My Utmost for His Highest: Classic Language

by Oswald Chambers

Have you come to your last days real y? You have come to them often in sentiment, but have you come to them really? You cannot go to your funeral in excitement, or die in excitement. Death means you stop being. Do you agree with God that you ...

We skirt the cemetery and al the time refuse to go to death. It is not striving to go to death, it is dying - "baptized into His death." Have you had your "white funeral," or a...

Is there a place in your life marked as the last day, a place to which the memory goes back with a chastened and extraordinarily grateful remembrance - "Yes, it was then, at that 'w...

"This is the wil of God, even your sanctification." When you realize what the will of God is, you wil enter into sanctification as natural y as can be. Are you wil ing to go through that "white funeral" now? Do you agree with Him that this is ...

When we speak of the cal of God, we are apt to forget the most important feature, viz., the nature of the One Who cal s. There is the cal of the sea, the cal of the mountains, the cal of the great ice barriers, but these cal s are only heard by the few. The cal is the expression of the nature from which it comes, and we can only record the cal if the same nature is in us. The cal of God is the expression of God's nature, not of our nature.

There are strands of the cal of God providential y at work for us which we recognize and no one else does. It is the threading of God's voice to us in some particular matter, and it is no use consulting anyone else about it. We have to keep that profound relationship between our souls and God.

The cal of God is not the echo of my nature; my affinities and personal temperament are not considered. As long as I consider my personal temperament and think about what I am fitted for, I shal never hear the cal of God. But when I am brought into relationship with God, I am in the condition Isaiah was in. Isaiah's soul was so attuned to God by t...

The majority of us have no ear for anything but ourselves, we cannot hear a thing God says. To be brought into the zone of the ca...

"Give Me to drink." How many of us are set upon Jesus Christ slaking our thirst when we ought to be satisfying Him? We should be pouring out now, spending to the last limit, not drawing on Him to satisfy us.

"Ye shal be witnesses unto Me" - that means a life of unsul ied, uncompromising and unbribed devotion to the Lord Jesus, a satisfaction to Him wherever He places us.

Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him. It is easier to serve than to be drunk to the dregs. The one aim of the cal of God is t...

We are not sent to battle for God, but to be used by God in His battlings. Are we being more devoted to...

Whenever God gives a vision to a saint, He puts him, as it were, in the shadow of His hand, and the saint's duty is to be stil and listen. There is a darkness which comes from excess of light, and then is the time to listen.

When God gives a vision and darkness fol ows, wait. God wil make you in accordance with the vision He has given if you wil wait His time. Never try and help God fulfil His word.

years of silence were a time of discipline, not of displeasure. Never pump up joy and confidence, but stay upon God (cf. Isaiah 1:10,11).

Have I any confidence in the flesh? Or have I got beyond al confidence in myself and in men and women of God; in books and prayers and ecstasies; and is my confidence placed now in God Himself, not in His blessings?

The one thing for which we are al being disciplined is to know that God is real. As soon as God becomes real, other people become shadows. Nothing that other saints do or sa...

Being born again of the Spirit is an unmistakable work of God, as mysterious as the wind, as surprising as God Himself. We do not know where it begins, it is hidden away in the depths of our personal life. Being born again from above is a perennial, perpetual and eternal beginning; a freshness al the time in thinking and in talking and in living, the continual surprise of the life of God.

Staleness is an indication of something out of joint with God - "I must do this thing or it wil never be done." That is the first sign of staleness. Are we freshly born this minute or are we stale, raking in our minds for something to do?

Freshness does not come from obedience but from the Holy Spirit; obedience keeps us in the li...

Guard jealously your relationship to God. Jesus prayed "that they may be one, even as we are one" - nothing between. Keep al the life perennial y open to Jesus Christ, don't pretend with Him. Are you drawing your life from any other source than God Himself? If you a...

Being born of the Spirit means much more than we general y take it to mean. It gives us a new vision and keeps us absolutely fresh for everything by...

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 ful 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. It is a great thing to think that Jesus Christ has need of me - "Give Me to drink." How much kindness have I shown Him this past week? Have I been kind to His reputation in my life?

