The idea of discipleship has been much on my thoughts this week. It has hit me on two different fronts, first from the lack of and need for discipleship of the kids around me, and second from the need for more devoted discipleship in my own life. As I look around me at the children here, a few thoughts come to mind. This is a Christian organization here, and they are doing all they can to shape the whole person of these kids. They don’t just give them everything they want because they are “poor orphans”, but they have the kids work for what they get, and have them live at the economic level of the culture around them. They are taught life skills and trades, they are given the equivelent of a high school education with the option of going farther, and there is a community in which they live. This community has a lot of rules which attempt to guard against a lot of open sin.

One thing I find lacking is close discipleship, and solid Bible teaching. Each kid is given a mentor, who will meet with them maybe an hour every few weeks. If the mentor is good and intentional there will be good discipleship going on. But I found myself frustrated and wondering at the lack of Biblical literacy, fervor for the things of God, and discipleship. I’ve had a couple of guys from my family group come over to my hut a few times just to chill and talk, because they are on break from school for about a month. When I try to challenge them in their Christian walk(which seems non-existent), they get very quiet. It seems very normal and common for them to not crack open their Bibles unless it is family devotion time or church time. So I tried to visualize what a week would be like for them, and I tried to notice when there is some direct Biblical/spiritual input into their lives. We have the Sunday morning sermon, and their family devotions three days a week. There may be other times I’m not seeing, but I have yet to see a young person stand out for Christ. Some may have great attitudes and make good life choices, but I think this is a growth point.

My point in telling you this is not to bash New Hope- not at all! In the same way, we can’t blame the pastors of the church because a kid grows up and leaves the faith. There are simply too many kids, and too few disciplers/mentors. I led my family devotions this past week. I made efforts to point to Christ as we trekked through 2 Samuel. I want people to understand God’s Word. I want them to get it! It frustrates me that these kids are allowed to grow up here, and yet be mostly Biblically illiterate when they grow up. What is needed is the Spirit of God at work in people who are willing to really challenge these kids. I’m trying to think of ways I can help in doing this, even some less conventional, unusual ways. It comes down to individuals going after individuals, one at a time. In a Christian home this is easier, because that is a built in structure where there are fewer kids, and two parents. In my family group there are 24 kids. I’m hopeful that God can and does use many different means to pour into their lives, and I am moved to pray for their spiritual development.

As far as my own discipleship, a few things have spurred my thinking in this matter. The first is a biography I finished this week on Keith Green. I love his passion and attitude. I certainly do not agree with him on a lot of things he did and thought, but I love his obedient no-compromise attitude. He was a real doer, who was hearing what God was telling him to do, and he would do it all out, with intensity. I’m encouraged by the fact that he was uneducated. Sometimes I think that once I’m more educated, then I’ll really be effective. But he just took a few promises of God, and trusted them completely. He was, as Piper would say, a man of ONE thing, with a singular passion. This leads me to the next man that impacted me this week, John Bunyan. I listened to his biography by John Piper. He was also uneducated, with only a grade school education. He could read and write. Yet he wrote more than fifty books in his life, most notably Pilgrim’s Progress. He was a powerfully gifted preacher. He was a contemporary of John Owen, who was the heavy-hitting, Puritan intellectual in London. Owen went to hear Bunyan preach every chance he got. When the king asked Owen, “Why do you go to hear that tinkerer?”, he answered, “I would willingly exchange my learning for the tinker’s power of touching men’s hearts.”

Bunyan suffered immensely as well, which ignited his ministry even more. He loved being a pastor. Anyway, the third biography I listened to a few nights ago was that of St. Augustine. I won’t say much about him except that I was impacted by His complete surrender to God, which was totally a move of God on his heart. He was in slavery, and was freed in a moment. I am strongly moved to follow Christ even harder, and seek to die to self more and more. Yet I will certainly be driven to despair (as Keith Green sometimes was) by my failures if I don’t keep the gospel central in my thoughts, and recognize that I am utterly in need of the Spirit of God to even think a righteous thought, or make the least motions toward a good deed. I’m so often up and down, going from a great fervor to serve God better, to a lazy, unfeeling and uncaring attitude. I am utterly dependent on God for the joy to deny this flesh and serve Him.

Anyway, that’s what God’s been teaching me primarily. In class this week we did an overview of Hebrews in a day, and 1 John/Galatians in a day. Good overviews, some better than others. I think some people here have never read straight through some of these books, especially Hebrews. We spent a day on the Kingdom of God, a day on suffering(which has also folded into my thoughts on discipleship, but it would take too long to draw that out here), and a day on Satan and demons. That was interesting, but I’ll talk about it later perhaps. Somebody remind me about that if I forget in the next month or so.

