Whether you know him from his classic My Utmost for His Highest or his numerous other writings, Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) is hard to miss. Over a century since his death, his thoughts on God, faith and what it means to be spiritually transformed are still in print and widely available. His vision of a spiritual life where the Holy Spirit leads people into a life of adoring God, while God becomes manifest in people to make them more like Christ, continues to inspire. Here are some of the many inspiring quotes from Chambers' work.
1. “Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.”
2. “Look back over your own history, as revealed to you by grace, and you will see one central fact growing large—God is love.”
3. “The purpose of prayer is to reveal the presence of God, equally present at all times and in every condition.”
4. “In the singing of the birds, in the love of human hearts, the voice of God is present. If only we had ears to hear the stars singing, to catch the glorious anthem of praise by the heavenly hosts!”
5. “We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.”
6. “Is it possible to live out the Beatitudes? Never—unless God can do what Jesus Christ says He can; unless He can give us the Holy Spirit, who will remake us and bear us into a new realm.”
7. “Give thanks to God that He is there, no matter what is happening.”
8. “Yet sin did not keep Him from graciously revealing Himself in communion with humanity. No, He still came.”
9. “God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.”
10. “The true happiness of the saint is found in purposefully making and keeping God first.”
11. “Many a man has found God in the belly of hell in the trenches during the days of war. They came to their wits’ end and discovered God.”
12. “At times, God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Songbirds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him...Watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there, keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet... When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light.”
13. “The Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the heart of an unsaved person, and that is the very thing Jesus means it to do—because as soon as we reach the point of despair we are willing to come to him as paupers to receive from Him.”
14. “God and love are synonymous. Love is not an attribute of God, it is God; whatever God is, love is.”
15. “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.”
16. “The bedrock of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possession. It is not ‘decisions for Jesus Christ,’ but a sense of absolute futility: ‘I cannot begin to do it.’ Then, says Jesus, you are blessed. It takes us a long while to believe we are poor, but that is the entrance. The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works.”
17. “Nothing is too hard for God, no sin too difficult for His love to overcome, no failure that He cannot make into a success.”
18. “You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.”
19. “All God’s men are ordinary men made extraordinary by the matter He has given them.”
20. “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 mold us.”
21. “Everything that God has created is like an orchestra praising Him.”
22. “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.”
23. “What is needed today is not a new gospel, but live men and women who can restate the Gospel of the Son of God in terms that will reach the very heart of our problems.”
24. “Never look for justice in this world, never cease to give it.”
25. “Remorse is not complete repentance. Returning to God is repentance!”
26. “Get into the habit of saying, ‘Speak, Lord,’ and life will become a romance.”
27. “Set your heart and mind toward God and let the holy light of Jesus Christ search through every nook and cranny. The result will be a marvelous readjustment of your whole life.”
28. “O Lord Jesus, hear my crying For a consecrated life, For I bite the dust in trying For release from this dark strife.”
29. “Shut out every other consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only—My Utmost for His Highest. I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone.”
30. “It is not reward that a saint looks for: it is to hear our Lord say, ‘well done, good and faithful servant.’”
31. “Continually revise your attitude towards God and see if it is a going out of everything, trusting in God entirely.”
32. “Listen to God, not to the selfish voice of ‘flesh and blood.’”
33. “God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is.”
34. “Love is the beginning and the middle and the end—the first sign, stamp, and seal—of the saint. Stronger than death, deeper than hell, higher than heaven, is this mighty, personal devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
35. “All our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out. When we have come to the end of ourselves, not in imagination but really, we are able to receive the Holy Spirit. ‘Receive ye the Holy Spirit’—the idea is that of invasion. There is only one lodestar in the life now, the lord Jesus Christ.”
36. “Since my eyes were fixed on Jesus, I’ve lost sight of all besides.”
37. “Worship is giving God the bet that He has given you.”
38. “When will this knowledge of Him be full? Never! Eternal life is to know Christ eternally; not eternal existence, but eternal knowledge of God; deeper depths and grander heights forever!”
39. “If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself, it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.”
40. “I am apt to forget the long way it took God to bring me to this point in the divine life, and I lose patience with other folks if they do not see at once what I now see. But God’s word exhorts me to be patient with all people. It brings to mind the question, How long did it take God to put you where you are now?”
41. “God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having—viz., life with Himself.”
42. “You do not grieve the Holy Spirit by taking a look over your past life. In fact, the Holy Spirit may take you back through your unregenerated days so that you may remember from where he took you, remember what you are, and remember He did it all.”
43. “Beware of the inclination to dictate to God as to what you will allow to happen if you obey Him.”
44. “Rejoice in everything if you are His child—no matter where you find yourself, no matter what your circumstances are, no matter what tribulations come. You can give thanks in all things because He remains the same. Nothing alters him.”
45. “Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.”
46. “The gospel does not end with the fact that God loved you with unmerited mercy and forgives you of your sins. That is only the beginning of it. But the full gospel of God is that He enables you to love others as He does.”
47. “We generally look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the Biblical idea of prayer is that God’s holiness, purpose, and wise order may be brought about.”
48. “The love of God at work in me makes me hate with the hatred of the Holy Ghost all that is not in keeping with God’s holiness. To walk in the light means that everything that is of the darkness drives me closer into the center of the light.”
49. “God is wonderful! He brings the friends we need just at the right time, and He removes them just at the right time.”
50. “Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. 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, He packs our life with surprises all the time.”
Some of these quotes previously appeared in the following articles:
What You Need to Know about Oswald Chambers
10 Things You Never Knew about Oswald Chambers
Photo Credit: Graphic by G. Connor Salter. Photo is public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This article is part of our larger Inspiring Quotes resource meant to encourage and strengthen your faith. Visit our most popular quotes by well known Christians and theologians to find more inspiration. Remember, the Holy Spirit can work through us when we have faith and share it with others! Please pass along any quotes that touch your heart because you never know light you’ll shine on someone else’s dark day!
