My Utmost for His Highest = My kick in the pants

This is my 1970s version of My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

In case you can’t get the full effect from the picture, that is a metallic silver cover with gold, embossed lettering. It is classy.

I found this in the summer of ’98, when I attended Creation Festival (a huge Christian music festival) in Pennsylvania. That summer marked the real beginning of my faith walk, when I decided I was going to be serious about this God thing. While browsing through one of the makeshift stores under a tent, I ran across a book table. I unearthed this copy of My Utmost for His Highest. I had heard great things about the book, so I bought it. I think I paid $4 for it.

After a couple years I began to read it daily. Once I started, I was hooked. This book has fed me more than any other book or devotional outside the Bible. I tried a different devotion one year, but it just wouldn’t cut it. I always seem to come back to good ol’ Oswald. After years of reading it, something new still hits me.

Here’s what’s hitting me this year.

It convicts me waaaay too much.

I’ve gotten out of the daily habit of reading it. I have lots of excuses. But the real reason?

It makes me uncomfortable. It reminds me of the Christian I so want to be and am so far away from being.

It still inspires me, but I hate that uncomfortable feeling when a phrase hits me straight to the gut. I try to read around it, ignore it, say that it really relates to someone else. But when it comes down to it, that convicting phrase is all about me and the ways that I am failing.

So I avoid reading it. It’s easier to stay in denial than to face the truth head on.

This year, my husband and I are making the effort to read the devotional together every day. And those hard to read phrases are hitting me hard. But I vow to keep reading and to do the best I can to work on those things that I need to work on.

Part of this whole faith thing is coming face to face with the not so pretty parts of me.

Have you ever had a book, devotional, or Scripture that painfully spoke to you?