I preach next Sunday! I have the sermons mostly written out, but I have in mind a few major changes I’d like to make. Next monday we are going to Gulu for the missions trip. I’ll talk about that more next Sunday when I know more of what we are actually going to DO. Ebra, the kid who was staying with us, is now gone. He’s been accepted into a Christian drug rehab center in Campala, which is a good thing. I had a few short chats with him, but it was difficult to talk with him, I think because of the effect the drugs have had on his head.

For prayer, you have heard my heart on discipleship above. Just pray that I would be a better disciple, more and more surrendered to his way and rule in my life. I know many of you pray for me daily, and I am very grateful. Grace to you and peace!

This whole concept of abiding in Christ, the true Vine, has been much on my thoughts this week. The idea of abiding is such a good term to describe what our ongoing relationship with Christ should be. On Sunday I read a fairly short book entitled The Three-Fold Secret of the Holy Spirit. The book is a hundred years old, and is way out of print. But the idea of abiding hit me afresh in the last section.

I’ve been reading through 1 John, where John brings up the idea of abiding in the last few verses of chapter two. This drove me back to John 15, where Jesus tells us to abide, and shows us the implications of it. I won’t delve into all that the passage is continuing to work in me, but I will share an illustration from the book I read. He said that our relationship with Christ can be thought of in one of two ways. Think about a battery-powered automobile(this was written around the 1900s).  It is charged, and can go as long as the batter goes. It can run independently, on it’s own, away from any outside source of power. Sometimes I subconsciousy think of my morning devotions this way. Get my battery charged up, and it should run the whole day, good to go. Not so with the Spirit! The other way to think about our relationship with Christ is that of a cable car. By itself, it is dead. It has no source of it’s own, and has no way to store power for later use. Above the car run miles of copper and iron cable, which are flowing with power and electricity. Once the car connects to the power, the car is full of life. The moment it disconnects, it is dead.

The spiritual parallel is obvious. Abiding is a continual drawing of life, of satisfaction and filling. This whole concept is feeding my thoughts on my sermon on Psalm 1, which I will preach on September 1st. The righteous man is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding much fruit. Jesus said by THIS is my father glorified: That you bear MUCH fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. A lot of these types of thoughts are really challenging and exciting me these days.

This week I am teaching our daily devotions at my family group. They are going through the Old Testament a chapter per week, and are in 2 Samuel. Up ’till now in the devotions the OT narratives have been treated like most people seem to treat them: Good stories of great men, and we should try to be like them. There is no connection made to Christ, therefore the main point is often missed. So I will be attempting to see Christ as He has revealed Himself in the latter life of David. It’s a challenge, but Christ is there! That’s my presupposition, my hermeneutic. I’m trying to teach the kids how to read their Bibles in this way.

This is a good segue into talking more about the orphans in my family group. But first I’d like to answer a few questions that some of you have posed to me via email. I’m sure more of you would like to know these answers than just the one who asked, so I will answer most of them on this blog.

Is time going by slow or fast for me? I must say that it is a mix of both. Sometimes I will email someone, and will await a response. A few days later I will check, and no response. Then I somehow think in the back of my head that it has been weeks, where it has only been a few days. So in some respects it is going slow. But I can’t believe it is almost September! Oy vey. But I’m in what I call a time-groove, where I just live each day as it comes, and don’t really think about time so much. Maybe that’s an African thing rubbing off on me.

The other questions had to do with my family group, so I’ll now talk a bit about them. To update, my relationships with them are really growing, particularly with two 15-16 year old guys named Moses and Silva. Moses it the guitarist, and Silva is a sweet djembe player. But they have gotten a lot more comfortable with me. They often come by my hut, and we just chat about things. Some of the others kids I feel are opening up a bit as well, and are including me a lot of other things, so praise God for that! Certain activities I do can help with this. On Saturday I helped fertilize their ground for a new set of crops. It was really muddy out, so I just went barefoot. I filled up a bucket with this hot, smelly STUFF, and spread it by hand across the fields. Working side by side with the kids really helps. I had the chance to milk a goat as well- check out the pic (and a reminder: all my new pics are now at http://runwithaim.blogspot.com , or via the link on the right).

