158 Quotes & Sayings By Oswald Chambers

Oswald Chambers was born on 28 April 1874 at Meerut, India, the son of Edward and Elizabeth Chambers. He was converted to the Christian faith by his grandmother, who had him baptized on her knees at the age of five. From this time on he gave himself to prayer and Bible study. At the age of eighteen Oswald was sent to England where he attended a Bible college at Windsor, Berkshire Read more

Oswald then spent two years at Leighton Buzzard Bible College in Bedfordshire where he completed his studies with honours. He returned to India in 1895, where he served as Pastor of the Pentecostal Church at Meerut from 1895 to 1900 when he came to America. In 1918 Oswald moved from Georgia to Georgia to Georgia where he established a church for black people.

In 1933 Oswald moved from Georgia to Georgia where he built a church for black people in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1944 Oswald moved from Georgia to Georgia where he bought a property in Lakeland, Florida, and built a church there before it burned down in December 1945. The church was rebuilt and reopened in 1946 under the leadership of Rev.

T.M. Chambers, Oswald's son-in-law and a former pastor in Lakeland, Florida who remained head pastor until his death in 1984.

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We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties. Oswald Chambers
Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose...
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Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. Oswald Chambers
If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes...
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If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart. Oswald Chambers
The author who benefits you most is not the one...
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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. Oswald Chambers
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What hinders me from hearing is that I am taken up with other things. It is not that I will not hear God, but I am not devoted in the right place. I am devoted to things, to service, to convictions, and God may say what He likes but I do not hear Him. Oswald Chambers
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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. Oswald Chambers
Don't forget to pray today because God did not forget...
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Don't forget to pray today because God did not forget to wake you up this morning. Oswald Chambers
A time is coming when the whole round world will...
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A time is coming when the whole round world will know that God reigns and that God is Love, when hell and heaven, life and death, sin and salvation, will be read and understood aright at last. Oswald Chambers
God always ignores the present perfection for the ultimate perfection.
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God always ignores the present perfection for the ultimate perfection. Oswald Chambers
The life of faith is not a life of mounting...
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The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting. Oswald Chambers
We act like pagans in a crisis--only one out of...
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We act like pagans in a crisis--only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God. Oswald Chambers
... God loved me not because I was lovable, but...
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... God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Oswald Chambers
As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith...
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As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Oswald Chambers
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The "show business, " which is so incorporated into our view of Christian work today, has caused us to drift far from Our Lord's conception of discipleship. It is instilled in us to think that we have to do exceptional things for God; we have not. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, surrounded by sordid sinners. That is not learned in five minutes. . Oswald Chambers
Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to...
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Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are. Oswald Chambers
There is no condition of life in which we cannot...
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There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed. Our Brilliant Heritage, 946 R Oswald Chambers
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The degree of panic activity in my life is equal to the degree of my lack of personal spiritual experience. Oswald Chambers
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Jesus doesn't bring anything up from the wells of human nature-- He brings them down from above. Oswald Chambers
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A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to our Lord. Oswald Chambers
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The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us. Oswald Chambers
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Never look for justice in this world, never cease to give it. Oswald Chambers
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Never allow anything to divert you from your insight into Jesus Christ. It is the true test of whether you are spiritual or not. To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you. Since mine eyes have looked on Jesus, I’ve lost sight of all beside, So enchained my spirit’s vision, Gazing on the Crucified. Oswald Chambers
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There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes. Oswald Chambers
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It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God's children starving while actually seated at the Father's table. Oswald Chambers
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Dec. 31… “Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ. Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him. Oswald Chambers
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We have to take the first step as though there were no God. It is no use to wait for God to help us, He will not: but immediately we arise we find He is there. Oswald Chambers
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We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours. . Oswald Chambers
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I want to tell you a growing conviction with me, and that is that as we obey the leadings of the Spirit of God, we enable God to answer the prayers of other people. I mean that our lives, my life, is the answer to someone’s prayer, prayed perhaps centuries ago. It is more and more impossible to me to have programmes and plans because God alone has the plan, and our plans are only apt to hinder Him, and make it necessary for Him to break them up. I have the unspeakable knowledge that my life is the answer to prayers, and that God is blessing me and making me a blessing entirely of His sovereign grace and nothing to do with my merits, saving as I am bold enough to trust His leading and not the dictates of my own wisdom and common sense. . Oswald Chambers
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What a blessed habit I have found my prayer list, morning by morning, it takes me via the Throne of all Grace straight to the intimate personal heart of each one mentioned here, and I know that He Who is not prescribed by time and geography answers immediately. Oswald Chambers
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Prayer is not an exercise, it is the life of the saint. Beware of anything that stops the offering up of prayer. Oswald Chambers
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The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God, not of the answer. Oswald Chambers
