Good Morning Friends,
Yesterday I recommended to you a book by Harry Emerson Fosdick and today I have another recommendation for you. It is the book by Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest. And it still grips readers today nearly a century after it was first published. It refuses to flatter us. It refuses to soften Jesus’ demands. It refuses to let us settle for a Christianity of mild inspiration. Chambers speaks as one who has died to self and now calls us to the same funeral, the “white funeral” where the old life is buried and the new life rises. People return to this book because it exposes the heart and then heals it. It confronts the will and then liberates it. It reminds us that discipleship is not a hobby but a surrender, not a theory but a participation in the life of God Himself. We often imagine surrender as a dramatic moment, a crisis, a white‑hot flash of consecration. But the deeper question is quieter, more searching: Where do I still insist on being my own master? Oswald Chambers grounds much of his writing in Philippians 1:20, noting that the believer’s “determined purpose” is to magnify Christ. His core thesis: True discipleship requires absolute, irrevocable surrender of the will to God. This surrender is not intellectual assent, emotional warmth, or religious activity, it is a decisive yielding of the self to Christ’s life. The Spirit rarely shouts this question; He whispers it into the places we prefer not to look. So, What Part Of Your Life Still Resists The Gentle, Relentless Pressure Of Christ’s Lordship?
Scripture:
Philippians 1:20 — Summary
Paul declares that his deepest longing and unwavering expectation is this: that Christ will be magnified in his life whether through living or through dying. His only concern is that nothing in him would ever cause shame, hesitation, or resistance to Christ’s lordship. He wants every part of his life to be a stage on which Christ’s glory is unmistakably displayed. In other words: Paul’s surrendered life is the canvas on which Christ paints His glory.
Psalm 139:23–24 — The Prayer of Surrender
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Luke 9:23–24 — The Call to Daily Yielding
“If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.”
Genesis 12:1 — The Call That Strips Before It Clarifies
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
Message: From Genesis to Revelation, God forms His people through a pattern: He calls, He strips, He fills, He sends. Abraham leaves his country before he knows the destination. Israel walks into a wilderness before it sees the Promised Land. Mary consents to bear Christ before she understands the cost. The disciples follow Jesus before they grasp the cross. This is the divine rhythm. It is surrender first, clarity later. Chambers understood this with piercing simplicity: God does not tell you what He is going to do, He reveals to you who He is. And once you see Him, obedience becomes not duty but delight. Here grace dismantles the illusion of self‑rule. Here grace prompts obedience that is nothing less than participation in God’s new‑creation life. But Chambers presses even further concluding that the only life Christ can fill is the one we have emptied. Sanctification is not polishing the self; it is Christ taking over the self. It is not moral improvement but divine participation, the life of the risen Jesus expressing itself through ordinary human clay. The Spirit does not ask us to be extraordinary; He asks us to be yielded. Today, Christ asks again: Will you give your utmost for His highest, not in dramatic gestures, but in the quiet places where your will still clings to control? For it is in those hidden corners that resurrection begins.
And So, this devotional introduces why My Utmost for His Highest endures: its uncompromising call to surrender, its vision of sanctification as participation in Christ’s life, and its heart‑exposing questions that lead believers into deeper discipleship. It weaves biblical themes of call, stripping, filling, and sending, the divine rhythm of transformation. Thirteen Million people have purchased this book. Check it out now that I have given you a taste.
Pray O Lord, that You take me where I do not want to go, and make me what I cannot make myself. Pray You break the last stronghold of my self‑will, that Christ may reign without rival. Pray You let Your life surge through mine in quiet obedience, hidden faithfulness, and joyful surrender. Pray You do in me what only Your Spirit can do, until my utmost is spent for Your highest. Amen.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 