So yes, I am feeling more included with my family. It took time, but it is growing. Do they treat me standoffishly being a white American, a mizungu as they call us? Not really. There are a lot of white people around who work here and visit, so they are very accustomed to white people. There are still a lot of misconceptions about the West which I am hoping to correct, but they don’t seem to RESENT which people. I do know for a fact, however, that a lot of them have some deep-seeded resentment or anger which may not manifest itself for awhile, but it must be dealt with at some point. This often stems from the fact that they are orphans, whose parents either died or abandoned them. That’s HUGE! The gospel can heal such things, but it’s never easy.

Some of the adult Africans have resentment toward white people, mostly based on what they have heard, or had a one-time bad experience with. I’ve written about this in my entry above entitled “The Healing of the Nations”, so I won’t belabor it further.

Last week in class we went through the Old Testament in survey fashion. Keith highlighted certain themes like covenant, kingdom, prophecy, priesthood, etc. It was refreshing to review again how all these point forward to Christ. This week we are going through the gospel, showing just how Christ fulfilled everything. I feel I have been taught this material quite well in the past, but I am really looking particularly at how Keith is teaching it. He is doing a great job, and I’m taking mental notes on how I would teach an introductory course on Biblical Theology to kids, teenagers, or adults.

One area in which I have moved on is that of the Holy Spirit. About a year or so ago I ceased my cessationist way of thinking, or at least adjusted it. I believed the charasmatic gifts can and do exist today, and are given to whomever God chooses, whenever He chooses. I find myself longing for the fullness of the Holy Spirit in my life, the experiential power that He gives. I don’t think it is right to think that we have all that God has to offer by way of the Spirit at conversion. In the book I read above, he distinguishes between the presence of the Spirit, which we all have at conversion, and the fullness of the Spirit, which only comes by complete surrender. I don’t agree with all that he says, but I do think there is more to the activity of the Spirit than I had thought previously. I’ll let you all know if I start speaking in tongues! But I am still working through this, so bear with me as I discuss it in later blog entries.

One of the family groups here has a small business on the side of making banana muffins twice a week. I ordered some for the first time this weekend, and they are so good! At times I get hungry outside of mealtime, so these help me out. I ordered 30 of them, at 200 shilling each, which amounts to a total of about four dollars for the whole bundle.

Oh yea- side note- I shaved off my beard and cut my hair. I just felt like doing it. I may grow it back.

To close, here are two intersting things you can be in prayer for. First, Matthew’s brother Ebra has been staying with us for about a week now. He’s about 18 years old, and grew up here at New Hope. He got in with the rebellious crowd, and began smoking marajuana. He got deep into to, and became fully addicted, from what I hear. He then ran away, which is very dangerous here. Matthew sought him and found him. He came back later with Jay, the founder of New Hope, and he spoke with him. A few days later Ebra returned to New Hope, and now they are trying to figure out what to do.  Their hope is to connect him with a drug rehab place, where he can try to get his head back in order. Talking to him is kind of difficult, but he’s dealing with a lot of hard things these days. I’m hoping to talk with him more.

In about 3 weeks I will be going on a missions trip! I know- I’m already on one, but the church here is heading up to Gulu for 10 days of ministry. If you don’t know, Gulu is a war-torn area of northern Uganda, where many kids are still homless, and extreme poverty is rampant. If you’ve ever heard of the turmoil in Northern Uganda, or have heard of Invisible Children (google it if you don’t know), that’s where I’m going. I’m really excited for it!

I really am feeling all of your prayers. I really feel God doing unique work in deep areas of my head and heart. Pray that I would continually abide in the true Vine, Jesus Christ, apart from whom we can do NOTHING. Nothing. Let’s depend wholly on Him, all the time, to continually abide. Grace and peace.

To those of you who have been checking weekly, this entry is late. I was planning on doing it on Monday, but we had no power. Power is fairly consistent, but at times it will just not work for some time. My battery was dead, so I had to wait. I was going to just skip it this week, until I found out that there are a few people who actually read it intently and want to know what I’m doing in more detail (thanks Mom and Dad), so here are a few more aspects of my life here, which I had alluded to, but not really talked much about.

NOTE: SOMETIMES MY PICTURES ARE NOT CLEAR ON THIS BLOG, SO FROM NOW ON ALL MY GOOD PICTURES CAN BE VIEWED AT THE FOLLOWING WEBSITE:  http://runwithaim.blogspot.com  There is also a link on the right.

