Oswald Chambers Quotes

Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ
For My Sake. It is that which makes the iron saint.

Just because I have listened carefully and intently to one thing from God does not mean that I will listen to everything He says.

There is a vast difference between devotion to a person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause- He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. To be a disciple is to be a devoted bondservant motivated by love for the Lord Jesus.

God's will is hard only when it comes up against our stubbornness, then it is as cruel as a ploughshare and as devastating as an earthquake.

The proof that our relationship is right with God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.

Faith is the whole man rightly related to God by the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

At least once a week examine yourself before God to see if your life is measuring up to the standard He has for you.

The men with God's 'go' in them have these three characteristics-a saving experience, the evidence of supernatural power at work, and the spiritual efficacy of success in prayer.

Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it.

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

Human nature, if healthy, demands excitement; and if it does not obtain its thrilling excitement in the right way, it will seek it in the wrong. God never makes bloodless stoics; He makes no passionless saints.

No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His worker, only one thing will, and that is a personal relationship to Himself which has gone through the mill of His spring-cleaning until there is only one purpose left
I am here for God to send me where He will.

Prayer is God's answer to our poverty, not a power we exercise to obtain an answer.

God answers prayer on the ground of Redemption and on no other ground.

We must keep ourselves in touch, not with theories, but with people, and never get out of touch with human beings, if we are going to use the word of God skilfully amongst them.

When we see Him, we will wonder that we ever could have disobeyed Him.

His agony is the basis of the simplicity of our salvation.

To identify with the death of Jesus Christ means that we must die to everything that was never a part of Him.

Beware of reasoning about God's Word - obey It.

We cannot discover the source of our natural life through common sense and reasoning, and Jesus is teaching here that growth in our spiritual life comes not from focusing directly on it, but from concentrating on our Father in heaven. Our heavenly Father knows our circumstances, and if we will stay focused on Him, instead of our circumstances, we will grow spiritually - just as the lilies of the field.

Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.

Beware of building your faith on experience, or your life will not ring true and will only sound the note of a critical spirit.

Sanctification means the impartation of the Holy qualities of Jesus Christ. It is His patience, His love, His holiness, His faith, His purity, His godliness, that is manifested in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy; it is drawing from Jesus the holiness that was manifested in Him, and He manifests it in me.

Never consider whether or not you are of use - but always consider that "you are not your own" (1 Corinthians 6:19). You are His.

God is my Father, He loves me, I shall never think of anything He will forget. Why should I worry?

If we are obsessed by God, nothing else can get into our lives - not concerns, nor tribulation, nor worries. And now we understand why our Lord so emphasized the sin of worrying. How can we dare to be so absolutely unbelieving when God totally surrounds us? To be obsessed by God is to have an effective barricade against all the assaults of the enemy.

Trust God, and do the next thing.

One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. It is not only God who punishes for sin, but sin establishes itself in the sinner and takes its toll. No struggling or praying will enable you to stop doing certain things, and the penalty of sin is that you gradually get used to it, until you finally come to the place where you no longer even realize that it is sin. No power, except the power that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, can change or prevent the inherent consequences of sin. "If we walk in the light as He is in the light ... " (1 John 1:7). For many of us, walking in the light means walking according to the standard we have set up for another person. The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie.

When you yield to something, you will soon realize the tremendous control it has over you. Even though you say, "Oh, I can give up that habit whenever I like," you will know you can't. You will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you willingly yielded to it. It is easy to sing, "He will break every fetter," while at the same time living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. But yielding to Jesus will break every kind of slavery in any person's life.

All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God.

None of us lives to himself . . . ." Romans 14:7 Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people? For instance, if I allow any turning away from God in my private life, everyone around me suffers. We "sit together in the heavenly places . . ." (Ephesians 2:6). "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it . . ." (1 Corinthians 12:26). If you allow physical selfishness, mental carelessness, moral insensitivity, or spiritual weakness, everyone in contact with you will suffer.

Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water.

Joy comes from seeing the complete fulfillment of the specific purpose for which I was created and born again, not from successfully doing something of my own choosing.

PRAYER THOUGHT: Through Your mercy and grace, Lord, I truly and completely yield myself to You.

Theology must work itself out in the most practical relationships.

As long as we are flippant and stupid and shallow and think that we know ourselves, we shall never give ourselves over to Jesus Christ; but when once we become conscious that we are infinitely more than we can fathom, and infinitely greater in possibility either for good or bad than we can know, we shall be only too glad to hand ourselves over to Him.

