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  OUR GOD-GIVEN PURPOSE
  by Oswald Chambers
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Summary: Our God-given purpose is to fulfill our created purpose and
bring praise to God's glory, and we must prioritize the passion for
Christ over the passion for souls to truly follow God.

Topics: "Christian Living", "Gods Glory"
Scripture References: Matthew 13:58, 2 Corinthians 4:10, Galatians 2:20, Ephesians 1:12, Philippians 2:14

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Oswald Chambers preaches about the purpose of believers in Christ,
emphasizing that our primary aim is to bring praise to God's glory by
trusting in Him. He warns against focusing solely on winning souls or
doing good deeds, as our true passion should be for Christ Himself, not
just for Christian work. Chambers highlights the importance of
manifesting the life of Jesus in our daily struggles and challenges,
showing that our response to disagreeable situations reveals whether we
are truly reflecting Christ's character in our lives.

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CONTENT
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" ...that we  who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of
His glory." Eph 1:12

"The joy of anything... is to fulfill its created purpose: 'that we 
who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.' (Eph
1:12)

"We are not here to win souls, to do good to others. That is the natural
outcome, but it is not our aim, and this is where so many of us cease to
be followers. We will follow God as long as He makes us a blessing to
others, but when He does not, we will not follow.

"Suppose our Lord had measured His life by whether or not He was a
blessing to others. Why, He was a 'stone of stumbling' to thousands,
actually to His own neighbors, to His own nation... and in His own
country 'He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief'
(Matt. 13:58).

"If our Lord had measured His life by its actual results, He would have
been full of misery. We get switched off when instead of following God
we follow Christian work and workers. We are much more concerned over
the passion for souls than the passion for Christ....

"The passion for souls in not a New Testament idea at all, but religious
commercialization. When we are taken up with this passion, the joy of
the Lord is never ours but only an excitable joy which always leaves a
snare behind."

The habit of enjoying the disagreeable

"That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal
flesh." 2 Cor. 4:10

"...It is not a question of being saved from hell, but of being saved in
order to manifest the life of the Son of God in our mortal flesh, and it
is the disagreeable things which make us exhibit whether or not we are
manifesting His life. Do I manifest the essential sweetness of the Son
of God, or the essential irritation of 'myself' apart from Him?

'The only thing that will enable me to enjoy the disagreeable is the
keen enthusiasm of letting the life of the Son of God manifest itself in
me. No matter how disagreeable a thing may be, say 'Lord, I am delighted
to obey Thee in this matter,' and instantly the Son of God will press to
the front, and there will be manifested in my human life that which
glorifies Jesus.

"There must be no debate. The moment you obey the light, the Son of God
presses through you in that particular; but if you debate you grieve the
Spirit of God. You must keep yourself [spiritually] fit to let the life
of the Son of God be manifested, and you cannot keep yourself fit if you
give way to self-pity. Our circumstances are the means of manifesting
how wonderfully perfect and extraordinarily pure the Son of God is. The
thing that ought to make the heart beat is a new way of manifesting the
Son of God. It is one thing to choose the disagreeable, and another
thing to go into the disagreeable by God's engineering. If God puts you
there, He is amply sufficient." (May 14)

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Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/oswald-chambers/our-god-given-purpose/
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