Here is a word about food. I really do enjoy the food here. I think they have a little more variety than some other African countries. For breakfast it is typically white bread, and maybe some jelly if they have it. Some days they hard boil or scramble eggs for us, which is nice. I drink a large cup of coffee. If there is power in the morning, which there usually is not, I can brew it. If not, I settle for the instant stuff, which is not so bad. By the way- we all eat in community. For lunch our whole institute class, about 15 of us, all eat and talk together after class. For other meals it is just the resident Institute students, about 8 of us, consisting of me, an Indian couple, a Congolese couple, two female Americanos, and my Ugandan roomate Matthew. Lunch and Dinner consist of one or two different types of starches. These can be anything from irish potatoes, fried potatoes, matoke(a white, mashed potato looking substance but dryer), another thing I forget the name of, but it’s from the banana family. It’s not sweet at all like a banana, but it’s like a potato. We also have rice or sweet potatoes or pasta at times. On top of the starch goes either a bean mix, a beef mix, ground beef, boiled meat, one day we had chicken, a vegetable mix, or something like that. But every meal is a starch with something on top. There is also fruit which is all grown here of course, and is very tasty. Usually we have a type of cole slaw mix as well. I’m happy with it! I love carbs, so that’s a good thing. Recently I attended a wedding in Campala- I think I mentioned that. But I was served probably 9 different types of food. I’d had most of it before, except for the intestines. I still haven’t had intestines. I didn’t feel that God had called me to eat them. Would would my intestines think, processing other intestines? There is a lot of fruit growing on trees around, which is nearly ready to be eaten. This past week my family group and I harvested G-nuts. A whole crop them. Usually you would roast them, and they are pretty good. At times I crave a sandwich or steak, but I’m surviving. Probably the hardest thing to get used to on the eating side of things is not being able to munch between meals. But that just takes getting used to, I think.

Let me share a bit about the sights and sounds here. On clear nights the stars are out of this world, literally. I have never seen them so clearly. You actually can see what looks like a cloud mist, which is actually clusters of stars from other galaxies. I’ll never get tired of it. I hear crickets, occasionally hear an owl or monkey, and can really hear the bats that live right above us. In the morning, if I am not awakened by my alarm I wake up to the sound of roosters, children on the way to school, monkeys, or some odd sound I haven’t yet figured out. There’s a certain type of bird that sounds like a baby cooing. It’s weird when a lot of them get going.  But there are roosters and chickens running around everywhere. I’m annoyed when I’m trying to nap in the afternoon and a rooster won’t shut up outside my window. There are a lot of fruit trees around, and it’s all very green because it does rain a lot here. I’ll try to get more pics of this soon.

The orphans I work with here. My mom gave me a few questions that she and perhaps others are wondering about, so I will attempt to answer them here. Many are orphaned because of AIDS. An orphan is considered an orphan when his father is dead, not necessarily his mother. Many have lost their parents at a young age, some of their mothers simply cannot care for them, so they bring them to New Hope for care and education. Some parents were killed because of violence, but AIDS and abandonment are the greater causes. Fatherhood is a real problem here. A good father is really hard to find. They frequently abandon or mistreat their families, leaving the children with a lot of inward issues and bitterness growing up. What I do is work with them in the garden where they grow food for their family, spend time with them, and go to their family devotions. All of this is so I can understand them and their culture better, and perhaps make a small impact on them. I will likely NOT be a life-changing person for them, because I’m here for such a short time. My goal is to point them to those who can make that lasting impact on them. That’s all for now on that. I will definately write a good post on the orphans at a later time, with pictures and all.

Last week in class we learned about counseling from the Ugandan pastor. Good guy! Surprisingly solid! I was familiar with a lot of it, but it was a good refresher. This week we are going through the covenants, and trying to show the Christotelic unity of the Bible. I’m quite familiar with this, but I don’t ever get tired of it, thankfully.

Here are a few questions I’m trying to answer right now, which I will leave unanswered at this point: What is “normal” Christianity? What does it really mean to listen to the Spirit? Is it possible to think too much about sin and obedience? Is paedo baptism a valid, normative practice for the New Testament church? What is the role of Satan and his minions? What would God have me do? At what point is my beard too long?(This past Sunday some people joked about being able to see my beard from behind me)

I’m reading three books, primarily: The Works of Edwards(hard), Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture(medium), and a biography of Keith Green(easy, yet quite edifying and spiritually challenging).

