.org*

October 14, 2011


 “*STUDY” p. 404 - From “DISCIPLES INDEED” - Oswald Chambers - 2011-10-14*


 *INTRODUCTION - Oswald Chambers' sermon class at the Bible Training College
was a combination of lecture and practical experience. Since each student
had to prepare and present a sermon before the other members of the class,
no visitors were permitted. Oswald wanted everyone to be on an equal
footing, as well as being sympathetic listeners, knowing their turn to speak
was coming.*

* Because of the give and take nature of the class, Oswald's lectures were
short and practical. Rather than giving a detailed process to follow in
sermon preparation, he sought to motivate students to think, study and
prepare. He often stressed that the behavior and words of the person who
preaches are inseparable.*

* From the BTC Journal articles, Mrs. Chambers selected thoughts on
twenty-one topics and published them as Disciples Indeed. There is a
surprising amount of material that appears here and nowhere else in the
books by Oswald Chambers.*


 *STUDY*


 Study to begin with can never be easy; the determination to form systematic
mental habits is the only secret. Don't begin anything with reluctance.

Beware of any cleverness that keeps you from working. No one is born a
worker; men are born poets and artists, but we have to make ourselves
“laborers.”

The discipline of our mind is the one domain God has put in our keeping. It
is impossible to be of any use to God if we are lazy. God won't cure
laziness; we have to cure it.

More danger arises from physical laziness (which is call “brain fag”) than
from almost any other thing.

Inspiration won't come irrespective of study, but only because of it. Don't
trust to inspiration; use your own “axe” (Psalm 74:5). Work! Think! Don't
luxuriate on the mount!

The demand for inspiration is the measure of our laziness. Do the things
that don't come by inspiration.

It is difficult to get yourself under control to do work you are not used
to; the time spent seems wasted at first, but get at it again. The thing
that hinders control is impulse.

Your mind can never be under control unless you bring it there; there is no
gift for control. You may pray till Doomsday, but your brain will never
concentrate if you don't make it concentrate.

In the most superficial matters put yourself under control, your own
control. Be as scrupulously punctual in your private habits as you would be
in a Government office.

Don't insult God by telling Him He forgot to give you any brains when you
were born. We all have brains; what we need is *work*.

It is better for your mental life to study several subjects at once rather
than one alone. What exhausts the brain is not using it, but abusing it by
nervous waste in other directions. As a general rule, the brain can never do
too much.

You can never work by impulse; you can only work by steady, patient plod. It
is the odd five minutes that tells.

To learn a thing is different from thinking out a problem. The only way to
learn a thing is to keep at it uninterruptedly, day after day, whether you
feel like it or not; and you will wake up one morning and find the thing is
learned.

Beware of succumbing to failure as inevitable; make it the stepping-stone to
success.

In beginning to study a new subject, you do it by repeated starts until you
get your mind into a certain channel; after that the subject becomes full of
sustained interest.

Beware of mental lounging. Whenever we see notebooks for study, or work of
any kind waiting to be done, we either go into dreamland, or we gather
everything around us in an enormously bustling style; but we never do good
solid work. It is nothing in the world but a habit of nerves which we have
to check, and take time to see that we do.


 *A subject has never truly gripped you until*

*you are mentally out of breath with it.*


 We have no business to go on impulses spiritually; we have to form the mind
“which was also in Christ Jesus.” People say their impulses are their guide
- “I feel impelled to do this, or that;” - that may be sufficient indication
that they should not do it.


 *Remember, there must always be a mechanical outlet*

*for spiritual inspiration.*


 We infect our surroundings with our own personal character. If I make my
study a place of stern industry, it will act as an inspiration every time I
go into it; but if I am lazy there, the place will revenge itself on me.

Note two things about your intelligence: first, when your intelligence feels
numb, quit at once, and play or sleep; for the time being the brain must
recuperate; second, when you feel a fidget of associated ideas, take
yourself sternly in hand and say, “You shall study, so it's no use whining.”

Mental stodge is different. Mental stodge is the result of one of three
forms of over-feeding - too much dinner, too much reading, or too much
meetings.

Irritation may be simply the result of not using your brain. Remember, the
brain gets exhausted when it is not doing anything.

 Beware of saying, “I haven't time to read the Bible, or to prayer”; say
rather, “I haven't disciplined myself to do these things.”

 Before any habit is formed you must put yourself under mechanical laws of
obedience, and the higher the emotion started by the Spirit of God, the
keener must be the determination to commit yourself.

 If we have no system of work we shall easily come to think we are working
when we are only thinking of working; that we are busy when we are only
engaged.


 *The more we talk about work, the less we work,*

*and the same with prayer.*


  We must be willing to do in the spiritual domain what we have to do in the
natural domain if we want to develop, viz., discipline ourselves.

 Vision is an inspiration to stand us in good stead in the drudgery of
discipline; the temptation is to despise the discipline.


 *Enchain your body to habitual obedience.*


  Beware of being haunted by a suppressed dissatisfaction with the
arrangements of your actual life - *get* the right program! The secret of
slacking is just here.


 *NOTE**: *The insights of Oswald Chambers can be shocking. His students in
the Bible Training College of London, England from 1911-1915 were often
brought up short by sayings as above! They would catch him at meal-times to
argue over these shocking statements! He would smile and say, “Put it on a
back burner; it will come clear after a while!


 As a boy in Scotland he showed little of the tremendous discipline that
characterized his later years, starting about his 18th year in London. His
biography by David McCasland, “Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to
God” - is worth its weight in gold. It is the third biography written on
this man, and is the most illuminating.


 For those of you who fit into his article on “Study” - “The Complete Works
of Oswald Chambers” compiled by David McCasland will be a fitting life
investment. On the “Net” it can be often found for under $40.00 - 1492 pages
of over 50 books, of which the one noted above is included.


 Oswald live 43 years, and died in 1917 as a Chaplain of the YMCA for
British Forces in Egypt during World War II - of complications that arose
from appendicitis. J.A.Watt


 *
*

*TO SUBSCRIBE - Please Email: mailing-subscribe at 2rbetter.org*


 *TO UNSUBSCRIBE - Please Email: mailing-unsubscribe at 2rbetter.org*


 *FOR ARCHIVE ARTICLES - Web:http://2rbetter.org/pipermail/mailing/ *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://2rbetter.org/pipermail/mailing/attachments/20111014/b5f42730/attachment.htm>