The Unspeakable Wonder

When the Lord Jesus got a hold of me in a grand collapse about six years ago I was already approaching middle age. I remember saying to Him at the time with a groan of regret: "I've thrown my whole life away!" His response to me opened up a vast potential: "You can do it all now, Don!" And I've been doing it all ever since, or rather, He has been doing it in me and through me to the benefit of others. His timing is always perfect: "But when He who had set me apart, from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles. . ." (Gal. 1:15-16). And again, from the same letter: "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law. . ." (Gal. 4:4). His timing is perfect. Our times are in His hand (Psalm 31:15).

Recently, I came across a message given by Oswald Chambers in 1917 called "The Unspeakable Wonder." I recognized my own experience in his message and wanted to encourage others. Here it is in its entirety from the book The Place of Help:

"In new birth God does three impossible things, impossible, that is, from the rational standpoint. The first is to make a man's past as though it had never been; the second, to make a man all over again; and the third, to make a man as certain of God as God is of Himself. New birth does not mean merely salvation from hell, but something more radical, something which tells in a man's actual life.

Of the Road Back to Yesterday

"So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you" (Joel 2:25).

"Through the redemption God undertakes to deal with a man's past, and He does it in two ways: by forgiving him, and by making the past a wonderful culture for the future. The forgiveness of God is a bigger miracle than we are apt to think. It is impossible for a human being to forgive; and it is because this is not realized that we fail to understand that the forgiveness of God is a miracle of divine grace. Do I really believe that God cannot, dare not, must not forgive me my sin without its being atoned for? If God were to forgive me my sin without its being atoned for, I should have a greater sense of justice than God. It is not that God says in effect, 'I will pay no more attention to what you have done.' When God forgives a man, He not only alters him but transmutes what he has already done. Forgiveness does not mean merely that I am saved from sin and made right for heaven; forgiveness means that I am forgiven into a recreated relationship to God.

"Do I believe that God can deal with my 'yesterday,' and make it as though it had never been? I either do not believe He can, or I do not want Him to. Forgiveness, which is so easy for us to accept, cost God the agony of Calvary. When Jesus Christ says, 'Sin no more,' He conveys the power that enables a man not to sin any more, and that power comes by right of what He did on the cross. That is the unspeakable wonder of the forgiveness of God. Today men do not bank on what Jesus Christ can do, or on the miraculous power of God; they only look at things from their side--'I should like to be a man or a woman after God's heart, but look at the mountain of my past that is in the way.' God has promised to do the thing, which looked at from the basis of our own reason, cannot be done. If a man will commit his 'yesterday' to God, make it irrevocable, and bank in confidence on what Jesus Christ has done, he will know what is meant by spiritual mirth--'Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing.' Very few of us get there because we do not believe Jesus Christ means what He says. 'It is impossible! Can Jesus Christ remake me, with my meanness and my criminality; remake not only my actual life, but my mind and my dreams?' Jesus said, 'With God all things are possible.' The reason God cannot do it for us is because of our unbelief; it is not that God won't do it if we do not believe, but that our commitment to Him is part of the essential relationship.

Of the Renewal of Youth

"But Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven'" (Matt. 19:14).

"Jesus Christ uses the child-spirit as a touchstone for the character of a disciple. He did not put up a child before His disciples as an ideal, but as an expression of the simple-hearted life they would live when they were born again. The life of a little child is expectant, full of wonder, and free from self-consciousness, and Jesus said, 'Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.' We cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven head first. How many of us thought about how we should live before we were born? Why, none. But numbers of people try to think of how to live as Christians before they are born again. 'Do not marvel that I said to you, "You must be born again,"' that is, become as little children, with openhearted, unprejudiced minds in relation to God. There is a marvelous rejuvenescence once we let God have His way. The most seriously minded Christian is the one who has just become a Christian; the mature saint is just like a young child, absolutely simple, and joyful and gay. Read the Sermon on the Mount--'Do not worry,' (that is, have no care) 'about your life.' The word 'care' has within it the idea of something that buffets. The Christianity of Jesus Christ refuses to be careworn. Our Lord is indicating that we have to be carefully careless about everything saving our relationship to Him. Fuss is always a sign of fever. A great many people mistake perspiration in service for inspiration in devotion. The characteristic of a man who has come to God is that you cannot get him to take anyone seriously but God.

"Spiritually beware of anything that takes the wonder out of life and makes you take a prosaic attitude; when you lose wonder, you lose life. The Spirit of God creates the intuitions of a child in a man and keeps him in touch with the elemental and real, and the miracle of Christianity is that a man can be made young in heart and mind and spirit.

Of the Repleteness of "Yes"

"And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you" (John 16:23).

"When once we strike the 'everlasting yes,' there is something positive all through our life. So many of us never get beyond the 'everlasting no'; there is a nebulous 'knockoutedness' about us--'Oh yes, I will pray, but I know what the answer will be.' When we come to the repleteness of 'yes,' the moral miracle God works in us is that we ask only what is exactly in accordance with God's nature, and the repleteness begins, the fullness and satisfaction of the 'everlasting yes.' 'And in that day you will ask Me nothing.' That does not mean that God will give us everything we ask for, but that God can do with us now exactly what He likes. We have no business to tell God we cannot stand any more; God ought to be at liberty to do with us what He chooses, as He did with His own Son. Then whatever happens our life will be full of joy.

"Anyone who has not found the road back to yesterday, who has not experienced the renewal of youth, and the repleteness of the 'everlasting yes,' has farther to go. The unspeakable wonder is that God undertakes to do all this with the human stuff of which we are made. The emphasis put on the nobility of man is largely a matter of fiction. Men and women are men and women, and it is absurd to pretend they are either better or worse than they are. Most of us begin by demanding perfect justice and nobility and generosity from other people, then we see their defects and become bitter and cynical. Jesus Christ never trusted human nature, yet He was never cynical, never in despair about any man, because He trusted absolutely in what the grace of God could do in human nature."