So yeah, Oswald has alot of good insights. Its pretty interesting to think that this was a statement made roughly a century ago. Wow.

"This is a day when practical work is overemphasized, and the saints who are bringing every project into captivity are criticized and told that they are not in earnest for God or for souls. True earnestness is found in obeying God, not in the inclination to serve Him that is born of undisciplined human nature. It is inconceivable, but true nevertheless, that saints are not bringing every project into captivity, but are doing work for God at the instigation of their own human nature which has not been spiritualized by determined discipline."

I know there can only be more truth to this in our culture today than there was in Chambers' day. This is only the tip of the iceberg in talking about the tangent issue of negative social standards invading the Christian life unacknowledged. Leaving that for another discussion, it is quite obvious that this issue is something that invades the personal life as well as church settings.

Although there is alot to look to in culture with makes this easier to disregard or overlook as normal, in reality it is an aspect of sin nature rather than a socially bred ill.

Social standards don't create problems, they just decide whether they are tolerable and in extreme cases, noticed at all.

In our churches and other ministries it becomes obvious that there are definitely ministries which have been started and run without God's instigation. There are also those which started out well and, through leadership changes or daily grind, have lost whatever vision and focus they were designed with. Men think too quickly and start ministry without realizing they are too fallen to know what is right. Instead of walking into Christ more, they try to build Him a worthy empire from what they know.

It is also easy to see in my own personal walk this truth is very evident. Some ministries are sometimes borderline, hard to discern as to where their focus, leadership, and trust lies. This is never true with my heart. I was talking to a friend, and came to the conclusion that I am definitely a "big picture person," one who loves to think about great huge things and how awesome things could develop, but dreads thinking about day to day processes. It is easy for me to look back and think of a million schemes , often with the goal of God's glory, if sometimes only a secondary factor. In fact, I can't really think past those things when they are on my mind. What else have I focused on?

Certainly not often have I been one to sit in silence and worship who God is without any plan to follow. Its pretty easy to look past the simple way of waiting on the will of the Lord, pursuing His heart rather than looking for a cool idea.

Psa 37:4
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

What a verse, to think that it is abused and worn out on the lips of those often using it to express the opposite of its meaning! It joins a multitude of others in the ranks of the recited foundation for personal oppinions. These verses are used to explain how obviously individual opinions are made crystal clear through the contorting of contexts.

We overlook the great depth within this verse, when held in its true context. Delighting in God is no little task. This is not a "be a good person and God will reward" you kind of verse. This is not even a "know God and He will make you want the right things" kind of verse. Delighting in God is to be as close as fallenly possible to allignment with His Heart, without any action taken. This verse follows.
Psa 37:5
Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.

This goes against any idea that we will get what we want.

Not we get to act. He will act.

He will act on His own agenda. So we simply trust. That sounds alot like waiting until something outside ourselves creates change. And Self is foiled again.

But we are men of action! This was a revolutionary idea, one which would create good change in problem areas! We're totally in the wrong place, something of this world, which is probably not a bad thing. Let us sit and simply soak in Christ, and see what happens. Easier said than done. So, to comfort us on this path, may we take a look at a closing word by Chambers, one much more straightforward in wording than we usually find Him.

"We are apt to forget that a man is not only committed to Jesus Christ for salvation; he is committed to Jesus Christ's view of God, of the world, of sin and of the devil, and this will mean that he must recognize the responsibility of being transformed by the renewing of his mind."