Oswald Chambers

“Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.”

“Never allow anything to divert you from your insight into Jesus Christ. It is the true test of whether you are spiritual or not. To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you. Since mine eyes have looked on Jesus, I’ve lost sight of all beside, So enchained my spirit’s vision, Gazing on the Crucified.”

“The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”

“If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.”

“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.”

“What hinders me from hearing is that I am taken up with other things. It is not that I will not hear God, but I am not devoted in the right place. I am devoted to things, to service, to convictions, and God may say what He likes but I do not hear Him.”

“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.”

“Some of us are like the Dead Sea, always taking in but never giving out, because we are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus.”

“There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes.”

“Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me? Am I full of the little things that cheer His heart over me, or am I whimpering because things are going hardly with me? There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes.”

“God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, ". . . who will go for Us?" The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude.”

“Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to "go out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to "go out" through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God.”

“If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is an absurdity and there is absolutely no need for it. What the world needs is not "a little bit of love," but major surgery. If you think you are helping lost people with your sympathy and understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ. You must have a right-standing relationship with Him yourself, and pour your life out in helping others in His way— not in a human way that ignores God. ”

“True intercession involves bringing the person, or the circumstance that seems to be crashing in on you, before God, until you are changed by His attitude toward that person or circumstance. People describe intercession by saying, "It is putting yourself in someone else’s place." That is not true! Intercession is putting yourself in God’s place; it is having His mind and His perspective.”

“Faith is not intelligent understanding, faith is deliberate commitment to a Person where I see no way.”

“he must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence”

“The great enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but the good which is not good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.”

“We imagine that whatever is unpleasant is our duty! Is that anything like the spirit of our Lord, "I *delight* to do Thy will, O My God.”

“Suppose God wants to teach you to say, "I know how to be abased"--are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket--to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister?”

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

“Our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants.”

“Patience is more than endurance. A saint's life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says--'I cannot stand anymore.' God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God's hands. Maintain your relationship to Jesus Christ by the patience of faith. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

“God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having--viz., life with Himself. It is a question of loosening the bonds that hinder the life...”

“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.”

“Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is.”

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

“Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.”

“When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.”

“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”

“It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes”