Because They Have Got the Lord

Spiritual moods are as sensitive and delicate as the awakenings of early love; 

• the most exquisite thing in the human soul 
• is that early mood of the soul when it first falls in love with the Lord. 

By Christian courtesy to Jesus Christ, 

• I should confirm the desire and love which has been awakened in souls wooed by my messages
• until I see them consorts of Him Who is the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely One. 
• It means no rest in intercession until the soul has long lost sight of the worker, 
• he needs me no more because he has got the Lord. 

I am apt to interfere in lives 

• and produce fanatics instead of men and women devoted to Jesus 
• because I have not been friends of the Bridegroom. 
• I decoy them into my sect or my personal point of view 
• instead of into His power. 

Like John the Baptist my joy is this—

• At last they are to see the Bridegroom! 
• “He must increase, but I must decrease”! 
• It is said not in sadness but in joy.

As a watcher of souls for God 

• I have to get them not so much out of sin and wrong as to see Jesus. 
• If I become a necessity to a soul I have got out of God’s order, 
• my great need as a worker is to be a friend of the Bridegroom. 

My goodness and purity ought never to attract attention to itself, 

• it ought simply to be a magnet to draw others to Jesus; 
• if it does not draw them to Him it is not holiness of the right order, 
• it is an influence which will awaken inordinate affection 
• and lead souls off into side issues. 

Over and over again I have the tendency to come in and prevent and say, 

• This, or that, must not be, 
• and instead of being friends of the Bridegroom I am a sympathizing snare, 
• and the soul is not able to say, “He or she was a friend of the Bridegroom,” 
• but, “He or she was a thief and stole my affections away from Jesus Christ 
• and located them elsewhere, and so I lost the vision.”

Adapted Excerpt From

The Place of Help

Oswald Chambers