May 16, 2013

My Utmost Inspiration


Crouching in the corner of my college dorm room, I found myself dumbstruck by the day's devotional reading. At my father's recommendation I'd faithfully read Chamber's My Utmost for His Highest for the past year. Countless devotionals from this book rocked my world, smacked me between the eyes and felt like the breath of God, but only a couple forced me to stand up and git. That day, one of those entries found me. Prior to reading that day, I felt my thoughts and experiences all flowing together in a swell that...needed something. An outlet. I knew I should write it down, but...well, life gets in the way, I'm not sure what I would write, etc. Excuses.

Then I read this. And it is the reason for my writing anything on this site. 

My Utmost for His Highest, December 15th:

"If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can. If you do not, someone will be the poorer all the days of his life. Struggle to re-express some truth of God to yourself, and God will use that expression to someone else. Go through the winepress of God where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle to get expression experimentally, then there will come a time when that expression will become the very wine of strengthening to someone else; but if you say lazily – “I am not going to struggle to express this thing for myself, I will borrow what I say,” the expression will not only be of no use to you, but of no use to anyone. Try to state to yourself what you feel implicitly to be God’s truth, and you give God a chance to pass it on to someone else through you.

Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance."

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to spend several hours with a professional composer. And by composer, I mean a seventy-year-old man who was a classmate with John Williams at Julliard. Surprisingly, this gentleman turned out to be a deep Christian who was originally led to Christ through music composition. We talked through what it means to write - words, music, anything - and where inspiration comes from. All of the wisdom learned that day can be summarized in the Utmost entry above. All good comes from God - you just have to put it out there in "utterance" so God can use it. Don't worry if it's not perfect or not yet complete. Just get that first bit down (on notebook paper or sheet music), and the next inspiration will come...but only after you give expression to what you have. 

Thus died my excuses for failing to write down the music in my head. Perhaps I'll post about that later on. But now - I hope the wisdom in here has encouraged, inspired, and freed you as much as it did me.