Oswald Chambers Quotations | Page 5

We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of person ...... the one who accepts the call of God in Christ Jesus.

If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time or great personal growth ahead.

Our prayers are heard, not because we are in earnest, not because we suffer, but because Jesus suffered.

When we are abandoned to God, He works through us all the time.

Our true character comes out in the way we pray.

Get alone with Jesus and either tell Him that you do not want sin to die out in you - or else tell Him that at all costs you want to be identified with His death.

We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life is he does not pray; I question it. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God within him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer...Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished.

The soul is in danger when knowledge of doctrine outsteps intimate touch with Jesus.

The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him...

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.

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

A life of intimacy with God is characterized by joy.

Today Jesus Christ is being dispatched as the Figurehead of a Religion, a mere example. He is that, but he is infinitely more; He is salvation itself, He is the Gospel of God.

Our Lord insists on the social aspect of our lives: He shows very distinctly that we cannot further ourselves alone.

It is easy to turn our religious life into a cathedral for beautiful memories, but there are feet to be washed . . .

Our 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.

Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water.

Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark.

If sin rules in me, God's life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed.

At the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself--the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

God's grace turns out men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not milksops.

Perseverance is more than endurance. It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen.

Beware of reasoning about God's Word - obey It.

The golden rule for understanding in spiritual matters is not intellect, but obedience.

God is the Great Engineer, creating circumstances to bring about moments in our lives of divine importance, leading us to divine appointments

There is always one fact more in every man's case about which we know nothing.

You may often have to watch Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it.

Jesus Christ can afford to be misunderstood; we cannot. Our weakness lies in always wanting to vindicate ourselves.

I have to learn that the aim in life is God's, not mine.

Realize that the Lord is here now, and the freedom you receive is immediate.

No man has ever gone through the crisis of deliberately making Jesus Lord and found Him to be a failure.

The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him.

There is nothing attractive about the gospel to the natural man; the only man who finds the gospel attractive is the man who is convicted of sin.

Intercession means that we deliberately substitute God’s interests in others for our natural sympathy with them.

We must keep ourselves in touch, not with theories, but with people, and never get out of touch with human beings, if we are going to use the word of God skilfully amongst them.

The institutions of Churchianity are not Christianity. An institution is a good thing if it is second; immediately an institution recognizes itself it becomes the dominating factor.

In the spiritual domain, criticism is love turned sour. In a wholesome spiritual life there is no room for criticism. The critical faculty is an intellectual one, not a moral one. If criticism becomes a habit it will destroy the moral energy of the life and paralyse spiritual force. The only person who can criticise human beings is the Holy Spirit.

Eternal life is not a gift from God; eternal life is the gift OF GOD.

Let the consequences of your obedience be left up to God.

The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.

We have to take the first step as though there were no God. It is no use to wait for God to help us, He will not: but immediately we arise we find He is there.

So many of us limit our praying because we are not reckless in our confidence in God. In the eyes of those who do not know God, it is madness to trust Him, but when we pray in the Holy Spirit we begin to realize the resources of God, that He is our perfect heavenly Father, and we are His children.

If for one whole day, quietly and determinedly, we were to give ourselves up to the ownership of Jesus and to obeying his orders, we should be amazed at its close to realize all he had packed into that one day.

God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome.

God is my Father, He loves me, I shall never think of anything He will forget. Why should I worry?

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

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.

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

Am I becoming more and more in love with God as a holy God, or with the conception of an amiable Being who says, “Oh well, sin doesn’t matter much”?

Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God.

When once you realize all that it cost God to forgive you, you will be held as in a vice, constrained by the love of God.

When God gives a vision, transact business on that line, no matter what it costs.

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

God rarely allows a person to see how great a blessing he is to others.

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

When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message.

Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it.

The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not--Do your duty, but--Do what is not your duty. It is not your duty to go the second mile, to turn the other cheek, but Jesus says if we are His disciples we shall always do these things. There will be no spirit of--"Oh, well, I cannot do any more, I have been so misrepresented and misunderstood". . . Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is--Never look for justice, but never cease to live it.

Too often we treat prayer as the preparation for the work of the church. Do you not see? Prayer IS the work of the church.

Now is the time for us to stop seeking our own satisfaction and to pour out our lives before HIM.

We are not sent to do battle for God, but to be used by God in His battles.

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 never gives strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the minute.

We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something.

An unguarded strength is a double weakness.

Our salvation comes to us so easily because it cost God so much.

Don't forget to pray today because God did not forget to wake you up this morning.

Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion.

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.

Never look for justice in this world, never cease to give it.

Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are.

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.

It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we mistake panic for inspiration.

You do not know what you are going to do,the only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing.......It is this attitude that keeps you in perpetual wonder-you do not know what God is going to do next.

Jesus Christ out-socialists the socialists. He says that in His Kingdom he that is greatest shall be the servant of all. The real test of the saint is not preaching the gospel, but washing disciples' feet, that is, doing the things that do not count in the actual estimate of men but count everything in the estimate of God.

We pray pious blether, our will is not in it, and then we say God does not answer; we never asked Him for anything. Asking means that our wills are in what we ask.

There is no need to get to a place of prayer; pray wherever you are.

The purpose of prayer is to reveal the presence of God equally present, all the time, in every condition.

Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished.

Prayer is an effort of will.

Worship is giving God the best that He has given you.

Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life-gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.

To be obsessed by God is to have an effective barricade against all the assaults of the enemy.

The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life.

If we are abandoned to Jesus we have no ends of our own to serve.

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.

Never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer your prayer.

A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness.

Once the call of God comes to you, start going and never stop.

Jesus Christ became Incarnate for one purpose, to make a way back to God that man might stand before Him as He was created to do, the friend and lover of God Himself.

God does not exist to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God.

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

The resentment of discipline of any kind will warp the whole life away from God's purpose.

Whenever the conviction of God's Spirit comes there is the softening of the whole nature to obey; but if the obedience is not instant there will come a metallic hardening and a corrupting of the guidance of God.

Don't read to remember; read to realize.

It is a joy to Jesus when a person takes time to walk more intimately with Him. The bearing of fruit is always shown in scripture to be a visible result of an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

God does not expect us to imitate Jesus Christ; He expects us to allow the life of Jesus to be manifested in our moral flesh.

Adam was created to be the friend and companion of God, he was to have dominion over all the life in the air and earth and sea, but one thing he was not to have dominion over, and that was himself.

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.

We are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do.