April 3
"If You Had Known!"

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers

If you had known . . . in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes
—Luke 19:42

Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly and the city was stirred to its very foundations, but a strange god was there-the pride of the Pharisees. It was a god that seemed religious and upright, but Jesus compared it to "whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness" ( Matthew 23:27 ).

What is it that blinds you to the peace of God "in this your day"?

Do you have a strange god-not a disgusting monster but perhaps an unholy nature that controls your life?

More than once God has brought me face to face with a strange god in my life, and I knew that I should have given it up, but I didn’t do it. I got through the crisis "by the skin of my teeth," only to find myself still under the control of that strange god.

I am blind to the very things that make for my own peace. It is a shocking thing that we can be in the exact place where the Spirit of God should be having His completely unhindered way with us, and yet we only make matters worse, increasing our blame in God’s eyes.

"If you had known . . . ." God’s words here cut directly to the heart, (to my heart today)

with the tears of Jesus behind them. These words imply responsibility for our(my) own faults.

God holds us accountable for what we refuse to see or are unable to see because of our sin.

And "now they are hidden from your eyes" because you have never completely yielded your nature to Him. Oh, the deep, unending sadness for what might have been! God never again opens the doors that have been closed. He opens other doors, but He reminds us that there are doors which we have shut-doors which had no need to be shut. Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you. God will turn what might have been into a wonderful lesson of growth for the future.

(my comments)

Jesus found a strange God! It appeared in all of it's "goodness" as very devout, upright and religious. But Jesus condemned this ferociously. He condemned this attitude as ungodly, as a "strange god type thinking". This was not at all the One True Living God, whom He represented, and still does ....

The hour is now, and the time is at hand, when I am encouraged to take heed to the Lord's voice and instructions to us through His Word. That God may not find the strange God of human goodness, self- righteousness, lurking around in us. We are not to think highly of ourselves and pridefully. We are nothing without Him. Apart from Him we can do nothing, but we can do all things through Christ Who strengthen's us.

On this incredible journey we will come to the crossroads where amazingly we must chose to die to our own agendas and plans that do not serve the Lord but serve our own self-preservation. No matter how good they may seem or how upright and for a good cause they may be, if they are not His plans, then they oppose His very life and Truth within us.

This death can be painful, even moreso when we do not yield and surrender but resist Him time and time again.

In this particular passage of scripture, Jesus wept over Jerusalem, as He weeps over you and I, recognizing of the many that would not forsake their "strange god of self goodness" and he wept over them, realizing that the time was coming when the truth would be completely hidden from them and that enemies would overcome them, and their children.

Let us realize how the Lord weeps over us too. Let us take heed now and yield and surrender to our Lord Jesus Christ that we may fully rejoice as we no longer live, but

CHRIST LIVES AND REIGNS IN US.

May we say:

"BLESSED BE THE KING THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, PEACE IN HEAVEN AND GLORY IN THE HIGHEST."