Dissipated Devotion

From The Place of Help by Oswald Chambers. It speaks for itself:

"Take heed to yourself that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see; but in the place which the LORD chooses, in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you" (Deut. 12:13-14).

"An unusual theme, but this Old Testament ritual which refers to the people of God having too many shrines, has a lesson of penetrating importance for us in the New Testament dispensation, which is that there is a willful element in our consecration that must be exterminated.

"The impulse of worship is natural in the majority of human beings, and we must make the distinction very clear between the impulse of worship in an unregenerate spirit and the impulse in a saint. Natural devotion chooses its own altars, its own setting, the scene of its own martyrdom. It would be very entrancing if a human being could go to martyrdom in such moods, having arranged the spectators and the scenery to suit his own ambition; but this Old Testament passage says that God chooses the place for the offering. This aims at the very root of the whole matter. We do not consecrate our gifts to God, they are not ours to give; we consecrate ourselves to God, that is, we give up the right to ourselves to Him.

"A remarkable thing is that the place of the altar is not mentioned because evidently it was continually being changed. If it had been always at one place, the people would have become devoted to that place and would have made it a scene of religious festival without any indication of real devotion to God.

"All through the prophets one hears the continual cry that the people have fasted or feasted for their own pleasure, they have been religious because it suited them; but the only devotion which is acceptable to God is the devotion on the part of a regenerate soul that starts from a full-hearted consecration, which by binding the sacrifice of itself to the altar of God, receives from God the supreme sanctification which identifies it for ever with the life of the Lord. The place of this devotion can never be discovered by human intelligence, or natural spirituality, but only by the Spirit of God.

"It must be borne in mind that the burnt offering is not the sin offering. The apostle Paul shows us distinctly the place of the altar, and the sacrifice God wants, 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice . . .', literally, give up your right to yourself. That people find it extremely difficult to get to this place is true, and the reason is not difficult to find. We choose our own altars, and say, 'Yes, we will devote ourselves to the foreign field,' or 'we will give ourselves to slum work,' 'to work in some orphanage,' or to 'rescue work.' All this commends itself thoroughly to the natural heart of a man, but it is not the place the Lord chooses.

"That place is discernible only by the Holy Spirit, and the offering is prompted not by devotion to duty, or devotion to a doctrine, but by devotion to a divine being. When our Lord talked to the woman of Samaria He pointed out that both Jews and Samaritans had begun to worship a place instead of God, but He said, 'the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.'

Purpose of Consecration

"In the general aspect of consecration one is easily misled by those who are possessed of natural piety. People talk about seeing God in nature, and are in danger of mistaking the impulse that seeks after God for God Himself. Paul makes that distinction very clear in Acts 17:27, 'so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.' The natural heart of man interprets that to mean that the instinct to worship, and to make an altar of devotion where he chooses, is the very instinct of God, whereas Paul implies that it is instinct feeling after God.

"The altar of God's choosing is not approached by feelings of devotion or emotions of worship; that is why it is difficult to discover it. All natural religion reaches its climax in ritual, in the beauties of aesthetic and sensuous worship. God's altar is discerned only by the Holy Spirit when that Spirit is in a man.

"The dissipation of devotion is seen over and over again in the practical issues of our lives. People give their lives to many things they have no business to. No one has any right to give up the right to himself or to herself to anyone but God Almighty, and devotion to a cause, no matter how noble or how beautiful, nowhere touches the profundity of this lesson. When we are told we must give up our right to ourselves to Jesus Christ, we are bound to ask--if we do not ask, we have not grasped the situation thoroughly 'Who is it that asks this tremendous devotion? Is there any principle, any cause, any enterprise on the face of the earth of such importance that a man has to give the very highest he has, namely, his right to himself, for it?' The only being who dare ask of me this supreme sacrifice is the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Satan's great aim is to deflect us from the center. He will allow us to be devoted 'to death' to any cause, any enterprise, to anything but the Lord Jesus. Is anyone roused by the Spirit of God to wonder whether the object to which he is devoting his life has been chosen in a selfish consecration or not? It is so easy for a young convert, after listening to a missionary, to say God has given him a call there, and deliberately to choose to consecrate his life to that place. And that sort of thing is commended all over the Christian world, but I question whether it is commended by God. The tremendous worldwide instinct is of God. No soul has ever been saved or sanctified who did not instantly lose sight of country and of kindred, in the determination to do God's will; but immediately the desire and ambition of the individual chooses the altar, the scene of sacrifice, his devotion is dissipated.

"Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship He brought out that fundamental thought 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him . . . take up his cross daily, and follow Me.' Jesus Christ distinctly stated that He came to do the will of His Father. 'I must work the works of Him who sent Me.' His first obedience was not to the needs of men, but to the will of God. He nowhere chose the altar of His sacrifice, God chose it for Him. He chose to make His life a willing and obedient sacrifice that His Father's purpose might be fulfilled, and He says, 'As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.'

Position of Consecration

"Are we putting the needs of mankind, heathen or otherwise, as the ground of our consecration? The amount of mistaken zeal and energy and passion and martyrdom thrown into work for God, that has to come under the category of dissipated devotion, because people have chosen the scene of their own worship, is appalling. God grant that we may accept the primary call of the saint, which is to do the will of his Lord, and the one vivid experience in the heart is personal, passionate devotion to Jesus Christ.

"Paul actually says, 'Though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.' This is the place in which nine out of every ten of us are deluded. Because men and women devote themselves to martyrdom for a cause, they think they have struck the profoundest secret of religion; whereas they have but exhibited the heroic spirit that is in all human beings, and have not begun to touch the great fundamental secret of spiritual Christianity, which is wholehearted, absolute consecration of myself to Jesus, not to His cause, not to His 'league of pity,' but to Himself personally. 'For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake,' as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:5. We are the servants of men, says Paul, not primarily because their needs have arrested us, but because Jesus Christ is our Lord; not because we feel the clamant needs of our age or any such sounding timbrel, but that the Lord Jesus Christ has saved and sanctified us and now He is Lord of our lives and makes us unconsciously the servants of other men, not for their sakes but for His own. This is the secret of presenting the burnt offering on the altar that God chooses.

Passion of Consecration

"When the 'passion for souls' has not this center it is a dangerous passion. The socialist has a passion for souls, but the saint's passion for souls is not for man's sake primarily, but for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the source of all evangelical missionary enterprise. The appeal is not to be put on the ground that the heathen are perishing without the knowledge of God; that appeal awakens a willful devotion which dissipates the energies of life. But let the preacher take back his hearer and his would-be devotee to the Garden of Gethsemane, to the still midnight in the quiet wood, to the pale moon's passionless gleam on each tree, and then in imagination again picture all prostrate on the ground, our King, Redeemer, God, whose bloody sweat, like heavy dew, stains the sod, and let the Holy Spirit ring through the preacher's and the hearer's heart, 'This is the cost of having loved you.'

"And let him take the hearer and his own heart back to Calvary, to that 'historic pole' of time and eternity, the cross of Christ, and then let the passion and power of the Holy Spirit so seize hold of heart and brain and imagination that the sacrifice is bound with cords unto the horns of the altar and the life is entirely at the disposal of God.

"It is one thing to behold the haggard, starved, sin-stained, brokenhearted faces of men, but that is not sufficient for Christian enterprise. At the back of these faces must ever be seen the 'Face marred more than any man's,' until the passion of the whole world's anguish that forced its way through His heart, may force its way through our hearts too, until we are His forever, having drunk the cup of communion with His cross that shall identify us body, soul, and spirit as Christ's."