Saints, I came across this powerful devotion last night while reading a section of Chamber's "Studies in the Sermon on the Mount". I thought it to be an extremely lucid insight into the working of the Holy Spirit, and therefore decided to post it here for your edification:

"The first time we read the Beatitudes, they appear to be simple and beautiful and unstartling statements, and they go unobserved in the subconscious mind. We are so used to the sayings of Jesus that they slip over us unheeded, they sound sweet and pious and wonderfully simple...but they are in reality like spiritual torpedoes that burst and explode in the subconscious mind, and when the Holy Spirit brings them back to our conscious minds, we realize what kind of startling statements they are. The test of discipleship is obedience to the light when these truths are brought to the conscious mind.

"We do not hunt through the Bible for some precept to obey, for Jesus Christ's teachings never lead to making ourselves moral; but rather that we live so much in touch with God that the Holy Spirit can continually bring some word of His and apply it to the circumstances we are in. We are not brought to the test until the Holy Spirit brings the word back to us.

"Neither is it a question of applying the Beatitues literally - but of allowing the life of God to [i]invade[/i] us by regeneration, and then soaking our minds in the teaching of Jesus Christ which slips down into the subconscious mind. Soon, a set of circumstances will arise when one of Jesus Christ's statements emerges, and instantly we have to decide whether we will accept the tremendous spiritual revolution that will be produced if we obey His precept. If we do obey it, our actual lives will become different and we shall find that we have the power to obey if we will to. That is the way the Holy Spirit works in the heart of a disciple."

- Oswald Chambers

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Paul Frederick West