Top 757 Quotes & Sayings by Oswald Chambers - Page 11

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

One of the most difficult questions to answer in Christian work is, 'What do you expect to do?' You don't know what you are going to do. The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing.......Hav e you been asking what God 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.

As Christians we are not out for our own cause at all, we are out for the cause of God, which can never be our cause. We do not know what God is after, but we have to maintain our relationship with Him whatever happens.

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.

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.

My worth to God publicly is measured by what I really am in my private life.

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

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

When God gives us a vision, we must transact business with Him at that point, no matter what the cost.

The one thing for which we are all being disciplined is to know that God is real. As soon as God becomes real, other people become shadows. Nothing that other saints do or say can ever perturb the one who is built on God.

The great enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but the good which is not good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.

We can all see God in exceptional things, but it requires the culture of spiritual discipline to see God in every detail.

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. It is a question of loosening the bonds that hinder the life.

The prayer of the saints is never self-important, but always God-important.

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.

Having the reality of God's presence is not dependent on our being in a particular circumstance or place, but is only dependent on our determination to keep the Lord before us continually.

One great effect of prayer is that it enables the soul to command the body. By obedience I make my body submissive to my soul, but prayer puts my soul in command of my body.

Prayer is the supreme activity of all that is noblest in our personality, and the essential nature of prayer is faith.

When you fear God you fear nothing else!

If the Spirit of God detects anything in you that is wrong, He doesn't ask you to make it right; He only asks you to accept the light of truth, and then He will make it right. A child of the light will confess sin instantly and stand completely open before God. But a child of the darkness will say, “Oh, I can explain that.

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.

The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man's respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, who produces these agonies begins the formation of the Son God in the life.

The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things.

Jesus said, 'Go ... and make disciples,' not converts to your opinions.

The height of the mountaintop is measured by the drab drudgery of the valley.

Reflected peace is the proof that you are right with God because you are at liberty to turn your mind to Him.

If I am going to know who Jesus is, I must obey Him. The majority of us don't know Jesus because we have not the remotest intention of obeying Him.

If I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God.

God does not make us holy in the sense of character; He makes us holy in the sense of innocence, and we have to turn that innocence into holy character by a series of moral choices.

In the spiritual domain, criticism is love turned sour... If criticism becomes a habit, it will destroy the moral energy of the life and paralyze the spiritual force... Whenever you are in a critical temper, it is impossible to enter into communion with God. Criticism makes you hard and vindictive and cruel, and leaves you with the flattering unction that you are a superior person. It is impossible to develop the characteristics of a saint and maintain a critical attitude.

There is no greater threat to our devotion to Christ than our service for Christ.

The greatest competitor of true devotion to Jesus is the service we do for Him. It is easier to serve than to pour out our lives completely for Him.

The good is always the enemy of the best.

Prayer is the answer to every problem there is.

Our Lord's conception of discipleship is not that we work for God, but that God works through us.

The disciple is rich not in possessions, but in personal identity.

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.

God regenerates us and puts us in contact with all his divine resources, but he cannot make us walk according to his will.

If Jesus is a teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize us by erecting a standard we cannot come anywhere near. But if by being born again from above we know Him first as Savior, we know that He did not come to teach us only. He came to make us what He teaches we should be. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His way with us.

The Christian life is one of spiritual courage and determination lived out in our flesh

Watch your motive before God; have no other motive in prayer than to know Him.

The inattentive, slovenly way we drift into the presence of God is an indication that we are not bothering to think about Him. Whenever our Lord spoke of prayer, He said, "Ask." It is impossible to ask if you do not concentrate.

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.

Never be diplomatic and careful about the treasure God gives. This is poverty triumphant.

We always have visions, before a thing is made real. When we realize that although the vision is real, it is not real in us, then is the time that Satan comes in with his temptations, and we are apt to say that it is no use to go on. Instead of the vision becoming real, there has come the valley of humiliation.

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

Some prayers are followed by silence because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than we can understand.

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.

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.

God’s training is for now, not presently. His purpose is for this minute, not for something in the future. we have nothing to do with the afterwards of obedience; we can get it wrong when we think of the afterwards. what men call training and preparation, God calls the end… if we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment is precious.

Remember that we have to ask things of God that are in keeping with the God whom Jesus Christ revealed.

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.

See that you do not use the trick of prayer to cover up what you know you ought to do.

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.

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.

People pour themselves into their own doctrines, and God has to blast them out of their preconceived ideas before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.

God makes us as broken bread and poured-out wine to please Him. Beware of competing calls once the call of God grips you.

Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to "go out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to "go out" through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God.

Our circumstances are the means God uses to exhibit just how wonderfully perfect and extraordinarily pure His Son is.

Speak, Lord”; make time to listen. Chastening is more than a means of discipline, it is meant to get me to the place of saying, “Speak, Lord.”