I mentioned Oswald Chambers in yesterday's blog. He is known for his classic devotional book My Utmost for His Highest. Several years ago, my sister gave me an Oswald Chambers devotional journal that was based on his book. I take the journal out from time to time. It's fascinating to read both Chambers' words and my journal entries from 1998.
One day, the reading was about spiritual leakage, and how our passion for God can just slip away a little bit at a time. Normally, my problem is not some huge decision or failing. Instead, my typical spiritual problem is simple leakage. Maybe it's boredom or laziness or a lack of discipline or carelessness. Whatever it is, though, it often creeps in without much notice or fanfare. And before I know it, I've lost my vision and my intimacy with God.
Normally, the spiritual leakage is so uneventful that I don't even realize that it's happening.
Chambers' counsel at this point uses the specific language that eventually became the title for his book. His advice is sound:
If we lose the vision, we alone are responsible,
and the way we lose the vision is by spiritual leakage.
The only way to be obedient to the heavenly vision
is to give our utmost for God's highest,
and this can only be done
by continually and resolutely recalling the vision.
The test is the sixty seconds of every minute,
and the sixty minutes of every hour,
not our times of prayer and devotional meetings.
According to Chambers, it's our moment by moment living and deciding that keeps us anchored to God. As important as our devotional times are, they aren't enough to keep us close. Recalling the vision - and staying close to it - happens as we live.
Often, however, just the opposite happens. Often, leakage happens. And, often, the leakage is so slow and so small that we barely notice. Then, when we look for the passion, the vitality, the energy, the commitment, the vision - it's nowhere to be found.
And we might wonder what happened . . .
Likely, what happened was a slow spiritual leak that went unnoticed. Over time, we simply became empty.
Most of us fail, I think, not through some great fall . . . but from simple carelessness and lack of interest and boredom.
And according to Oswald Chambers, the only way to keep that terrible thing from happening is to recall the vision . . . and to recall it continually and resolutely.
My simple hope is to keep that vision from God at the heart of my living moment by moment by moment . . .