Be in prayer- my next preaching engagement is the first Sunday in September. I’ve had Psalm 1 on my heart for a while now, and I’d love to preach on it, so I think I will. Wow. There really is a lot to say. Thanks to all who are interested and who are praying. Feel free to leave a comment as well, or ask me a question which I can answer for you. More pictures are coming. Seriously, thanks for all your prayer and support. The Lord bless you and keep you!

We are in the rainy season now. That means it rains for a couple of hours almost every afternoon, and is pretty hot and sunny the rest of the time. On Friday of this week we had a community day of personal reflection and prayer. During that time God really revealed a few things in my life which I need to continually face. There was something good about just praying, drinking in the Word, and journaling for a number of hours straight. I felt like there were things that God showed me after two or three hours that wouldn’t have been as clear in only thirty minutes or so. I sensed a need and desire to do this more often.

I crashed a wedding in Campala on Saturday! Well I didn’t really crash it. My roomate invited me, and he knew the couple, so I came along. It was a good experience for me, which is why I went, just to see what it would be like. It was very much like a traditional American wedding. I think weddings in the bush of Africa have a little more excitement than those in the big city. I rode back in a taxi van in which we packed a total of 23 people. My roomate has a saying, “This is Uganda!” He wasn’t saying that today when we woke up and it felt like it was 55 degrees outside.

This week I finished reading a biography of Oswald Chambers, entitled Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God (c. 1993, Discovery House Publishers). I was very impacted by it, and I recommend it for all, especially for those entering or already in some form of vocational ministry. Many of you will recognize his book My Utmost for His Highest. Seeing how he lived his life has greatly inspired me, and spurred me on to follow the exhortation in Hebrews 13:7, which says, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to the you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”  Rather than summarizing the book here, I will try to bring out a few of those aspects which impacted me most.

Oswald Chambers was born in 1874 in Scotland, but he ended up spending most of his upbringing in England. He was born around the time that D.L. Moody(God bless the school that he founded…) was traveling around as an evangelist. His father was a pastor who moved around several times. His father was a very practical man, with a very economic approach to life. This is what brought them to live just outside of London. During Oswald’s childhood he was energetic and care-free. He loved the outdoors, and he loved the arts. I thought this was interesting that this future pastor-professor-theologian-author was passionately pursuing a career in art as a ministry before heading into more pastoral ministerial service. Against his father’s better judgment he went to art school, desiring to reach people in the art community. He was exceptionally talented at sketching. He wrote scores of poetry, and was proficient at piano and organ. He was pursuing an advanced degree in art when he began running out of money. At this time God laid it on his heart to go into ministry. He attended a small, podunk seminary started by a learned pastor/professor who was frustrated with the dry, academic approach of most seminaries. He put together a small group of guys and trained them, with a lot of personal discipleship, rigorous academics, and hands-on ministry.

At a young age Chambers had been zealous for God, having been converted through the preaching of Charles Spurgeon. He taught and preached to young adults at a young age, and was very passionate and feeling about all that he did. I would describe him as a very intense person, not doing anything halfway. But after getting started at this seminary(Dunoon College), he began to thirst for more of a move of the spirit in his life. This began a greatly trying time in his life which nearly destroyed him. Here is an exerpt from his journal: “After I was born again as a lad I enjoyed the presence of Jesus Christ wonderfully, but years passed before I gave myself up thoroughly to His work. I was in Dunoon College as a tutor of Philosophy when Dr. F. B. Beyer came and spoke about the Holy Spirit. I determined to have all that was going on, and went to my room and asked God simply and definitely for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, whatever that meant. For that day on for four years, nothing but the overruling grace of God and the kindness of friends kept me out of an asylum. God used me during those years for the conversion f souls, but I had no conscious communion with Him. The Bible was the dullest, most uninteresting book in existence, and the sense of depravity, the vileness and bad-motivedness of my nature was terrific.”

In short, God purified Chambers through this time and expanded his view of God to great depths and heights. It ended suddenly one night during a prayer meeting. Jesus became so much more sweeter to him, and it was a new beginning. He wrote, “Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the loave of God. Love is the beginning, love is the middle and love is the end. After He comes in, all you see is ‘Jesus only, Jesus ever.’ When you know what God has done for you, the power and tyranny of sin is gone and the radiant, unspeakable emancipation of the indwelling Christ has come.” During that time he wondered if he was holding something back from God. He began to systematically lay his all on the alter, including ending an 8-year relationship with a young lady from back home whom he loved.

