Destitution

 

I pray for destitution this Advent season. Wow! That's a weird prayer. I blame it on My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. May we be destitute.

This past Sunday morning I was led to this. I read Psalm 24. The whole earth is the Lord's and all that is in it. It begs the question, Who can go to His mountain? Those with clean hands and pure hearts. Well, who really is that?

The last few days, I was reading Matthew 27 about the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. Saturday, I read Psalm 22. The words of this Psalm specifically spell out what Jesus experienced, even though they were written many years before- a prophecy of King David's. I can't imagine what David envisioned or lived, to “see” these words. All this points to the Cross, the Great Exchange, the only action that makes a new heart. I had been thinking on the sacrifice.

That is how we go to the mountain of God, by way of the Cross. Our hands are pure because Christ took our sins. I sat to contemplate this after reading Psalm 24. I wrote to God that morning, “You are so great, yet You invite us not only into Your presence, but to be Your dwelling place, Your presence. - Wow! The greatness of You in me, a broken, clay vessel. I should fall, prostrate. I don't want to give up. Fill me more.”

I continued to pray for revival. I'm not praying for a hoopla experience, a flash in the pan. I want one that changes hearts. We may become new hearts, new creations. I finished for us older believers, crack the stone off our hearts.

The Gospel of Mark begins with preparing the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. John the Baptist called Israel to repentance. He baptized with water of repentance. Jesus baptizes with fire. A little later in the chapter, Jesus' water baptism from John shows His identification with us in repentance. His Emmanuel, one hundred percent Man and one hundred percent God, perfect, carried through the water baptism of repentance in preparation for the Cross, where He took on our sin DNA. With this, Jesus forms new hearts- Happy Advent.

This exchange makes us all level. We all sin and we are all on the same level as the worse sinner. This is where Oswald Chambers comes in. “The Gospel of the grace of God awakens an intense longing in human souls and an equally intense resentment, because the revelation which it brings is not palatable. There is a certain pride in man that will give and give, but to come and accept is another thing. ...do not humiliate me to the level of the most hell-deserving sinner.”

We need to be destitute. We need to see our great need, or God cannot work with us. We can only “enter into His Kingdom through the door of destitution.” - Oswald Chambers, again.

All of us are not OK. We all need Jesus. We all need the Cross. We humble ourselves to accept what we cannot do on our own. We should have the sense of need only One can fulfill. Like in The Christmas Carol, facing our own death may bring us to new life- the Ebeneezer Scrooge moment. This Advent, I pray we are all destitute. May a revival break out. Admit our need, we are never worthy, yet God in mercy made a way for all people through His Son on the Cross.

Changed hearts or new hearts, for that I pray. Make us destitute- Make us destitute, to be full in Jesus.