I was looking at an Oswald Chambers lecture recently entitled, Arriving at Myself. You may know Chambers from his enduring work, “My Utmost for His Highest”, a daily devotional book. Chambers’ wife wrote down many of his sermons and classroom lectures to seminary students, leaving us a rich trove of his knowledge and wisdom. This lecture hit me because, like so much of his writings, it seemed so relevant; it was delivered in 1915 , but it could have been written yesterday.

Chambers is one of my favorite writers because his every thought brings you back to Christ. He pinpoints even subtle attitudes of secular thinking, and confronts them with truth. There you are, confronted with the words of Christ, the Godly perspective, the attitude that the Christian should have. In one hundred years the spiritual battleground has not changed so much as we think. It is just uncanny how these ideas are still around, pervading and warping our thinking.

Arriving at Myself is divided into six segments, but two of them especially made me stop and think. The first is entitled, “My Right to My Individual Self.” He explains individuality as the “husk of personality” that protects our personal life.

“But if individuality does not become transfigured by the grace of God, it becomes objectionable, egotistical and conceited, interested only in its own independence.”

We want our own ideas and our own ways from before our Christian experience to stay just where they are – but Jesus is telling us:

“If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” – Matthew 16:24

Chambers wastes no words in showing up our excuses:

“We cling to our individuality like a drowning man to a straw – ‘Of course God will recognize my individual peculiarisms and prejudices.’ “

Then Chambers compares it to God’s call:

“If we are to be disciples of Jesus Christ, our independent right to our individual self must go, and go altogether.”

It must go, and go altogether. For an example, look at some of the things in Ephesians 5 we are told to change that many of us don’t change because “we just are that way”:

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person – such a man is an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. – Ephesians 5:3 – 5 (Italics mine)

Ouch. Ouch. I fail at both getting all these things out of my life and at replacing them with thanksgiving. I don’t make enough effort to always reflect that I belong to Him.

In college, I roomed at one time with a girl who had advertised for a Christian roommate. I came in one evening to find she was sitting at the kitchen table with a friend, both telling the filthiest sex jokes they could come up with. I took her aside in the hallway and called her on it, but she told me, “I’m a Scorpio, I can’t help it.” (Scorpio is the astrological sign associated with sexuality.) In other words, she was saying, “I want God, but He can’t have my fun, and I don’t care if you’re offended by it, either. I’ve found my excuse, and I’m keeping my individual independence.”

The next section cuts to the deepest point: “The Recognition of My Personal Self.” Its theme is Matthew 10:39 –

He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.

Chambers’ first sentence clearly shows what he wants us to recognize about the personal self:

We have to recognize that our personal life is meant for Jesus Christ.

But will we give it to Jesus or keep holding on to and examining the experiences, thoughts and emotions that He already knows?

It amazed me that Chambers mentions how this is the opposite of the “modern jargon” of self realization. Evidently people have been trying to look within and draw their feelings out to find the “answers” well before Transcendental Meditation and the various New Age regimens. By giving your personal self to Christ, the Holy Spirit will help you remember what you need to know and better yet, lead you toward Jesus, His love, His cleansing and real answers.

Some methods pull up too many emotions or traumas for a person to handle at one time. It can be frightening and injurious. The Holy Spirit shows you only what you can handle of the things that have been buried deep inside, in the order that you can handle it. Having experienced God’s loving, gentle healing I would never want another method. In the past I have seen a therapist – they can be immensely helpful – but I prayed that God would guide those sessions so they would not become overwhelming.

Chambers warns against using Christian service as a cover. Jesus is not just looking for our giving in service, but in giving our very selves. Chambers writes,

“The great dominating recognition is that my personal self belongs to Jesus….The point is, will I surrender my individual life entirely to Him?”

Chambers goes on to explain that this is laying at His feet not just our sins, but good things. Are our hopes and dreams subject to Him or do we keep them as our own? Are our loved ones in His hands or do we clutch them in ours? Several people in my life have died at an early age, and I have had to learn in my sorrow that they were not mine to keep.

I hope the last paragraph grips you as it did me as Chambers ends by gathering up all our difficulties in life and says that at their root, they are one and the same:

“Jesus Christ asks us to give up the best we have got to Him, our right to ourselves. There is only this one crisis, and in the majority of lives it has never been reached, we are brought up to it again and again, and every time we go back. Self-realisation must be renounced in order that Jesus Christ may realize Himself in us.”