Oswald Chambers was an early-twentieth-century Scottish Baptist and Holiness Movement evangelist and teacher, best known for the devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Profoundly inspirational Oswald Chambers quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
If you’re searching for profound quotes by famous Christians that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes from Pope John Paul II, powerful Ravi Zacharias quotes and famous Rick Warren quotes.
Famous Oswald Chambers Quotes
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.
The 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.’
Our circumstances are the means God uses to exhibit just how wonderfully perfect and extraordinarily pure His Son is.
There have been prophets and students who handle the Bible like a child’s box of bricks; they explain to us the design and structure and purpose; but as time goes on things do not work out in their way at all. They have mistaken the scaffolding for the structure, while all the time God is working out His purpose with a great and undeterred patience.
Faith 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… ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.’ – this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.
It’s easier to serve God without a vision, easier to work for God without a call, because then you are not bothered by what God requires; common sense is your guide, veneered over with Christian sentiment. But once you receive a commission from Jesus Christ the memory of what God wants will always come like a goad, and you will no longer be able to work for Him on the common sense basis.
We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, and He packs our life with surprises all the time…. Leave the whole thing to Him, it is gloriously uncertain how He will come in, but He will come.
It 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!
The test of a man’s religious life and character is not what he does in the exceptional moments of life, but what he does in the ordinary times, when there is nothing tremendous or exciting on. The worth of a man is revealed in his attitude to ordinary things when he is not before the footlights.
Self pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it, I cannot be used by God for his purpose in the world.
The secret of the missionary is…I am His, and He is carrying out His work through me.
The central point of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with Him, not public usefulness to others.
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.
We must never put our dreams of success as God’s purpose for us; His purpose may be exactly the opposite. His purpose is that I depend on HIM and in HIS power NOW. His end is the process. It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God….His purpose is for this minute, not for something in the future. We have nothing to do with the ‘afterwards’ of obedience. If we have a further end in view, we do not pay sufficient attention to the immediate present; if we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment as it comes is precious.
The one true mark of a saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered to Jesus Christ.
What the world needs is not ‘a little bit of love’, but a surgical operation.
The great thing about faith in God is that it keeps a man undisturbed in the midst of disturbance.
Never be diplomatic and careful about the treasure God gives. This is poverty triumphant.
When obedience is in the ascendant, He will tax the remotest star and the last grain of sand to assist you with all His Almighty power.
When the Spirit fills us, we are transformed, and by beholding God we become mirrors. You can always tell when someone has been beholding the glory of the Lord, because your inner spirit senses that he mirrors the Lord’s own character. Beware of anything that would spot or tarnish that mirror in you. It is almost always something good that will stain it- something good, but not what is best.
When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship – when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.
Beware of the inclination to dictate to God what consequences you would allow as a condition of your obedience to Him.
Never be hurried out of the relationship of abiding in Him.
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.
Inspirational Oswald Chambers Quotes
Prayer is not getting things from God. That is a most initial stage; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God: I tell Him what I know He knows in order that I may get to know it as He does.
When we see Him, we will wonder that we ever could have disobeyed Him.
Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him.
Keep your life in its constant contact with God that his surprising power may break out on the right hand and on the left. Always be in a state of expectancy, and see that you leave room for God to come in as he likes.
The thing that awakens the deepest fountain of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven his sin.
We 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.
Solitude with God repairs the damage done by the fret and noise and clamour of the world.
It is easy to say we believe in God as long as we remain in the little world we choose to live in; but get out into the great world of facts, the noisy world where people are absolutely indifferent to you, where your message is nothing more than a crazy tale belonging to a bygone age, can you believe God there?
Worship and intercession must go together, the one is impossible without the other. Intercession means that we rouse ourselves up to get the mind of Christ about the one for whom we pray.
The center of salvation is the Cross of Jesus, and the reason it is so easy to obtain salvation is because it cost God so much.
We are so busy telling God where we would like to go. We wait with the idea of some great opportunity, something sensational, and when it comes we are quick to cry, ‘Here am I.’ Readiness for God means that we are ready to do the tiniest little thing or the great big thing, it makes no difference.
God saved us to make us holy, not happy. Some experiences may not contribute to our happiness, but all can be made to contribute to our holiness. Vance Havner The destined end of man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness. God’s one aim is the production of saints.
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.
Many people have turned back because they are afraid to look at things from God’s perspective. The greatest spiritual crisis comes when a person has to move a little farther on in his faith than the beliefs he has already accepted.
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.
You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.
Intercession 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
We pray when there’s nothing else we can do; Jesus wants us to pray before we do anything at all.
The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit Divine characteristics in your life, not good human characteristics . God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly.
The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould
Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion. But strictly speaking, there is no call to that. Service is what I bring to the relationship and is the reflection of my identification with the nature of God.
Top Oswald Chambers Quotes
Eternal life is not a gift from God; eternal life is the gift of God. The energy and the power which was so very evident in Jesus will be exhibited in us by an act of the absolute sovereign grace of God, once we have made that complete and effective decision about sin. We have to keep letting go, and slowly, but surely, the great full life of God will invade us, penetrating every part.
Christianity is not devotion to work, or to a cause, or a doctrine, but devotion to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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.
We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life – those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength.
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.’
The scrutiny we give other people should be for ourselves.
One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit.
When God gives us a vision, we must transact business with Him at that point, no matter what the cost.
But the miracle of the redemptive reality of God is that the worst and the vilest offender can never exhaust the depths of His love.
If you yourself do not cut the lines that tie you to the dock, God will have to use a storm to sever them and to send you out to sea. You have to get out past the harbor into the great dephts of God, and begin to know things for yourself….beg in to have spiritual discernment. Beware of paying attention or going back to what you once were, when God wants you to be something that you have never been.
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.
We must build our faith not on fading lights but on the Light that never fails.
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.
For understanding in spiritual matters, the golden rule is not intellect but obedience.
You must learn to wrestle against the things that hinder your communication with God.
Death is God’s delightful way of giving us life.
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.
Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God. Faith means, whether I am visibly delivered or not, I will stick to my belief that God is love.
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.
The greatest word of Jesus to His disciples is abandon
Sanctification means more than being freed from sin. It means the deliberate commitment of myself to the God of my salvation, and being willing to pay whatever it may cost.
The 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.
The strain of life is what builds our strength. If there is no strain, there will be no strength.
Obey Him with glad reckless joy.
It is not repentance that saves me; repentance is the sign that I realize what God has done in Christ Jesus.
