Centrality of Christ

Mistaken – Warren Barfield

Oh I want all I am to die
So all He is can come alive

Until everyone I talk to hears His voice
And everything I touch feels the warmth of His hand
Until everyone I meet
Sees Jesus in me
This is all I wanna be
I wanna be mistaken
For Jesus
Oh I wanna be mistaken

– Warren Barfield –

Absolutely Abandoned to Jesus Christ – Oswald Chambers

Whenever our Lord talked about the relation of a disciple to Himself it was in terms of mystical union: “I am the vine [not the root of the vine, but the vine itself], ye are the branches.” We have not paid enough attention to the illustrations Jesus uses. This is the picture of sanctification in the individual, a completeness of relationship between Jesus Christ and myself. Pharisaic holiness means that my eyes are set on my own whiteness and I become a separate individual. I have the notion that I have to be something; I have not, I have to be absolutely abandoned to Jesus Christ, so one with Him that I never think of myself apart from Him. Love is never self-conscious.

– Oswald Chambers –
from Biblical Ethics

The Name They Go By – Charles Spurgeon

A boy in the streets, selling mince-pies, kept crying, ““Hot mince-pies!”” A person bought one of them, and found it quite cold. “”Boy,”” said he, “”why do you call these pies hot?”” ““That’s the name they go by, sir,”” said the boy. So there are plenty of people who are called Christians, but they are not Christians——that’s the name they go by; but all the substance is drained out of them by other matters.

– Charles Spurgeon –

Chesterton on Grace and Prayer

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

– GK Chesterton –