God is saying to His people - You are not in love with Me now, but I remember the time when you were - "I remember . . . the love of thine espousals." Am I as ful of the extravagance of love to Jesus Christ as I was in the beginning, when I went out of my way to prove my devotion ...

but Himself? Am I there now, or have I become wise over loving Him? Am I so in love with Him that I take no account of where I go? or am I watching for the respect due to...

The great difficulty spiritual y is to concentrate on God, and it is His blessings that make it difficult. Troubles nearly always make us look to God; His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere.

The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is, in effect - Narrow al your interests until the attitude of mind and heart and body is concentration on Jesus Christ.

Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God. There is no sal...

The outstanding characteristic of a Christian is this unveiled frankness before God so that the life becomes a mirror for other lives.

By being fil ed with the Spirit we are transformed, and by beholding we become mirrors. You always know when a man has been beholding the glory of the Lord, you feel in your inner spirit that he is the mirror of the Lord's own character. Beware of anything which would sul y that mirror in you; it is nearly always a good thing, the good that is not the best.

The golden rule for your life and mine is this concentrated keeping of the life open towards God. Let everything else - work, clothes, food, everything on earth - go by the board, saving that one thing. The rush of other things always tends to obscure this concentration on God. We have to maintain oursel...

Let other things come and go as they may, let other people criticize as they wil , but never al ow anything to obscure the life that is hid with Christ in God. Never be hur...

It is the one thing that is apt to fluctuate but it ought not to. The severest discipline of a Christian's life is to learn how to keep "beholdi...

When we are born again we al have visions, if we are spiritual at al , of what Jesus wants us to be, and the great thing is to learn not to be disobedient to the vision, not to say that it cannot be attained.

It is not sufficient to know that God has redeemed the world, and to know that the Holy Spirit can make al that Jesus did effectual in me; I must have the basis of a personal relationship to Him.

Do not look for God to come in any particular way, but look for Him. That is the way to make room for Him. Expect Him to come, but do not expect Him only in a certain way. However much we may know God, the great lesson to learn is that at any minute He may break in.

We are apt to over look this element of surprise, yet God never works in any other way. Al of a sudden God meets the life - "When it was the good pleasure of God. . ."

Keep your life so constant in its 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 tha...

A simple statement of Jesus is always a puzzle to us if we are not simple. How are we going to be simple with the simplicity of Jesus? By receiving His Spirit, recognizing and

relying on Him, obeying Him as He brings the word of God, and life wil become amazingly simple.

Every time we have gone back in spiritual communion it has been because we have impertinently known better than Jesus Christ. We have al owed the cares of the world to come in, and have forgotten the "much more" of our Heavenly Father.

"Consider the lilies of the field" - they grow where they are put. Many of us refuse to grow where we are put, consequently we take root nowhere.

Jesus says that if we obey the life God has given us, He wil look after al the other things. Has Jesus Christ told us a lie? If we are not experiencing the "much more," it is because we are not obeying the life God has given us, we are taken up with confusing considerations. How much time have we taken up worrying God with questions when we should have been absolutely free to concentrate on His work?

Consecration means the continual separating of myself to one particular thing. We cannot consecrate once and for al . Am I continual y separating mys...

A warning which needs to be reiterated is that the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things entering in, wil choke al that God puts in. We are never free from the recurring tides of this encroachment. If it does not come on the line of clothes and food, it wil come on the line of money or lack of money; of friends or lack of friends; or on the line of difficult circumstances.

Jesus Christ knows our circumstances better than we do, and He says we must not think about these things so as to make them the one concern of our life. Whenever there is competition, be sure that you put your relationship to God first.

Am I set on my own way for God? We are never free from this snare until we are brought into the experience of the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire.

Obstinacy and self-wil wil always stab Jesus Christ. It may hurt no one else, but it wounds His Spirit. Whenever we are obstinate and self-wil ed and set upon our own ambitions, we are hurting Jesus. Every time we stand on our rights and insist that this is what we intend to do, we are persecuting Jesus.

Whenever we stand on our dignity we systematical y vex and grieve His Spirit; and when the knowledge comes home that it is Jesus Whom we have been persecuting al the time, it...