Oswald Chambers quotes:

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

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

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.

To terrorize a man into believing in God is never the work of God, but the work of human expediency. If we want to convince a congregation of a certain thing, we may use terror to frighten them into it; but never say that is God's way, it is our way. To call that God's method is a travesty to the character of God.

Christianity is not consistency to conscience or to convictions; Christianity is being true to Jesus Christ.

It is in the middle that human choices are made; the beginning and the end remain with God. The decrees of God are birth and death, and in between those limits man makes his own distress or joy.

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.

The real attitude of sin in the heart towards God is that of being without God; it is pride, the worship of myself, that is the great atheistic fact in human life.

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.

The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit Divine characteristics in your life, not good human characteristics . God's life in us expresses itself as God's life, not as human life trying to be godly.

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

At His Ascension our Lord entered Heaven, and He keeps the door open for humanity to enter.

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

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

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

Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark.

Our Lord insists on the social aspect of our lives: He shows very distinctly that we cannot further ourselves alone.

Beware of bartering the Word of God for a more suitable conception of your own.

Quit praying about yourself and spend your life for the sake of others as the bondservant of Jesus. That is the true meaning of being broken bread and poured-out wine in real life.

Am I getting nobler, better, more helpful, more humble, as I get older? Am I exhibiting the life that men take knowledge of as having been with Jesus, or am I getting more self-assertive, more deliberately determined to have my own way? It is a great thing to tell yourself the truth.

If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means they are being purified.

I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye.

When we preach the love of God there is a danger of forgetting that the Bible reveals not first the love of God but the intense, blazing holiness of God, with His love at the center of that holiness.

If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men.

Not often, but every once in a while, God brings us to a major turning point--a great crossroads in our life. From that point we either go more and more toward a slow, lazy, and useless Christian life, or we become more and more on fire, giving our utmost for His highest--our best for His glory.

The deadliest Pharisaism today is not hypocrisy, but unconscious unreality."

When it is a question of God's almighty Spirit, never say, 'I can't.'

To be obsessed by God is to have an effective barricade against all the assaults of the enemy.

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.

The true expression of Christian character is not in good-doing but in God-likeness.

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

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

Solitude with God repairs the damage done by the fret and noise and clamour of the world.

The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. 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.

If you have ever prayed in the dawn you will ask yourself why you were so foolish as not to do it always: it is difficult to get into communion with God in the midst of the hurly-burly of the day.

Prayer is not getting things from God. That is a most initial stage; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God: I tell Him what I know He knows in order that I may get to know it as He does.

Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging, therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried.

So many of us limit our praying because we are not reckless in our confidence in God. In the eyes of those who do not know God, it is madness to trust Him, but when we pray in the Holy Spirit we begin to realize the resources of God, that He is our perfect heavenly Father, and we are His children.

Keep your life in its constant contact with God that his surprising power may break out on the right hand and on the left. Always be in a state of expectancy, and see that you leave room for God to come in as he likes.

The Christian life is one of spiritual courage and determination lived out in our flesh

See that you do not use the trick of prayer to cover up what you know you ought to do.

In the spiritual domain, criticism is love turned sour. In a wholesome spiritual life there is no room for criticism. The critical faculty is an intellectual one, not a moral one. If criticism becomes a habit it will destroy the moral energy of the life and paralyse spiritual force. The only person who can criticise human beings is the Holy Spirit.

The greatest test of Christianity is the wear and tear of daily life; it is like the shining of silver: the more it is rubbed the brighter it grows.

Never water down the Word of God, but preach it in its undiluted sternness. There must be unflinching faithfulness to the Word of God, but when you come to personal dealings with others, remember who you are- you are not some special being created in heaven, but a sinner saved by grace.

So long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor to serve him until he does.

Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God. Faith means, whether I am visibly delivered or not, I will stick to my belief that God is love.

Worship God in the difficult circumstances, and when He chooses, He will alter them in two seconds.

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

At the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself--the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

We actually slander and dishonor God by our very eagerness to serve Him without knowing Him.

The call of God is to preach the gospel--namely, the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. The one passion of Paul's life was to proclaim the gospel of God. He welcomed heartbreak, disillusionment , and tribulation for only one reason--these things kept him unmovable in his devotion to the gospel of God.

When the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over, because out of it will come that following of Jesus which is an unspeakable joy.

Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested.

The great thing about faith in God is that it keeps a man undisturbed in the midst of disturbance.

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

Don't waste time asking God to keep you from doing things. Don't do them.

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.

All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.

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

Grace is the overflowing favor of God, and you can always count on it being available to draw upon as needed.

Trust no one, not even the finest saint who ever walked this earth, ignore him, if he hinders your sight of Jesus Christ.

Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.

As long as we are flippant and stupid and shallow and think that we know ourselves, we shall never give ourselves over to Jesus Christ; but when once we become conscious that we are infinitely more than we can fathom, and infinitely greater in possibility either for good or bad than we can know, we shall be only too glad to hand ourselves over to Him.

As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, forgetful delight, nor with the quickness of impulsive thoughtlessness . But let us go out with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us.