We are not sent to do battle for God, but to be used by God in His battles.

When the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over, because out of it will come that following of Jesus which is an unspeakable joy.

We take such liberties with our circumstances, we do not believe God engineers them, although we say we do; we treat the things that happen as if they were engineered by men. To be faithful in every circumstance means that we have only one loyalty, and that is to our Lord. Suddenly God breaks up a particular set of circumstances,

Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is - Never look for justice, but never cease to give

No matter what changes God has performed in you, never rely on them. Build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives.

There is nothing thrilling about a laboring person's work, but it is the laboring person who makes the ideas of the genius possible. And it is the laboring saint who makes the ideas of his Master possible. When you labor at prayer, from God's perspective there are always results. What an astonishment it will be to see, once the veil is finally lifted, all the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you have been in the habit of taking your orders from Jesus Christ.

God is patient with the process! Think of the enormous leisure of God! He is never in a hurry.

How much kindness have I shown Him in the past week? Has my life been a good reflection on His reputation? God is saying

The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.

The test of mountain-top experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness is when you are "in the soup" of actual circumstances.

Obey God in the things he shows you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. God will never reveal more truth about himself until you have obeyed what you know already ... this chapter brings out the delight of real friendship with God.

The workshop of missionary munitions is the hidden, personal, worshipping life of the saint.

If your life is producing only a whine, instead of the wine, then ruthlessly kick it out. It is definitely a crime for a Christian to be weak in God's strength.

The real test of the saint is not preaching the gospel, but washing disciples' feet, that is, doing the things that do not count in the actual estimate of men, but count everything in the estimate of God. Paul

Love for the Lord is not an ethereal, intellectual, dreamlike thing; it is the intensest, most vital, most passionate love of which the human heart is capable.

At His Ascension our Lord entered Heaven, and He keeps the door open for humanity to enter.

Measure your growth in grace by your sensitiveness to sin.

The whole idea of the prayers of the saints is that God's holiness, God's purpose, God's ways may be brought about irrespective of who comes or goes.

It is easy to turn our religious life into a cathedral for beautiful memories, but there are feet to be washed ...

The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign the death certificate of our sin nature. I must take my emotional opinions and intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a moral verdict against the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I have to my right to myself. Paul said, "I have been crucified with Christ ... " He did not say, "I have made a determination to imitate Jesus Christ," or, "I will really make an effort to follow Him" - but - "I have been identified with Him in His death.

When we lose sight of God we become hard and dogmatic. We hurl our own petitions at God's throne and dictate to Him as to what we wish Him to do. We do not worship God, nor do we seek to form the mind of Christ. If we are hard towards God, we will become hard towards other people.

The real attitude of sin in the heart towards God is that of being without God; it is pride, the worship of myself, that is the great atheistic fact in human life.

Intercession is about putting ourselves in other's shoes or having sympathy with others. But intercessions are about having the mind of God and see things through His perspective

Am I becoming more and more in love with God as a holy God, or with the conception of an amiable Being who says, "Oh well, sin doesn't matter much"?

A man may betray Jesus Christ by speaking too many words, and he may betray him through keeping his mouth shut.

Watch the things you say you can't believe, and then recall the things you accept without thinking, like your own existence.

Prayer is not getting things from God. That is a most initial stage; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God: I tell Him what I know He knows in order that I may get to know it as He does.

If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we remove God's riches from our lives and hinder others from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it removes God from the throne of our lives, replacing Him with our own self-interests. It causes us to open our mouths only to complain, and we simply become spiritual sponges - always absorbing, never giving, and never being satisfied. And there is nothing lovely or generous about our lives.

One man or woman called of God is worth a hundred who have elected to work for God.

The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things.

My personal life may be crowded with small, petty happenings, altogether insignificant, but if I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God. Then, when I stand face to face with God, I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When God's redemption brings a human soul to the point of obedience, it always produces. If I obey Jesus Christ, the redemption of God will flow through me to the lives of others, because behind the deed of obedience is the reality of Almighty God.

Continually examine your attitude toward God to see if you are willing to "go out" in every area of your life, trusting in God entirely. It is this attitude that keeps you in constant wonder, because you don't know what God is going to do next. Each morning as you wake, there is a new opportunity to "go out," building your confidence in God. ". . . do not worry about your life . . . nor about the body . . ." (Luke 12:22). In other words, don't worry about the things that concerned you before you did "go out.

Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret.

The Spirit of God brings justification with a shattering, radiant light, and I know that I am saved, even though I don't know how it was accomplished.

Jesus Christ reveals, not an embarrassed God, not a confused God, not a God who stands apart from the problems, but One who stands in the thick of the whole thing with man.

Have you ever sought God with your whole heart, or have you simply given Him a feeble cry after some emotionally painful experience?

God's training ground, where the missionary weapons are found, is the hidden, personal, worshiping life of the saint.

Jesus Christ carries on intercession for us in heaven; the Holy Ghost carries on intercession in us on earth; and we the saints have to carry on intercession for all men.

The one thing that remains is looking in the face of God for ourselves.

God does not exist to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God.

We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle.

Holiness is the remaking of our inward and hidden desires and affections, when the Holy Spirit of God dwells in our mortal bodies.

My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to grant to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.

When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God. Consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself.

It is not a lack of spiritual experience that leads to failure, but a lack of working to keep our eyes focused and on the right goal. At least once a week examine yourself before God to see if your life is measuring up to the standard He has for you. Paul was like a musician who gives no thought to audience approval, if he can only catch a look of approval from his Conductor.

Being born again from above is an enduring, perpetual, and eternal beginning. It provides a freshness all the time in thinking, talking, and living - a continual surprise of the life of God. Staleness is an indication that something in our lives is out of step with God.

Beware of harking back to what you once were when God wants you to be something you have never been.

If you have ever had the vision of God, you may try as you like to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never let you.

Every man is made to reach out beyond his grasp.

Some of us get played out in the first ten yards, because God compels us to go where we cannot see the way, and we say - "I will wait till I get nearer the big crisis." If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis.

Make a determination to take no one seriously except God. You may find that the first person you must be the most critical with, as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself.

Consecration is the act of continually separating myself from everything except that which God has appointed me to do. It is not a one-time experience but an ongoing process. Am I continually separating myself and looking to God every day of my life?

Remember whose you are and whom you serve.

The danger we have is that we want to water down what Jesus said to make it mean something that aligns with our common sense.

Allow God to have complete liberty in your life when you speak. Before God's message can liberate other people, His liberation must first be real in you. Gather your material carefully, and then allow God to "set your words on fire" for His glory.

Be relentless and hard on yourself if you are in the habit of talking about the experiences you have had. Faith based on experience is not faith; faith based on God's revealed truth is the only faith there is.

confidence in Him. It is because of our trusting in experience that we see the steadfast impatience of the Holy Spirit against unbelief. All of our fears are sinful, and we create our own fears by refusing to nourish ourselves in our faith. How can anyone who is identified with Jesus Christ suffer from doubt or fear! Our lives should be an absolute hymn of praise resulting from perfect, irrepressible,

Wherever there is any element of pride or of conceit, Jesus cannot expound a thing. He will take us through the disappointment of a wounded pride of intellect, through disappointment of heart. He will reveal inordinate affections-thin gs over which we never thought He would have to get us alone.

You are the salt of the earth." Some modern teachers seem to think our Lord said, You are the sugar of the earth, meaning that gentleness and winsomeness without curativeness is the ideal of the Christian. Our Lord's illustration of a Christian is salt, and salt is the most concentrated thing known. Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. It is a disadvantage to be salt. Think of the action of salt on a wound, and you will realize this. If you get salt into a wound, it hurts, and when God's children are amongst those who are "raw" towards God, their presence hurts. The person who is wrong with God is like an open wound, and when salt gets in it causes annoyance and distress and the person is spiteful and bitter. The disciples of Jesus in the present dispensation preserve society from corruption; the salt causes excessive irritation, which spells persecution for the saint.

Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us. It will cost everything that is not of God in us.

Our true character comes out in the way we pray.

A simple statement of Jesus is always a puzzle to us if we are not simple. How are we going to be simple with the simplicity of Jesus? By receiving His Spirit, recognising and relying on Him, obeying Him as He brings the word of God, and life will become amazingly simple.

The historic idea that the devil tempts men had this remarkable effect, it produced the man of iron who fought; the modern idea of blaming his heredity or his circumstances produces the man who gives in at once.

If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our commonplace religious feet, and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in his presence.