Oswald Chambers Quotes

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

“When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.”

“The golden rule for understanding spiritually is not intellect, but obedience. If a man wants scientific knowledge, intellectual curiosity is his guide; but if he wants insight into what Jesus Christ teaches, he can only get it by obedience.”

“The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.”

“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.”

“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”

“You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.”

“One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God.”

“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…”

“We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.”

“The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience.”

“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.”

“Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.”

“Have you been asking God what He 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.”

“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”

“Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.”

“Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.”

“God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.”

“The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.”

“No healthy Christian ever chooses suffering; he chooses God's will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.”

“The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone”

“When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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”

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

“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.”

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

“Let the consequences of your obedience be left up to God.”

“Never look for justice in this world, never cease to give it.”

“Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.”

“Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are.”

“God gives us the vision, then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.”

“Some of us are like the Dead Sea, always taking in but never giving out, because we are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus.”

“Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.”

“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.”