Quotes from Oswald Chambers

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

When a man is at his wits' end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get in touch with Reality.

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.

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

Earnestness is not by any means everything; it is very often a subtle form of pious pride because it is obsessed with the method and not with the Master.

The dearest friend on earth is a mere shadow compared to Jesus Christ.

The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.

We look upon the enemy of our souls as a conquered foe, so he is, but only to God, not to us.

We say, sorrow, disaster, calamity. God says, chastening and it sounds sweet to him though it is a discord to our ears. Don't faint when you are rebuked, and don't despise the chastening of the Lord. In your patience possess your souls.

We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle.

I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.

We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.

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

Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing...Certainty is the mark of the common-sense 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 rather be an expression of breathless expectation.

At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God's hand until we learn to hear Him.

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

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.

Faith is not intelligent understanding, faith is deliberate commitment to a Person where I see no way.

No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His worker, only one thing will, and that is a personal relationship to Himself which has gone through the mill of His spring-cleaning until there is only one purpose left--I am here for God to send me where He will.

We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.

Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me? Am I full of the little things that cheer His heart over me, or am I whimpering because things are going hardly with me? There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes.

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...

Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God.