It's one thing to go through a crisis grandly, yet quite another to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, and no one paying even the remotest attention to us.

Our work begins where God's grace has laid the foundation; we are not to save souls, but to disciple them.

Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer, we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not of the answer.

God answers prayer on the ground of Redemption and on no other ground.

Never take your obedience as the reason God blesses you; obedience is the outcome of being rightly related to God.

Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift.

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.

Your priorities must be God first, God second, and God third, until your life is continually face to face with God ...

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

The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in his motives, having been made good by the supernatural grace of God.

We must learn to live in the ordinary 'gray' day according to what we saw on the mountain.

The reason we see hypocrisy and fraud and unreality in others is because they are all in our own hearts. The great characteristic of a saint is humility-Yes, all those things and other evils would have been manifested in me but for the grace of God, therefore I have no right to judge.

We are so busy telling God where we would like to go. We wait with the idea of some great opportunity, something sensational, and when it comes we are quick to cry, 'Here am I.' Readiness for God means that we are ready to do the tiniest little thing or the great big thing, it makes no difference.

If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time or great personal growth ahead.

The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything is has to face without wavering. If we take this view, life becomes one great romance, a glorious opportunity for seeing marvelous things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.

Perseverance is more than endurance." It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen. Perseverance means more than just hanging on, which may only be exposing our fear of letting go and falling. Perseverance is our supreme effort of refusing to believe that our hero is going to be conquered.

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.

When I see Jesus Christ I simply want to be what He wants me to be.

The aim of the missionary is to do God's will, not to be useful, not to win the heathan; he is useful and does win the heathen, but that is not his aim. His aim is to do the will of his Lord.

Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God.

Worshipping God is the great essential of fitness. If you have not been worshipping...when you get to work you will not only be useless yourself, but a tremendous hindrance to those who are associated with you.

One of the greatest snares is the number of good things we might do. Jesus Christ never did the good things He might have done, He did everything He ought to do because He had His eye fixed on His Father's will and He sacrificed Himself for His Father.

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.

The Spirit is the first power we practically experience, but the last power we come to understand.

How many people have you made homesick for God?

There is only One Being who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Humble yourself"--it is a humbling experience to knock at God's door--you have to knock with the crucified thief. "To him that knocketh, it shall be opened.

Beware of being obsessed with consistency to your own convictions instead of being devoted to God. The important consistency in a saint is not to a principle but to the divine life. It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than it is to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him.

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

Believe steadfastly on Him and everything that challenges you will strengthen your faith. There is continual testing in the life of faith up to the point of our physical death, which is the last great test. Faith is absolute trust in God-trust that could never imagine that He would forsake us.

It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances, for we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them.

If we rely on the Holy Spirit, we shall find that our prayers become more and more inarticulate; and when they are inarticulate, reverence grows deeper and deeper.

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

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.

Jesus Christ carries on intercession for us in heaven; the Holy Ghost carries on intercession in us on earth; and we the saints have to carry on intercession for all men.

Worship and intercession must go together, the one is impossible without the other. Intercession means that we rouse ourselves up to get the mind of Christ about the one for whom we pray.

Can Jesus Christ see the agony of His soul in us? He can't unless we are so closely identified with Him that we have His view concerning the people for whom we pray. May we learn to intercede so wholeheartedly that Jesus Christ will be completely and overwhelmingly satisfied with us as intercessors.

Intercessory prayer for one who is sinning prevails. God says so! The will of the man prayed for does not come into question at all, he is connected with God by prayer, and prayer on the basis of the Redemption sets the connection working and God gives life.

The real business of your life as a saved soul is intercessory prayer.

A life of intimacy with God is characterized by joy.

The battle of prayer is against two things in the earthlies: wandering thoughts and lack of intimacy with God's character as revealed in His word. Neither can be cured at once, but they can be cured by discipline.

It is a tremendous freedom to get rid of all self-considerat ion and learn to care about only one thing-the relationship between Christ and ourselves.

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.

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.

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

The whole meaning of prayer is that we may know God.

If God sees that my spiritual life will be furthered by giving the things for which I ask, then He will give them, but that is not the end of prayer. The end of prayer is that I come to know God Himself.

Are you learning to say things after listening to God, or are you saying things and trying to make God's word fit in?

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what takes place in the lives of others.

If I obey Jesus Christ, the redemption of God will flow through me to the lives of others, because behind the deed of obedience is the reality of Almighty God.

Jesus Christ became Incarnate for one purpose, to make a way back to God that man might stand before Him as He was created to do, the friend and lover of God Himself.

Spiritual character is only made by standing loyal to God's character, no matter what distress the trial of faith brings. The distress and agony the prophets experienced was the agony of believing God when everything that was happening contradicted what they proclaimed Him to be; there was nothing to prove that God was just and true, but everything to prove the opposite.

One of the most amazing revelations of God comes to us when we learn that it is in the everyday things of life that we realize the magnificent deity of Jesus Christ.

Keep your soul fit to manifest the life of the Son of God. Never live on memories; let the word of God be always living and active in you.

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

By the supernatural miracle of God's grace I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my sin, not because I have repented, but because of what Jesus has done.