The greatest answer to prayer is that I am brought into a perfect understanding with God, and that alters my view of actual things.
Oswald ChambersIt is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances, for we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them.
Oswald ChambersSanctification is not my idea of what I want God to do for me; sanctification is God’s idea of what He wants to do for me.
Oswald ChambersThe only way we can be of use to God is to let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our own characters.
Oswald ChambersEvery man carries his kingdom within, and no one knows what is taking place in another's kingdom. 'No one understands me!' Of course they don't, each one of us is a mystery. There is only One Who understands you, and that is God. Hand yourself over to Him.
Oswald ChambersIntercession 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
Oswald ChambersThe moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life.
Oswald ChambersBe rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water.
Oswald ChambersIt 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 ChambersIn 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 ChambersThe test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is. We will set up success in Christian work as the aim; the aim is to manifest the glory of God in human life, to live the life hid with Christ in God in human conditions. Our human relationships are the actual conditions in which the ideal life of God is to be exhibited.
Oswald ChambersNever make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer your prayer.
Oswald ChambersSelf pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it, I cannot be used by God for his purpose in the world.
Oswald ChambersWe are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay on the mount. The times of exaltation are exceptional, they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware lest our spiritual selfishness wants to make them the only time.
Oswald ChambersThe great thing about faith in God is that it keeps a man undisturbed in the midst of disturbance.
Oswald ChambersAm I learning how to use my Bible? The way to become complete for the Master’s service is to be well soaked in the Bible; some of us only exploit certain passages. Our Lord wants to give us continuous instruction out of His word; continuous instruction turns hearers into disciples.
Oswald ChambersOur Lord insists on the social aspect of our lives: He shows very distinctly that we cannot further ourselves alone.
Oswald ChambersDon't plan without God. God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the plans we have made, when we have not taken Him into account.
Oswald ChambersOur Lord's first obedience was to the will of his Father, not to the needs of men; the saving of men was the natural outcome of his obedience to the Father.
Oswald ChambersWe read some things in the Bible three hundred and sixty-five times and they mean nothing to us, then all of a sudden we see what God means, because in some particular we have obeyed God, and instantly His nature is opened up.
Oswald ChambersOur understanding of God is the answer to prayer; getting things from God is God's indulgence of us. When God stops giving us things, He brings us into the place where we can begin to understand Him.
Oswald ChambersFaith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our own minds. Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of unsyllabled isolation. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life. Much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive.
Oswald ChambersThe honour of Jesus Christ is at stake in your bodily life. Are you remaining loyal to the Son of God in the things which beset His life in you? Do you continue to go with Jesus? The way lies through Gethsemane, through the city gate, outside the camp; the way lies alone, and the way lies until there is no trace of a footstep left, only the voice, 'Follow Me.'
Oswald ChambersWe give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the divine guidance of God being exhibited through childlike people who were “foolish” enough to trust God’s wisdom and His supernatural equipment.
Oswald ChambersThe heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.
Oswald ChambersContinually revise your relationship to God until the only certainty you have is not that you are faithful, but that He is.
Oswald ChambersWatch human nature; we are so built that if we do not get thrilled in the right way, we will get thrilled in the wrong. If we are without the thrill of communion with God, we will try to get thrilled by the devil, or by some concoction of human ingenuity.
Oswald ChambersComplete weakness and dependence will always be the occasion for the Spirit of God to manifest His power.
Oswald ChambersWe are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do. We cannot save ourselves nor sanctify ourselves, God does that; but God will not give us good habits, He will not give us character, He will not make us walk aright. We have to do all that ourselves.
Oswald ChambersIt is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.
Oswald ChambersWe are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do.
Oswald ChambersIs the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him?... Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God. If the Son of God is formed in us by regeneration, He will press forward in front of our common sense and change our attitude to the things about which we pray.
Oswald ChambersIt is a great thing to see physical courage, and greater still to see moral courage, but the greatest to see of all is spiritual courage; oh, to see a person who will stand true to the integrity of Jesus Christ no matter what he or she goes through!
Oswald ChambersJesus Christ can afford to be misunderstood; we cannot. Our weakness lies in always wanting to vindicate ourselves.
Oswald ChambersBeware of any belief that makes you self-indulgent; it came from the pit, no matter how beautiful it sounds.
Oswald ChambersThere 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 ChambersOur prayers are heard, not because we are in earnest, not because we suffer, but because Jesus suffered.
Oswald ChambersGod does not make us holy in the sense of character; He makes us holy in the sense of innocence, and we have to turn that innocence into holy character by a series of moral choices.
Oswald Chambers