Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), the British preacher best known for My Utmost for His Highest, wrote about “the discipline of disillusionment.” Here are highlights:
- A disillusioned person, although all he says may be correct, is often cynical and unkindly severe about other people. The disillusionment which comes from God is just as accurate and clear and understanding, but there is no cynicism in it.
- Most of the suffering in human life comes because we refuse to be disillusioned. For instance, if I love a human being, and do not love God, I demand of that man or woman an infinite satisfaction which they cannot give. I demand of them every perfection and every rectitude, and when I do not get it, I become cruel and vindictive and jealous.
- Have I refused to be disillusioned when God has tried to talk to me through difficulties and in sufferings? If I have, it is a sign that I am still suffering from illusions; … God is not to blame; I am to blame.
- Our Lord has no illusions about any of us. He sees every man and woman as the descendants of Adam who sinned, and with capacities in our hearts of which we have no idea.
- Think of the worst man or woman you know. Do you believe that that one can be presented perfect in Jesus Christ? If you do not, it is because you are still under an illusion about yourself, you still have a notion that there is something in your virtues that will save you.
- The way we act when we come up against things proves whether we have been disillusioned or not; do we trust in our wits or do we worship God? If we trust in our wits, God will have to repeat the same lesson until we learn it. Whenever our faith is not in God, and in him alone, there is still an illusion somewhere.
- Is Jesus Christ increasing in my life, or am I taking everything for myself? When I get disillusioned I see him and him alone; there are no illusions left. It is a matter of indifference how I am hurt, the one thing I am concerned about is that everyone may be presented “perfect in Christ Jesus.”
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Excerpted from The Place of Help by Oswald Chambers (Christian Literature Crusade, 1935).
1996 Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP Journal
