Oswald Quotes

God will turn the might have been into a wonderful culture for the future. ~ Oswald Chambers

Whenever the conviction of God's Spirit comes there is the softening of the whole nature to obey; but if the obedience is not instant there will come a metallic hardening and a corrupting of the guidance of God. ~ Oswald Chambers

Those who march with us will certainly face abuse, misunderstanding, bitter animosity, and possibly the ferocity of struggle and of danger. In return, we can only offer to them the deep belief that they are fighting that a great land may live. ~ Oswald Mosley

God speaks in the language you know best - not through your ears, but through your circumstances. ~ Oswald Chambers

Douglas Thornton [an English Christian missionary to Cairo, Egypt with the Church Missionary Society from 1898-1907] was often more amusing than he tried to be. He had a delightful way of mixing up two kindred proverbs or idioms. Once he told his companions that he always had two strings up his sleeve. They then asked him if he had another card to his bow. Such exchanges enliven heavy committee eetings and create wholesome laughter. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

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. ~ Oswald Chambers

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. ~ Oswald Chambers

Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cultureless. If we look back we find that it is synonymous with life itself. ~ Oswald Spengler

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. ~ Oswald Chambers

It's a question of trying to take down by dictation what's already there. I'm not making something, I'm trying to hear it. ~ Alice Oswald

Christ taught that the kingdom of God was a community where each member served the others. He defined His ultimate purpose using that term. But in most churches, a few people carry the load. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

There are not three levels of spiritual life--worship, waiting, and work...God's idea is that the three should go together as one. ~ Oswald Chambers

The strain of life is what builds our strength. If there is no strain, there will be no strength. ~ Oswald Chambers

God gives us the vision, then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience. ~ Oswald Chambers

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 ~ Oswald Chambers

When a man is at his wits' end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get in touch with Reality. ~ Oswald Chambers

I'm sick and tired of our generation being called the TV generation. What do you expect? We watched Lee Harvey Oswald get his brains blown out all over. How could we change the channel after that? ~ Denis Leary

We Germans will never produce another Goethe, but we may produce another Caesar. ~ Oswald Spengler

Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.
Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.
Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.
Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.
Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

...

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.
Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.
Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening
Blowing the stars toward them, bringing snow. ~ Alice Oswald

One night, I lay awake for hours, just terrified. When the dawn finally came up - the comfortable blue sky, the familiar world returning - I could think of no other way to express my relief than through poetry. I made a decision there and then that it was what I wanted to do. Every time I pulled a wishbone, it was what I asked for. ~ Alice Oswald

A sentimentalist is one who delights to have high and devout emotions stirred whilst reading in an arm-chair, or in a prayer meeting, but he never translates his emotions into action. Consequently a sentimentalist is usually callous, self-centred and selfish, because the emotions he likes to have stirred do not cost him anything. ~ Oswald Chambers

Self pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it, I cannot be used by God for his purpose in the world. ~ Oswald Chambers

Stripped of its plot, the 'Iliad' is a scattering of names and biographies of ordinary soldiers: men who trip over their shields, lose their courage or miss their wives. In addition to these, there is a cast of anonymous people: the farmers, walkers, mothers, neighbours who inhabit its similes. ~ Alice Oswald

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

Each of us is as full of the Spirit as we really want to be. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

Never ask another person's advice about anything God makes you decide before Him. If you ask advice, you will almost always side with Satan. " ... I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood ... " (Galatians 1:16). ~ Oswald Chambers

Every element of our own self-reliance must be put to death by the power of God. The moment we recognize our complete weakness and our dependence upon Him will be the very moment that the Spirit of God will exhibit His power. ~ Oswald Chambers

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. ~ Oswald Chambers

The kings of terrors, the last enemy, will never be able to breach the pearly gates and disturb the bliss of heaven! No more deathbed vigils or funerals. The hearse will have made its last journey. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

The Doctor: I've seen bigger.
Clara: Really?
The Doctor: Are you joking? It's massive! ~ Steven Moffat

It is even possible to be a martyr for the Faith and yet not love Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald J. Smith

If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time or great personal growth ahead. ~ Oswald Chambers

I think it's often assumed that the role of poetry is to comfort, but for me, poetry is the great unsettler. It questions the established order of the mind. It is radical, by which I don't mean that it is either leftwing or rightwing, but that it works at the roots of thinking. ~ Alice Oswald

There is always one fact more in every man's case about which we know nothing. ~ Oswald Chambers

There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself. If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you - and His experiments always succeed. ~ Oswald Chambers

The well of your incompleteness runs deep, but make the effort to look away from yourself and to look toward Him. ~ Oswald Chambers

Never forget that our capacity and capability in spiritual matters is measured by, and based on, the promises of God. ~ Oswald Chambers

