Quotes from Oswald Chambers

The great wonder of Jesus Christ's salvation is that He changes our heredity. He does not change human nature—He changes its source, and thereby its motives as well.

God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision

The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. But it is not a gate we pass right through; it is one where we abide in the life that is found there.

God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with Himself.

Never consider whether or not you are of use—but always consider that "you are not your own" (1 Corinthians 6:19). You are His.

A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus. Never try to make your experience a principle for others, but allow God to be as creative and original with others as He is with you.

The call of God is not a reflection of my nature; my personal desires and temperament are of no consideration. As long as I dwell on my own qualities and traits and think about what I am suited for, I will never hear the call of God.

Beware of the inclination to dictate to God what consequences you would allow as a condition of your obedience to Him.

In our mental outlook we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin as the only explanation as to why Jesus Christ came, and the explanation of the grief and sorrow in life.

God forgives sin only because of the death of Christ. God could forgive people in no other way than by the death of His Son, and Jesus is exalted as Savior because of His death.

many of us prefer to stay at the entrance to the Christian life, instead of going on to create and build our soul in accordance with the new life God has placed within us.

Who are the people who have influenced us most? Certainly not the ones who thought they did, but those who did not have even the slightest idea that they were influencing us. In the Christian life, godly influence is never conscious of itself. If we are conscious of our influence, it ceases to have the genuine loveliness which is characteristic of the touch of Jesus.

The proof that our relationship is right with God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.

To have a master and teacher is not the same thing as being mastered and taught.

Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.

We can only be used by God after we allow Him to show us the deep, hidden areas of our own character.

O Lord, my Lord, I come to Thee this morning with a sense of spiritual failure. Cleanse me by Thy grace and restore me to the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. O that the sweet kindness of Jesus were more and more manifest in me.

The thing that approaches the very limits of His power is the very thing we as disciples of Jesus ought to believe He will do. We impoverish and weaken His ministry in us the moment we forget He is almighty. The impoverishment is in us, not in Him. We will come to Jesus for Him to be our comforter or our sympathizer, but we refrain from approaching Him as our Almighty God.

Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained through discipline.

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

There are vast areas of stubbornness and ignorance the Holy Spirit has to reveal in each of us, but it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone...Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet all our intellectual questions and get alone with Him.

The real danger in spiritual laziness is that we do not want to be stirred up—all we want to hear about is a spiritual retirement from the world.

God does not make us holy in the sense that He makes our character holy. He makes us holy in the sense that He has made us innocent before Him. And then we have to turn that innocence into holy character through the moral choices we make.

Lord, the range of Thy power, the touch of Thy grace, the breathing of Thy Spirit, how I long for these to bring me face to face with Thee; Lord, by Thy grace cause me to appear before Thee.