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We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself. Oswald Chambers
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To say that 'prayer changes things' is not as close to the truth as saying, 'prayer changes me and then I change things.' God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Oswald Chambers
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Your god may be your little Christian habit - the habit of prayer or Bible reading at certain times of your day. Watch how your Father will upset your schedule if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes. We say, 'I can't do that right now; this is my time alone with God.' No, this is your time alone with your habit. Oswald Chambers
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Only one in a thousand sits down in the midst of it all and says– I will watch my Father mend this. God must not be treated as a hospital for our broken “toys, ” but as our Father. Oswald Chambers
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When we lose sight of God we become hard and dogmatic. We hurl our own petitions at God’s throne and dictate to Him as to what we wish Him to do. We do not worship God, nor do we seek to form the mind of Christ. If we are hard towards God, we will become hard towards other people. Oswald Chambers
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When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else once you are back in the light. Oswald Chambers
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He comes where He commands us to leave. Oswald Chambers
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The proof that our relationship is right with God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not. Oswald Chambers
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In Him we have . the forgiveness of sins . –Ephesians 1:7Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God: God is so kind and loving that of course He will forgive us. That thought, based solely on emotion, cannot be found anywhere in the New Testament. The only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ. To base our forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy. The only ground on which God can forgive our sin and reinstate us to His favor is through the Cross of Christ. There is no other way! Forgiveness, which is so easy for us to accept, cost the agony at Calvary. We should never take the forgiveness of sin, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and our sanctification in simple faith, and then forget the enormous cost to God that made all of this ours. Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ. To forgive sin, while remaining a holy God, this price had to be paid. Never accept a view of the fatherhood of God if it blots out the atonement. The revealed truth of God is that without the atonement He cannot forgive– He would contradict His nature if He did. The only way we can be forgiven is by being brought back to God through the atonement of the Cross. God’s forgiveness is possible only in the supernatural realm. Compared with the miracle of the forgiveness of sin, the experience of sanctification is small. Sanctification is simply the wonderful expression or evidence of the forgiveness of sins in a human life. But the thing that awakens the deepest fountain of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven his sin. Paul never got away from this. Once you realize all that it cost God to forgive you, you will be held as in a vise, constrained by the love of God. Oswald Chambers
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Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have, Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. Oswald Chambers
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Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you. Oswald Chambers
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If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is an absurdity and there is absolutely no need for it. What the world needs is not "a little bit of love, " but major surgery. If you think you are helping lost people with your sympathy and understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ. You must have a right-standing relationship with Him yourself, and pour your life out in helping others in His way– not in a human way that ignores God. . Oswald Chambers
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You may often have to watch Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it. Oswald Chambers
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Paul was devoted to a Person, not a cause. Oswald Chambers
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No man by mere high human wisdom would dare undertake a step for Jesus’ sake unless he knows that the Holy Spirit has directly spoken to him; and until He comes, I shall not go. Oswald Chambers
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Narrow all your interests until your mind, heart, and body are focused on Jesus Christ. Oswald Chambers
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God did not direct His call to Isaiah– Isaiah overheard God saying, ".. . who will go for Us?" The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude. Oswald Chambers
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...let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him. Oswald Chambers
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The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold. 69 L Oswald Chambers
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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. Oswald Chambers
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Never ask another person's advice about anything God makes you decide before Him. Oswald Chambers
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Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus– not love for Jesus Himself. Oswald Chambers
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The Bible attitude is not that God sends sickness or that sickness is of the devil, but that sickness is a fact usable by both God and the devil. Oswald Chambers
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Satan takes occasion of the frailty of the bodily temple and says, 'Now you know you cannot do that; you are so infirm, you cannot concentrate your mind, ' etc. Never allow bodily infirmities to hinder you obeying the commands of Jesus. Oswald Chambers
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We become side-tracked if we make physical health our aim and imagine that because we are children of God we shall always be perfectly well. Oswald Chambers
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If you open your mouth in the dark, you will speak while in the wrong mood--darkness is the time to listen. Oswald Chambers
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God's friendship is with people who know their poverty. Oswald Chambers
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The grace you had yesterday will not be sufficient for today. Oswald Chambers
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We can only be used by God after we allow Him to show us the deep, hidden areas of our own character. Oswald Chambers
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Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. Oswald Chambers
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One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it. Oswald Chambers
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Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses the conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God. Oswald Chambers
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You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside. Oswald Chambers
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We must continually maintain an adventurous attitude toward Him, despite any potential personal risk. Oswald Chambers
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The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God's call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude. Oswald Chambers
