I don’t know how many times I have used Oswald Chambers’ devotional classic, My Utmost for His Highest. At least every three or four years I go back to it for resourcing my daily spiritual reading and always -- without fail -- I am ministered to, receiving challenge and insight not received before. I remember the experience I had the last time I used it.

The meditation began with this sentence from Hebrews 13, verses 5-6: “He hath said . . . so that we may boldly say.” Then came these two sentences: “My say-so is to be built on God’s say-so.” God says -- “I will never leave thee,” then I can with courage say -- “the Lord is my helper, I will not fear.”

I knew then that, sometime, I would preach on this theme: “God’s say-so” -- or God has said, so we can say. The writer to the Hebrews put…