(The End of Self-Appointed Purpose and the Life That Returns Everything to God)

September 30th brings Chambers and Spurgeon together around the question of source. Chambers warns that even spiritual consecration can become something we take possession of and turn into our own sense of calling. Spurgeon directs the heart in the opposite direction: toward praise arising from the recognition that everything has been received by grace. Together they reveal a life that no longer attempts to establish its own spiritual purpose, but receives from God and returns the glory to Him.

When Our Consecration Becomes Our Own

Chambers writes:

“We take our spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside.” (My Utmost for His Highest)

There is something subtle in Chambers’ observation. Even our devotion to God can become material from which self constructs its own purpose.

We surrender something. We make a commitment. We recognize a spiritual desire. And before long, we may begin defining what God must now intend to do with us because of it.

Consecration then becomes another form of self-direction.

The problem is not consecration itself. The problem is source.

Jesus did not determine His purpose from the intensity of His own devotion. His life proceeded from the Father.

“I can of mine own self do nothing…” (John 5:30, KJV)

The Son did not create a calling and then ask the Father to bless it. He received His life and work from the One who sent Him.

This is where sonship confronts even our most sincere spiritual ambitions. The life of the Son is not merely a more devoted version of self-directed living. It is life received from the Father and lived in response to Him.

God may therefore brush aside things that appear deeply spiritual to us—not because devotion is meaningless, but because He is bringing us beyond devotion that still originates in ourselves.

Grace That Returns to God in Praise

Spurgeon writes:

“Praise is God’s most righteous due, and every Christian, as the recipient of His grace, is bound to praise God from day to day.” (Morning and Evening)

Praise begins with recognition.

We have received.

Grace leaves no room for the believer to stand before God as the originator of his own life, righteousness, or spiritual progress. Whatever God accomplishes in us begins with Him.

“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.” (Romans 11:36, KJV)

That movement—of Him, through Him, and to Him—places praise within the proper order of life.

If everything begins with God, then glory returns to God.

Praise is therefore more than verbal thanksgiving. It is the acknowledgment of source. It confesses that what we possess by grace did not originate in us.

The life received through the Son becomes a life that increasingly recognizes the Father as its beginning and its end.

Where the Two Meet: Nothing Originates in Us

Chambers removes confidence in self-appointed spiritual purpose.

Spurgeon removes confidence in self-produced spiritual attainment.

Both bring us to the same place.

We are recipients.

The danger Chambers identifies is that we can take even something offered to God and quietly reclaim ownership of it: my consecration, my calling, my ministry, my purpose.

But sonship begins elsewhere.

The Son received from the Father.

And those brought into sonship are learning the same order of life.

What God purposes does not originate in our determination to accomplish something for Him. His purpose precedes us. It has been revealed in Christ, and by grace we are brought into participation in it.

Praise then becomes the fitting response because nothing remains for self to claim as its own achievement.

What begins in God returns to God in glory.

Pastoral Orientation

There are times when something we sincerely believed God wanted from us is set aside.

That can be unsettling.

We may wonder whether our devotion was mistaken or whether something has been lost.

But God may be doing something deeper than confirming the plans we formed from our consecration. He may be freeing us from the need to determine for ourselves what our surrendered life must become.

The Holy Spirit operates upon the human spirit, directing the life toward the purpose already revealed in the Son. The spirit of sonship responds—not by constructing a calling from its own devotion, but by receiving and participating in what proceeds from the Father.

Then praise becomes natural.

We cease presenting our spiritual accomplishments before God as though they establish our worth or purpose.

We receive.

We respond.

And we give thanks.

For the life is from God, the purpose is revealed in His Son, and the glory belongs to the Father.