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To follow Jesus today is to follow a madman according to the ideals of present day civilization. We have the idea that our civilization is God-ordained, whereas it has been built up by ourselves. We have made a thousand and one necessities until our system of civilized life is as cast iron, and then we apologize to the Lord for not following Him. Oswald Chambers
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Emotion is not simply an overplus of feeling; it is life lived at white-heat, a state of wonder. To lose wonder is to lose the true element of religion. Oswald Chambers
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You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral, nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual. God wants you to be entirely his, and this means that you have to watch to keep yourself fit. It takes a tremendous amount of time. Some of us expect to “clear the numberless ascensions”* in about two minutes. Oswald Chambers
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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. Oswald Chambers
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Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion. Oswald Chambers
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It is one thing to follow God's way of service if you are regarded as a hero, but quite another thing if the road marked out for you by God requires becoming a 'doormat' under other people's feet. Oswald Chambers
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Are you ready to be less than a mere drop in the bucket--to be so totally insignificant that no one remembers you even if they think of those you served? 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? Oswald Chambers
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Some saints cannot do menial work while maintaining a saintly attitude because they feel such service is beneath their dignity. Oswald Chambers
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At heart men are antagonistic to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is not antagonism to creeds or points of view, but antagonism encountered for My sake. Many of us awaken antagonism by our way of stating things; we have to distinguish between being persecuted for some notion of our own and being persecuted “for My sake. Oswald Chambers
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We are not built for mountains and dawns and artistic affinities; they are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff of life, and this is where we have to prove our mettle. A false Christianity takes us up on the mount and we want to stay there. But what about the devil-possessed world? Oh, let it go to hell! We are having a great time up here. Oswald Chambers
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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. Oswald Chambers
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The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience. Oswald Chambers
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The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word. Oswald Chambers
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Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God. Some people mature into an understanding of God’s will more quickly than others because they obey more readily; they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of God. Oswald Chambers
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The test of mountain-top experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness is when you are “in the soup” of actual circumstances. Oswald Chambers
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The call of God is a call according to the nature of God; where we go in obedience to that call depends entirely on the providential circumstances which God engineers, and is not of any moment. The danger is to fit the call of God into the idea of our own discernment and say, “God called me there.” If we say so and stick to it, then it is good-bye to the development of the life of God in us. Oswald Chambers
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The Christian who is truly intimate with Jesus will never draw attention to himself but will only show the evidence of a life where Jesus is completely in control. Oswald Chambers
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I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God. Oswald Chambers
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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. Oswald Chambers
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If we indulge in inordinate affection, anger, anxiety, God holds us responsible; but He also insists that we have to be passionately filled with the right emotions. Oswald Chambers
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He is not concerned about making you blessed and happy right now, but He’s continually working out His ultimate perfection for you... Oswald Chambers
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God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hearts to give; for the giving that is governed by a fixed determination. The Spirit of God revolutionises our philanthropic instincts. Much of our philanthropy is simply the impulse to save ourselves an uncomfortable feeling. The Spirit of God alters all that. As saints our attitude towards giving is that we give for Jesus Christ’s sake, and from no other motive. Oswald Chambers
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The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God. Oswald Chambers
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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. Oswald Chambers
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As we draw on the grace of God He increases voluntary poverty all along the line. Always give the best you have got every time; never think about who you are giving it to; let other people take it or leave it as they choose. Pour out the best you have, and always be poor. Never reserve anything; never be diplomatic and careful about the treasure God gives. Oswald Chambers
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The deadliest Pharisaism today is not hypocrisy, but unconscious unreality. Oswald Chambers
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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. Oswald Chambers
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The love of God pays no attention to my prejudices caused by my natural individuality. Oswald Chambers
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Be careful that you don't become a hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right with God before you worship Him yourself. Oswald Chambers
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The Lord's questions always reveal the true me to myself. Oswald Chambers
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There is something in human pride that can stand big troubles, but we need the supernatural grace and power of God to stand by us in the little things. The tiniest detail in which we obey has all the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it. When we do our duty, not for duty’s sake, but because we believe that God is engineering our circumstances in that way, then at the very point of our obedience the whole superb grace of God is ours. Oswald Chambers
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One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God. Oswald Chambers
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When God brings a time of waiting, and appears to be unresponsive, don't fill it with busyness, just wait. Oswald Chambers
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...never act on the impulse of that feeling. If you do, you will cause difficult situations to arise which will take years to untangle. Wait for God's timing and He will do it without any heartache or disappointment. Oswald Chambers