Oswald Chambers Quotations

The dearest friend on earth is a mere shadow compared to Jesus Christ.

The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.

We look upon the enemy of our souls as a conquered foe, so he is, but only to God, not to us.

Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.

It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.

We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.

You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.

If in preaching the gospel you substitute your knowledge of the way of salvation for confidence in the power of the gospel, you hinder people from getting to reality.

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.

Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

When it is a question of God's almighty Spirit, never say, 'I can't.'

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.

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

Never believe that the so-called random events of life are anything less than God’s appointed order. Be ready to discover His divine designs anywhere and everywhere.

We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be.

Certain things can only be dealt with by ignoring them; if you face them you increase their power. It is absurd to say, Pray about them; when once a thing is seen to be wrong, don't pray about it, it fixes the mind on it; never for a second brood on it, destroy it by neglect.

If you will receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.

I cannot give up my will - I must exercise it, putting it into action.

Watch where Jesus went. The one dominant note in His life was to do His Father's will. His was not the way of wisdom or of success, but the way of faithfulness.

Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim - not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good.

Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God's sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others' lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God's testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.

God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with.

Whenever God touches sin it is independence that is touched, an that awakens resentment in the human heart. Independence must be blasted clean out, there must be no such thing left, only freedom which is very different. Freedom is the ability not to insist on my rights, but to see that God gets his

Prayer is not a preparation for work, it IS work. Prayer is not a preparation for the battle, it IS the battle. Prayer is two-fold: definite asking and definite waiting to receive.

Prayer is simple, as simple as a child making known its wants to it parents.

Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgments in life; it means being free from these deceptions. Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life.

Beware of making a fetish of consistency to your convictions instead of being devoted to God.

A saint is never consciously a saint- a saint is consciously dependent on God.

Intercession means raising ourselves up to the point of getting the mind of Christ regarding the person for whom we are praying.

Never allow the thought, 'I am of no use where I am.' You are certainly of no use where you're not.

There comes the baffling call of God in our lives also. The call of God can never be stated explicitly; it is implicit. The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to, because his call is to be in comradeship with himself, for his own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what he is after.

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.

Many people begin coming to God once they stop being religious.There's only one master of the heart-Jesus, not religion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

in the will of God" is not a matter of intellectual discernment, but a state of heart... It's motto is --" My Father can do what he likes with me, He may bless me to death, or give me a bitter cup; I delight to do His will.

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.

The knowledge that God has loved me beyond all limits will compel me to go into the world to love others in the same way.

If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means they are being purified.

A ready person never needs to get ready.

Begin to know Him now, and finish never

To silence the Voice of God is damnation in time!

Many of us suffer from temptations from which we have no business to suffer.

We must get to the place of real solitude with Christ. He is our mountain-height and our sea-calm.

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

Our Lord was 30 years preparing for 3 years of service. The modern stamp is to spend 3 hours preparing for 30 years of service.

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

It is easy for us to tarnish God's character because He never argues back; He never tries to defend or vindicate himself.

When you fear God you fear nothing else!

Is He going to help Himself to your life, or are you taken up with your conception of what you are going to do? God is responsible for our lives, and the one great keynote is reckless reliance upon Him.

Abandonment to God is of more value than personal holiness!

We have to keep letting go, and slowly and surely the great full life of God will invade us in every part, and men will take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.

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.

Do we so appreciate the marvelous salvation of Jesus Christ that we are our utmost for His highest?

Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God’s purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. And all the so-called Christian sympathy of others helps us to our deathbed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, “Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine.” If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours?

We 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.

The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold.

The Holy Ghost is the only One who can detect the temptations of Satan, neither our common sense nor our human wisdom can detect them as temptations.

Continually revise your relationship to God until the only certainty you have is not that you are faithful, but that He is.

Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people?

There is only one way by which I can get right with God, and that is through the death of Jesus Christ. I must get rid of the underlying idea that I can ever be right with God because of my obedience. Who of us could ever obey God to absolute perfection!

When I was born again, I received the very life of the risen Lord from Jesus Himself.

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

Sin is not weakness, it is a disease; it is red-handed rebellion against God and the magnitude of that rebellion is expressed by Calvary's cross.

Make converts to your own thoughts and opinions.

God has one destined end for mankind - holiness! His one aim is the production of saints. God is not an eternal blessing-machine for men. He did not come to save men out of pity. He came to save men because He had created them to be holy.

Tell God you are ready to be offered, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.

Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift.

No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit

God will never reveal more truth about himself until you have obeyed what you know already

We have all had times...when we have seen things from God's standpoint and have wanted to stay there; but God will never allow us to stay there. ...[I]t is in the valley where we live for the glory of God.

The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is.

Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God.

If we pray only because we want answers, we will become irritated and angry with God. We receive an answer every time we pray, but it does not always come in the way we expect, and our spiritual irritation shows our refusal to identify ourselves truly with our Lord in prayer. We are not here to prove that God answers prayer, but to be living trophies of God’s grace.

I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. ... When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. ... Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world.

Narrow all your interests until the attitude of mind and heart and body is concentration on Jesus Christ.

There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross.

Holiness is the balance between my nature and the law of God as expressed in Jesus Christ.

If your faith is in experiences, anything that happens is likely to upset that faith.

With Christ, it is not how much we give, but what we do not give that is the real test.

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.

The majority of us do not enthrone God, we enthrone common sense. We make our decisions and then ask the real God to bless our God's decision.

It is a tremendous freedom to get rid of all self-considerat ion and learn to care about only one thing-the relationship between Christ and ourselves.

To wait is not to sit with folded hands, but to learn to do what we are told.

Happiness depends on what happens; joy does not.

I am called to live in such a perfect relationship with God that my life produces a yearning for God in the lives of others, not admiration for myself. Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God. God’s purpose is not to perfect me to make me a trophy in His showcase; He is getting me to the place where He can use me. Let Him do what He wants.

The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything is has to face without wavering. If we take this view, life becomes one great romance, a glorious opportunity for seeing marvelous things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.

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.

Never try to help God fulfill His word.

You can never argue anyone into the Kingdom of Heaven, you cannot argue anyone anywhere. The only result of arguing is to prove to your own mind that you are right and the other fellow wrong. You cannot argue for truth; but immediately Incarnate Truth is presented, a want awakens in the soul which only God can meet.

We must learn to tell ourselves the truth on the basis of God’s Word.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations

The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty.

It is a trap to presume that God wants to make us perfect specimens of what He can do— God’s purpose is to make us one with Himself.

But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to protect us from a very shallow security in the present.

The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me.

We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us, our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.'