Let me summarize the rest of his life. Read the book if you want more. He spent a period of his life as part of a couple of different organizations, teaching and preaching in different parts of the world, mainly in Japan and America. He did eventually marry at the age of 35, to a wonderful lady. She wanted to be the secretary to the Prime Minister of England someday, so she perfected her skills at typing and shorthand dictation. But God used he skills differently. She typed out many of Oswald’s lectures and books, and sent them out for publication. We would have nothing in print from Chambers if it weren’t for her. She is the one who compiled My Utmost for His Highest from many lectures and devotionals he had given during his life, yet her name rarely if ever appears on anything he wrote. A mervelous testimony to how a husband and wife can partner in the ministry. Chambers saw his ministry as THEIR ministry, something God had called and equipped both of them to do.

Eventually he volunteered for military service as a chaplain during the war, and he served in Egypt. There he had a radical ministry to literally thousands of soldiers, faithfully discipling, teaching, and just living the gospel. He died young and suddenly at age 44 from a ruptured appendix, and was buried with full military honors.

There is so much I want to say about what he did and said, but here are just a few tidbits that impacted me. The man was hard core about his faith. He would often spend whole nights in prayer, so concerned to lay everthing on the alter. He was a vessel for God’s service, broken bread and poured out wine. During his years of spiritual depression he did not give up or waver, but kept on with the ministry and kept on being molded by God’s hands. Often I wonder when I will be brought through something like that, some kind of depression or suffering or pain. I long to be molded, shaped, and purified by His fire of suffering. What a wonderful gift Chambers was given during that time! If he had a life motto, or battlecry it was the saying, “My utmost, for His highest!”

He was a thinker. He had a low tolerance for biblically illiterate ministers, and he worked hard at his own learning. He was extremely sharp, yet he was not a cold academic. He was huge on the ministry of hospitality. He often had people in his home, and there was a great warmth, a jovial spirit, and a depth which he carried with him and transferred to those around him. He was a fun guy to be around! Yet his speech was dripping with God and His Word. He was full of life.

He was a man who trusted God for everything. He had been married for only a few months, and was sailing back from American to England with his wife. They had no money, and didn’t know where they were going to live. Prior to this Oswald never had a life plan of what he was going to do, and never had a contingency plan if that didn’t work out. He took risks for God, and put his whole self into God’s service. While on that boat back his wife recalls him falling asleep in his chair on the deck, not worried about how they would make it. “Trust God, and do the next thing”, was his saying.

During his life he had periods of intense business. He had literally hundreds of students he was training by correspondence, and preaching engagements several days a week on top of meetings he attended for his organizations. But he never seemed to get overwhelmed, but truly rested in God. Did he sleep? Yes, and this is a good practical thing he said about how hard it would be to get up sometimes: “Just get up first, and think about it afterward.” That’s a good word.

In conclusion, I often wonder at men like Oswald Chambers. I ask myself, what is the one thing that he had that affected everthing else? Usually it’s not a hundred things at the root, but one thing that shapes everything. I can’t be an Oswald Chambers. I can only be who God is making me to be. But I want to learn from his life, and follow him as he followed Christ. He was totally sold out, abandoned to God his entire life. He never thought, “I’m working so hard, while other Christians have a life of ease. I’ll take a break.” I think he truly saw his life as a race, in which he had to run with great pain and perseverance. How well he ran it! He was merely faithful with what God had given him, and obeyed God in what He told him to to. We should look at this runner who crossed the finish line well, and be inspired to run even harder in his footsteps, in which many saints before him have run, eyes on Jesus. His total surrender to Christ is really what makes any great man or woman of God what he/she is. He was one of many who persevered by faith. To end, here is an exerpt from a letter by Chambers written to a friend:

“You ask a question about the baptism of the Holy Ghost- did I get there all at once, or easily? No, I did not. Pride and possession of the high esteem of many Christian friends kept me out for long enough. But immediately I was willing to sacrifice all and put myself on the Alter, which is Jesus Himself, all was begun and done. Holiness is not an attainment at all, it is the gift of God, and the pietistic tendency is the introspection which makes me worship my own earnestness and not take the Lord seriously at all. It is a pious fraud that suits the natural man immensely. HE makes holy, HE sanctifies, HE does it all. All I have to do is come as a spiritual pauper, not ashamed to beg, to let go of my right to myself and act on Romans 12:1-2. It is never ‘Do, do and you’ll be’ with the Lord, but ‘Be, be, and I will do through you.’ It is a case of ‘hands up’ and letting go, and then entire reliance on Him.”