Top 757 Quotes & Sayings by Oswald Chambers - Page 12

One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit.

And it is not repentance that saves me — repentance is only the sign that I realize what God has done through Christ Jesus.

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

A man ceases to be an honest doubter the moment he refuses one way of getting at the truth because he does not like that way.

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.

When we say "Thy will be done," do we say it with a sigh? If so, we have never realized that the character of God is holy love; nothing can ever happen outside His purposeful will.

Prayer is often a temptation to bank on a miracle of God instead of on a moral issue, i.e., it is much easier to ask God to do my work than it is to do it myself. Until we are disciplined properly, we will always be inclined to bank on God's miracles and refuse to do the moral thing ourselves. It is our job, and it will never be done unless we do it.

Are you willing to give and be poured out until you are used up and exhausted-not seeking to be ministered to, but to minister?

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

The Christian life is stamped by 'moral spontaneous originality,' consequently the disciple is open to the same charge that Jesus Christ was, viz., that of inconsistency. But Jesus Christ was always consistent to God, and the Christian must be consistent to the life of the Son of God in him, not consistent to hard and fast creeds. Men pour themselves into creeds, and God has to blast them out of their prejudices before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.

Prayer is God's answer to our poverty, not a power we exercise to obtain an answer.

When someone thinks that to develop a holy life he must always be alone with God, he is no longer of any use to others.

Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ -- For My Sake. It is that which makes the iron saint.

The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is. We will set up success in Christian work as the aim; the aim is to manifest the glory of God in human life, to live the life hid with Christ in God in human conditions. Our human relationships are the actual conditions in which the ideal life of God is to be exhibited.

To be 'in the will of God' is not a matter of intellectual discernment, but a state of heart.

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.

To silence the Voice of God is damnation in time!

When you pray, things remain the same, but you begin to be different. The same thing when a man falls in love, his circumstances and conditions remain the same, but he has a sovereign preference in his heart for another person which transfigures everything!

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

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

The whole idea of the prayers of the saints is that God's holiness, God's purpose, God's ways may be brought about irrespective of who comes or goes.

Angels cannot preach the gospel, only beings such as Paul and you and I can preach the gospel.

Watch the things you say you can't believe, and then recall the things you accept without thinking, like your own existence.

The nature of faith is that it must be tried.

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.

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.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations

Beware of giving over to mere dreaming when once God has spoken. Leave him to be the source of all your dreams and joys and delights, and go out and obey what He has said. If you are in love, you do not sit down and dream about the one you love all the time, you go and do something for him; and that is what Jesus Christ expects us to do. Dreaming after God has spoken is an indication that we do not trust Him.

A river reaches places which its source never knows. And Jesus said that, if we have received His fullness, "rivers of living water" will flow out of us, reaching in blessing even "to the end of the earth" regardless of how small the visible effects of our lives may appear to be.

Never water down or minimise the mighty Gospel of God by considering that people may be misled by certain statements. Present the Gospel in all its fullness and God will guard His own truth.

The one thing that remains is looking in the face of God for ourselves.

The love of God is not created- it is His nature.

If you are going on with God, the only thing that is clear to you, and the only thing God intends to be clear, is the way He deals with your own soul.

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

Once we see Jesus, the impossible things He does in our lives become as natural as breathing.

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 key to the missionary's work is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the lost. We are inclined to look on our Lord as one who assists us in our endeavors for God. Yet our Lord places Himself as the absolute sovereign and supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say that the lost will never be saved if we don't go- He simply says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations...."

One man or woman called of God is worth a hundred who have elected to work for God.

The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.

The only basis on which to work for God is an esteemed appreciation of his deliverance.

The saint is hilarious when he is crushed with difficulties because the thing is so ludicrously impossible to anyone but God.

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.

If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our commonplace religious feet, and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in his presence.

We do not pray at all until we are at our wits' end.

God gets me into a relationship with Himself whereby I understand His call, then I do things out of sheer love for Him on my own account. To serve God is the deliberate love-gift of a nature that has heard the call of God.

God always ignores the present perfection for the ultimate perfection.

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

A river reaches places its source never knows.

It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes

A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to our Lord.

Drudgery is one of the finest touchstones of character there is. Drudgery is work that is very far removed from anything to do with the ideal - the utterly mean grubby things; and when we come in contact with them we know instantly whether or not we are spiritually real.

Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ.

Take care lest you play the hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right before you worship God yourself.

Anything that belittles or obliterates the holiness of God by a false view of the love of God, is untrue to the revelation of God given by Jesus Christ.

It must be God first, God second, and God third

Be exhausted for God, but remember that your supply comes from Him. 'All my fresh springs shall be in thee.'

There is a call to spiritual perseverance. A call not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately, knowing with certainty that God will never be defeated.

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

The vision that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here.

Abandonment to God is of more value than personal holiness!