"Thinking"

[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 25, 2011


 *2011-10-24 - “THINKING” - From “Disciples Indeed” - Oswald Chambers, p.408
*


 “*For who among men knows the things of a man, save the spirit of the man,
which is in him?” *A man discovers intellectual things for himself, but he
cannot discover God by his intellect. *“ ... even so the things of God none
knows, save the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11 RV).*

* *Think of the labor and patience of men in the domain of science, and then
think of our lack of patience in endeavoring to appreciate the Atonement;
and you see the need there is for us to be conscientious in our thinking,
basing everything on the reality of the Atonement. We prefer to be average
Christians; we don't mind it having broken God's heart to save us; but we do
object to having a sleepless night while we learn to say “Thank you” to God,
so that the angels can hear us. We need to be staggered out of our shocking
indolence.


 *We have no business to limit God's revelations*

*to the bias of the human mind.*


 “I can't alter my thinking.” You can. It is actually possible to identify
your mind with the highest point of view, and to habituate yourself by
degrees to the thinking and the living in accordance with it.


 *A man's mental belief will show sooner or later*

*in his practical living.*


 If I make my life in my intellect, I will certainly delude myself that I am
as good as I think I am. “As [a man] thinks *in his heart” - *that means
“me,” as I express my thinking in actual life; *“so is he.”*

I can think out a whole system of life, reason it all out well; but it does
not necessarily make any difference to my actual life; I may think like an
angel and live like a tadpole.


 *Note the things your thinking does not account for.*


 Truth is discerned by moral obedience. There are points in our thinking
which remain obscure until a crisis arises in personal life where we ought
to obey; immediately we obey, the intellectual difficulty alters. Whenever
we have to obey, it is always in something immensely practical.

Obedience is the basis of Christ thinking. Never be surprised if there are
whole areas of thinking that are not clear; they never will be until you
obey.

Every new domain into which your personal life is introduced, necessitates a
new form of responsible intelligence.

*Watch what you say you don't understand -*

*you understand only too clearly!*


 Learn to be glad when you feel yourself a chaos, that makes you bitterly
disappointed with yourself; because from that moment you will begin to
understand, that God alone can make your “order” and “beauty.”


 *Young life must be in chaos*

*or there is no development possible.*


 Until you get an answer that satisfies your best moods only, don't stop
thinking; keep on querying God. The answers that satisfy you go all over
you, like health, or fresh air.

Don't shut up any avenue of your nature; let God come into every avenue,
every relationship; and you will find the nightmare curse of “secular and
sacred” will go.

Intellectual obstinacy produces the sealed mind - *“Jesus said unto them, If
you were blind, you would have no sin: but now you say, We see: your sin
remains” (John 9:41 RV).*

* *There is no jump into thinking; it is only done by a steady determined
facing of the facts brought by the engineering of circumstances. God always
insists that I think *where I am*. Beware of that abortion of Providence -
“If I were you ...”

With regard to other men's minds, take all you can get, whether those minds
are in flesh-and-blood editions or in books; but remember: the best you get
from another mind is not that mind's verdict, but its standpoint. Note the
writers who provoke you to do your best mentally.


 *Never cease to think, until you think things home*

*and they become character.*


 * *Very few of us are real as God is real; we are only real in spots -
awake morally and spiritually and dead intellectually, or *vice versa*;
awake intellectually and dead morally and spiritually. It takes the shaking
of God's Providence to awaken us up as whole beings; and when we are
awakened we get growing pains in moral senses, in spiritual muscles we have
never used. It is not the devil; it is *God* trying to make us appreciative
sons and daughters of His.

 Our thinking is often allowed to be anti-Christian, while our feelings are
Christian. The way I think will color my attitude towards my fellow-men.

 Always make it a practice of provoking your mind to think about what it
easily accepts. A position is not yours until you make it yours through
suffering.

 If you have ever done any thinking, you don't feel very complacent after
it; you get your first touch of pessimism; if you don't, you have never
thought clearly and truly.

 An appalling thing is that men who ignore Jesus Christ have their eyes
open, in a way many a preacher of The Gospel has not. Ibsen, for instance,
saw things clearly: he saw the inexorable results of sin, but without any
deliverance or forgiveness, because he saw things apart from the Atonement.

 The first thing that goes when you begin to think, is your theology. If you
stick too long to a theological point of view, you become stagnant, without
vitality.


 *Never try to pillory Incarnate Reason*

*by your own petty intelligence*


  *“I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now”
(John 16:12 RV).* These words are true in our mental life as well as in our
spiritual life.


 *Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong;*

*it may be a sign that he is thinking.*


  Keep the powers of your mind going full pace, always maintaining the
secret life right with God.


 *If you teach anything out of an idle intellect,*

*you will have to answer to God for it.*


  Never be distressed at the immediate result of thinking on the deep truths
of religion, because it will take of profound familiarity with such truths,
before you gain an expression sufficient to satisfy you.

 God never simply gives us an answer; He puts us on a line where it is
possible for Truth to break more and more as we go on.

 Before the mind has begun to grapple with problems, it is easy to talk;
when the mind has begun to grapple with problems, it is a humiliating thing
to talk.


 *Unless you think,*

*you will be untouched, unbroken, by the truths you utter.*


  A logical position is satisfying to the intellect, but it can never be
true to life. Logic is simply the method man's intellect follows in making
things definable to himself; but you can't define what is greater than
yourself.

 We command what we can explain; and if we bring our explanation into the
spiritual domain, we are in danger of explaining Jesus away - *“and every
spirit which annuls Jesus is not of God” (1 John 4:3 RV mg). *We have to be
intelligently more than intelligent, intellectually more than intellectual;
that is, we have to use all our wits in order not to worship our wits, but
be humble enough to worship God.

 Don't run away with the idea that everything that runs contrary to your
complacent scheme of things is of the devil.

 As you go on with God, He will give you thoughts that are a bit too big for
you. God will never leave a servant of His with ideas he can easily express;
He will always express through him more than he can grasp.


 *It takes a long time to get rid of atheism in thinking.*


 *NOTE**: *What is *your* “take” on the above?


 Mine is that I am reading the 32nd chapter of Proverbs! It is like the book
of Acts, which was *not* finished at the 28th chapter, but has continued
being added unto.


 Oswald Chambers wife after her husband's death at 43, chose 21 of his short
addresses to Missionary Bible College Students in London, England from
1911-15, before they preached in front of one another in homiletic class. No
visitors were permitted because of the sensitive nature of such a class.


 The short, pungent addresses given by the Principal at this time - had a
disturbing effect in the short run on the students - but in the long run -
deeply endeared him to their hearts.


 The best way to enhance one's understanding of the author of this address
is to read his biography - “Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God”, 1993, by
David McCasland. J.A.Watt



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