MY RAINBOW IN THE CLOUD

“I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Genesis 9:13).

It is the will of God that human beings should get into a right-standing relationship with Him, and His covenants are designed for this purpose. Why doesn’t God save me? He has accomplished and provided for my salvation, but I have not yet entered into a relationship with Him. Why doesn’t God do everything we ask? He has done it. The point is, will I step into that covenant relationship? All the great blessings of God are finished…but they are not mine until I enter into a relationship with Him on the basis of His covenant.

Waiting for God to act is fleshly unbelief. It means that I have no faith in Him. I wait for Him to do something in me so I may trust in that. But God won’t do it, because that is not the basis of the God-man relationship. Man must go beyond the physical body and feelings in his covenant with God, just as God goes beyond Himself in reaching out with His covenant to man. It is a question of faith in God, a very rare thing. We only have faith in our feelings. I don’t believe God until He puts something tangible in my hand, so that I know I have it. Then I say, “Now I believe.” There is no faith exhibited in that. God says, “Look to Me, and be saved..“ (Isaiah 45:22).

When I have really transacted business with God on the basis of His covenant, letting everything else go, there is no sense of personal achievement — no human ingredient in it at all. Instead, there is a complete overwhelming sense of being brought into union with God, and my life is transformed and radiates peace and joy.

O. Chambers

Taken from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. copyright 1935 by Dodd Mead & Co., renewed copyright 1963 by Oswald Chambers Publications Assn., Ltd., and is used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.

A Faith That Honors God…

Will believe without encouragement from others like Abraham (Gen. 18:9-15; Rom. 4:19, 20)…will believe without encouragement from the Lord like the Syrophenician woman (Matt. 15:22-28)…will believe without previous experience like Noah (Heb. 11:7)…will believe without seeing like the Nobleman of Capernaum (John 4:47-53). It is this calm, unswerving steadiness that marks matured faith with no hint of ‘the evil heart of unbelief’ remaining. Selected