Borrowed Breath

It bothers me when people limit what the Lord can and cannot do by their own understanding, though I am more often guilty of this than I care to admit.  But I am quick to confess and to proclaim that my Lord is not powerless, and that there is nothing He cannot do.  Often in my prayers, I remind the Lord of the words He spoke to Abraham when Sarah laughed upon hearing the declaration that she would conceive and bear a son in her old age.  The Lord said, “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14 ESV). 

Yet this morning, during my regular reading, I came across a thought-provoking quote by the incomparable Oswald Chambers from his devotional classic, “My Utmost for His Highest.”  He wrote in the November 28^th entry, “The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute; until we get there our Lord is powerless.  He can do nothing for us if we think we are sufficient of ourselves, we have to enter into His Kingdom through the door of destitution.  As long as we are rich, possessed of anything in the way of pride or independence, God cannot do anything for us.  It is only when we get hungry spiritually that we receive the Holy Spirit.  The gift of the essential nature of God is made effectual in us by the Holy Spirit, He imparts to us the quickening life of Jesus, which puts ‘the beyond’ within, and immediately ‘the beyond’ has come within, it rises up to ‘the above,’ and we are lifted into the domain where Jesus lives (John 3:5).” (emphasis mine) 

Thank you, O Lord, for spiritual destitution that forces me to fall upon you in dependence.