Oswald Chambers' Six Major Christian Disciplines for the Growing Christian
Are you looking for encouragement in the midst of difficult circumstances?
Have you ever wanted to better understand the events and experiences of your own life?
Oswald Chambers offers just such encouragement and understanding as he explains how God uses six important disciplines to build strong Christian character and develop intimacy with you. Chambers, one of the most profound and beloved Bible teachers of the twentieth century, said that the reason we are all being disciplined is so that we will know that God is real.
"You cannot consecrate yourself and your friends. If at the altar your heart imagines that loving arms are still around you, and that together, lovers as lovers, and friends as friends, can enter through this mighty gate of supreme sanctification, it is a fond dream, doomed to disillusionment. Alone! Relinquish all! You cannot consecrate your children, your wife, your lover, your friend, your father, your mother, or your own life as yours. You must abandon all and fling yourself on God as a mere conscious being, and unperplexed, seeking you'll find Him. The teaching that presents consecration as giving to God our gifts, our possessions, our comrades, is a profound error. These are all abandoned, and we give up forever our right to ourselves."
Oswald Chambers, Christian Disciplines
In Christian Disciplines, Chambers concentrates on six major disciplines – or areas of concern – for the growing Christian.
- DIVINE GUIDANCE and the childlike expectation we should have when we come to God for leading.
- SUFFERING, an expected part of the Christian life and an opportunity for God's glory to be revealed.
- PERIL and how our dependence on God makes us more available to His work.
- PRAYER, an avenue to Christlikeness in its expectancy, relinquishment, and power.
- LONELINESS, or solitude, an opportunity for intimate communion with God.
- PATIENCE, an anchoring in God that holds us through the troubles and circumstances of the world.
Such disciplines are God's way of molding us, of capturing our attention so that we focus on Him and not on ourselves. They are His means for us to know Him!
