The following is from p. 218 of Oswald Chamber's The Moral Foundations of Life:
An artist is one who not only sees, but is prepared to pay the price of acquiring the technical knowledge to express what he or she sees. 'Artistic people' are those who have not enough art in them to make them work at the technique of art whereby they can express themselves; they indulge in moods and tones and impressions. Consequently, there are more artistic people than there are artists. The same is true of poetry. There are many people with poetic notions, but very few poets. It is not enough for people to feel the divine flame burning in them; unless they go into the concentrated, slogging business of learning the technique of expression, their geniuses will be of no use to anyone.
Apply these illustrations spiritually: if we have not enough of the life of God in us to overcome the difficulty of expressing it in our bodies, then we are living impoverished spiritual lives. Think of the illuminations the Spirit of God has given you. He expected you to bring your physical body, that He made, into obedience to the vision, and you never attempted to but let it drift, and when the crisis came and God looked for you to be His mouthpiece, you crumbled all to pieces. You had not formed the habit of apprehending; your physical machine was not under control. It is a terrible thing to sit down to anything.
Beware of being sidetracked by the idea that you can develop a spiritual life apart from physical accompaniments. It is a desperately dangerous thing to allow the spiritual vision to go ahead of the physical obedience.
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