Forgive my obsession with Oswald Chambers. I have read My Utmost For His Highest fairly regularly for over 25 years. I’m now seeing things he said that I honestly don’t remember, despite the fact that I’ve likely read this exact passage at least 20 times over that span. Part of this is just where I am right now, but part of it is the filter I saw everything through in my little well defined evangelical lens. If it didn’t appear in that lens, it either didn’t exist or it was not worth considering. I read and taught scripture that way, through that smallish lens, and I apparently read Oswald Chambers that way.

This selection is the last part of the devotional for February 25. Bolded parts are my emphasis. The rest of it is good, too, but these lines sort of slapped me in the face this time around. Remember…this is a guy who died at age 43, in 1917. Passages like this one make him sound like he is still alive today, wrestling with the same things many of us are presently wrestling with. Enjoy.

The institutional church’s idea of a servant of God is not at all like Jesus Christ’s idea. His idea is that we serve Him by being the servants of others. Jesus Christ actually “out-socialized” the socialists. He said that in His kingdom the greatest one would be the servant of all (see Matthew 23:11 ). The real test of a saint is not one’s willingness to preach the gospel, but one’s willingness to do something like washing the disciples feet,” that is, being willing to do those things that seem unimportant in human estimation but count as everything to God. It was Paul’s delight to spend his life for God’s interests in other people, and he did not care what it cost. But before we will serve, we stop to ponder our personal and financial concerns. “What if God wants me to go over there? And what about my salary? What is the climate like there? Who will take care of me? A person must consider all these things.” All that is an indication that we have reservations about serving God. But the apostle Paul had no conditions or reservations. Paul focused his life on Jesus Christ’s idea of a New Testament saint; that is, not one who merely proclaims the gospel, but one who becomes broken bread and poured-out wine in the hands of Jesus Christ for the sake of others.