Oswald Chambers Quotes

If my ruling disposition is self-interest, I perceive that everything that happens to me is always for or against my self-interest; if, on the other hand, my ruling disposition is obedience to God, I perceive Him to be at work for my perfecting in everything that happens to me.

God expects no complaining on our part and offers no explanation on His part.

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.

When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, he is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a pedestal, away from the common run of men.........If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve.

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.

It never cost a disciple anything to follow Jesus; to talk about cost when you are in love with anyone is an insult.

One of the greatest snares is the number of good things we might do. Jesus Christ never did the good things He might have done, He did everything He ought to do because He had His eye fixed on His Father's will and He sacrificed Himself for His Father.

The key to the missionary's work is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the lost. We are inclined to look on our Lord as one who assists us in our endeavors for God. Yet our Lord places Himself as the absolute sovereign and supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say that the lost will never be saved if we don't go- He simply says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations...."

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

The spirit of God has the habit of taking the words of Jesus out of their scriptural setting and putting them into the setting of our personal lives.

The busyness of things obscures our concentration on God ... Never let a hurried lifestyle disturb the relationship of abiding in Him. This is an easy thing to allow, but we must guard against it.

Obey Him with glad reckless joy.

The most important aspect of Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to give our attention to, and it is the one thing that is continually under attack.

People say that it is so hard to bring Jesus Christ and present him before the lives of men today. Of course it is. It is so hard that it is impossible except by the power of the indwelling Holy Ghost.

The marvelous thing about spiritual wealth is that when we take our part in that, everyone else is blessed; whereas if we refused to be partakers, we hinder others from entering into the riches of God.

Sin is blatant mutiny against God, and either sin or God must die in my life.

If you have ever prayed in the dawn you will ask yourself why you were so foolish as not to do it always: it is difficult to get into communion with God in the midst of the hurly-burly of the day.

Intercessory prayer for one who is sinning prevails. God says so! The will of the man prayed for does not come into question at all, he is connected with God by prayer, and prayer on the basis of the Redemption sets the connection working and God gives life.

If you have had no tension in your life, never been screwed up by problems, your mortality well within your own grasp, and someone tells you that God so loved you that He gave His Son to die for you, nothing but good manners will keep you from being amused.

Theology must work itself out in the most practical relationships.

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

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.

If Jesus ever commanded us to do something that He was unable to equip us to accomplish, He would be a liar. And if we make our own inability a stumbling block or an excuse not to be obedient, it means that we are telling God that there is something which He has not yet taken into account.

Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led - but it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of FAITH, not of understanding and reason- - a life of knowing Him who calls us to go.

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.

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

The real business of your life as a saved soul is intercessory prayer.

Grace is the overflowing favor of God, and you can always count on it being available to draw upon as needed.

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.

Beware of being obsessed with consistency to your own convictions instead of being devoted to God. The important consistency in a saint is not to a principle but to the divine life. It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than it is to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him.

Let God fling you out (as seed), and do not go until He does. If you select your own spot, you will prove an empty pod. If God sows you, you will bring forth fruit.

It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence.

God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you. Your part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intercede, but to use the everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence to bring them before His throne, and to allow the Spirit in you the opportunity to intercede for them. In this way God is going to touch the whole world with His saints.

For understanding in spiritual matters, the golden rule is not intellect but obedience.

We think we understand another person's struggle until God reveals the same shortcomings in our lives.

The Cross did not happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Never say you will pray about a thing; pray about it.

God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.

If we obey God it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the sting comes in. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything, it is a delight, but it costs those who do not love Him a good deal.

Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God. Some people mature into an understanding of God’s will more quickly than others because they obey more readily; they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of God.

Whenever God's will is in the ascendant all compulsion is gone. When we choose deliberately to obey Him then with all His almighty power.

A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus.

A hypocrite is one who plays two parts consciously for his own ends. When we find fault with other people we may be quite sincere, and yet Jesus says in reality we are frauds.

God's end is to enable me to see that he can walk on the chaos of my life just now.

Dreaming about a thing in order to do it properly is right; but dreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong.

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 the exercise of drawing on the grace of God.

Our Lord did not say it was wrong to pray in the corners of the street, but He did say it was wrong to have the motive to "be seen of men".