Prayer imparts the power to walk and not faint. ~ Oswald Chambers

God works this unspeakable mystery of entire sanctification in your life and mine. People try to seek the experience of entire sanctification in ways other than God's way; but the wonderful Spirit of God will remove confusion and enable us to see that the only means to obtain the experience of entire sanctification by faith is the grace of God. ~ Oswald Chambers

The fascinating thing about the studio was that there was no story department. They would put a little notice up on the bulletin board saying: 'The next Oswald will take place at the North Pole. Anybody having any gags, please turn them in before such a date.' If you turned in gags regularly, the way Tex Avery, Cal Howard, Jack Carr and two or three others of us did, you'd be called into the gag meeting. The group would go into Walt's office and talk about whatever the subject of the cartoon was. Walt would put it into some kind of form and that was the story
no scripts, no storyboards. ~ Walter Lantz

You may often have to watch Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it. ~ Oswald Chambers

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

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. ~ Oswald Chambers

The prayer of the feeblest saint who lives in the Spirit and keeps right with God is a terror to Satan. The very powers of darkness are paralyzed by prayer; no spiritualistic seance can succeed in the presence of a humble praying saint. No wonder Satan tries to keep our minds fussy in active work till we cannot think in prayer. ~ Oswald Chambers

There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact. ~ Oswald Spengler

Solitude with God repairs the damage done by the fret and noise and clamour of the world. ~ Oswald Chambers

Remember that there is a passion for souls that does not come from God, but from our desire to make converts to our point of view. ~ Oswald Chambers

When we say "Thy will be done," do we say it with a sigh? If so, we have never realized that the character of God is holy love; nothing can ever happen outside His purposeful will. ~ Oswald Chambers

John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald meet in hell and team up to assassinate Satan. ~ John Hodgman

God does not hear us because we pray earnestly - He hears us solely on the basis of redemption. God is never impressed by our earnestness. ~ Oswald Chambers

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again ~ Alice Oswald

By connecting Oswald to several parts of the JFK–Almeida coup plan, those working for Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli could ensure that when Oswald surfaced as the main suspect, the CIA and other agencies would have to cover up much information to protect the coup plan - which is exactly what happened ~ Lamar Waldron

The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience. ~ Oswald Chambers

Once the call of God comes to you, start going and never stop. ~ Oswald Chambers

I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my life produces a longing after God in other lives, not admiration for myself. Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God. God is not after perfecting me to be a specimen in His show-room; He is getting me to the place where He can use me. Let Him do what He likes. ~ Oswald Chambers

We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. ~ Oswald Chambers

In our mental outlook we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin as the only explanation as to why Jesus Christ came, and the explanation of the grief and sorrow in life. ~ Oswald Chambers

The Bible talks plentifully about joy, but it nowhere talks about a 'happy Christian.' Happiness depends on what happens; joy does not. Remember, Jesus Christ had joy, and He prayed 'that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.' ~ Oswald Chambers

If you do not cut the moorings, God will have to break them by a storm and send you out. ~ Oswald Chambers

Prayer is the practice of drawing on the grace of God. Don't say, "I will endure this until I can get away and pray." Pray now - draw on the grace of God in your moment of need. Prayer is the most normal and useful thing; it is not simply a reflex action of your devotion to God. We are very slow to learn to draw on God's grace through prayer. ~ Oswald Chambers

Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God. ~ Oswald Chambers

How many people have you made homesick for God? ~ Oswald Chambers

The peace of God is not the peace of stoicism or passivity. It is the most intense activity. ~ Oswald Chambers

Famously in 1936, Oswald Mosley led a march of his British black shirts through a mostly Jewish neighborhood, in the east end of London. What resulted was what they called the "Battle of Cable Street", where Oswald Mosley and his fascists basically got the snot beaten out of them when East London rose up against them and beat them up. ~ Rachel Maddow

You may often see Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it. (Cf. Matthew 10:34) ~ Oswald Chambers

When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message. ~ Oswald Chambers

The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious. ~ Oswald Spengler

If a leader shows strong discipline, others will see it and cooperate with the expectations placed on them. At this point, leadership by example is crucial. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don't agree with us. ~ Oswald Chambers

We can never be like lillies in the garden unless we have spent time as bulbs in the dark, totally ignored. ~ Oswald Chambers

True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing men to one's service but in giving oneself in selfless service to them. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

The Sermon on the Mount is not some unattainable goal; it is a statement of what will happen in me when Jesus Christ has changed my nature by putting His own nature in me. Jesus Christ is the only One who can fulfill the Sermon on the Mount. ~ Oswald Chambers

It is impossible to conduct your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer ~ Oswald Chambers

I have learnt that I am me, that I can do the things that, as one might put it, me can do, but I cannot do the things that me would like to do. ~ Oswald Chambers

Spiritual character is only made by standing loyal to God's character, no matter what distress the trial of faith brings. The distress and agony the prophets experienced was the agony of believing God when everything that was happening contradicted what they proclaimed Him to be; there was nothing to prove that God was just and true, but everything to prove the opposite. ~ Oswald Chambers

In the midst of the awesomeness, a touch comes, and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. You know it is not the hand of restraint, correction, nor chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it gives inexpressible peace and comfort, and the sense that "underneath are the everlasting arms," (Deuteronomy 33:27) full of support, provision, comfort and strength. ~ Oswald Chambers

By the supernatural miracle of God's grace I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my sin, not because I have repented, but because of what Jesus has done. ~ Oswald Chambers

Never choose to be a worker, but once God has placed His call upon you, woe be to you if you "turn aside . . . to the right or the left . . ." (Deuteronomy 28:14). He will do with you what He never did before His call came to you, and He will do with you what He is not doing with other people. Let Him have His way. ~ Oswald Chambers

The reason we see hypocrisy and fraud and unreality in others is because they are all in our own hearts. The great characteristic of a saint is humility-Yes, all those things and other evils would have been manifested in me but for the grace of God, therefore I have no right to judge. ~ Oswald Chambers

Let circumstances take you where they will, but keep drawing on the grace of God in whatever condition you may find yourself. ~ Oswald Chambers

Faith is the inborn capacity to see God behind everything. ~ Oswald Chambers

One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be - though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain - because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone. ~ Oswald Spengler

A child of the light confesses instantly and stands bared before God; a child of the darkness says, 'Oh, I can explain that away. ~ Oswald Chambers

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, ~ Oswald Chambers

Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you. ~ Oswald Chambers

...never act on the impulse of that feeling. If you do, you will cause difficult situations to arise which will take years to untangle. Wait for God's timing and He will do it without any heartache or disappointment. ~ Oswald Chambers

When I was 16, I was taught by a wonderful teacher who let me ignore the Greek syllabus and just read Homer. ~ Alice Oswald

Unalert yet sometimes suffused through and through by an inward light, is characteristic of the primitive and of the child (and also of those moments of religious and artistic inspiration that occur ever less and less often as a Culture grows older) right ~ Oswald Spengler

Under dictatorship, people are enslaved but they know it," he told de Mohrenschildt, recalling his days in the Soviet Union. "Here, the politicians constantly lie to people and they become immune to these lies because they have the privilege of voting. But voting is rigged and democracy here is a gigantic profusion of lies and clever brainwashing." Oswald worried about the FBI's police-state surveillance tactics. And he believed that America was turning more "militaristic" as it increasingly interfered in the internal affairs of other countries. ~ David Talbot

To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery(the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed ~ Oswald Spengler

Neighbours complaining about someone's dog making an awful racket. You could hardly blame the poor beast, its owner had died in her bed at least a fortnight before and there hadn't been much left of the old girl worth eating. ~ James Oswald

When prayer seems to be unanswered, beware of trying to place the blame on someone else. That is always a trap of Satan. When you seem to have no answer, there is always a reason - God uses these times to give you deep personal instruction, and it is not for anyone else but you. ~ Oswald Chambers

This last month I have felt the burden of a city. Its great sorrow has pressed in on my soul. Its vice and sin have bowed me upon my knees in tears. ~ Oswald J. Smith

if my memory serves me right, here is my genealogical line: Boccaccio, Petronius, Rabelais, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, Plotinus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Dostoievsky (and other Russian writers of the Nineteenth Century), the ancient Greek dramatists, theElizabethan dramatists (excluding Shakespeare), Theodore Dreiser, Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Elie Faure, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Proust, Van Gogh, the Dadaists and Surrealists, Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Nijinsky, Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Celine, everything I read on Zen Buddhism, everything I read about China, India, Tibet, Arabia, Africa, and of course the Bible, the men who wrote it and especially the men who made the King James version, for it was the language of the Bible rather than its "message" which I got first and which I will never shake off. ~ Henry Miller

A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to our Lord. ~ Oswald Chambers

Leaders require courage of the highest order -- always moral courage -- and often physical courage as well. Courage is that quality of mind that enables people to encounter danger or difficulty firmly, without fear or discouragement. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

because she'd forbidden him to bring it anywhere in sight of the school. Ever since it had exploded in the school car park. "Give us a lift?" asked Darius. "Oswald can't fetch me, he's in a meeting." A meeting? thought Nat. Oswald? Darius didn't have any parents; Nat had never asked why, and Darius never wanted to talk about it. Oswald Bagley was Darius's terrifying older brother, who was looking after him. The way wolves sometimes look after man-cubs ~ Nigel Smith

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man. ~ Oswald Chambers

God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hearts to give; for the giving that is governed by a fixed determination. The Spirit of God revolutionises our philanthropic instincts. Much of our philanthropy is simply the impulse to save ourselves an uncomfortable feeling. The Spirit of God alters all that. As saints our attitude towards giving is that we give for Jesus Christ's sake, and from no other motive. ~ Oswald Chambers

The Christian leader who seeks an example to follow does well to turn to the life of Jesus Himself. ~ J. Oswald Sanders