My Utmost for His Highest: Classic Language

by Oswald Chambers

Is the word of God tremendously keen to me as I hand it on to you, or does my life give the lie to the things I profess to teach? I may teach sanctification and yet exhibit the spirit of Satan, the spirit that persecutes Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Jesus is conscious of one thing only - a perfect onenes...

Al I do ought to be founded on a perfect oneness with Him, not on a self-wil ed determination to be godly. This wil mean that I can be easily put upon, easily over-reached, easily ignored; but if I submit to i...

There is no escape when Our Lord speaks, He always comes with an arrestment of the understanding.

Has the voice of God come to you directly? If it has, you cannot mistake the intimate insistence with which it has spoken to you in the language you know best, not through your ears, but through your circumstances.

God has to destroy our determined confidence in our own convictions. "I know this is what I should do" - and suddenly the voice of God speaks in a way that overwhelm...

We serve Jesus in a spirit that is not His, we hurt Him by our advocacy for Him, we push His claims in the spirit of the devil. Our words sound al right, but our spirit is that of an enemy. "He rebuked them,...

Have I been persecuting Jesus by a zealous determination to serve Him in my own way? If I feel I have done my duty and yet have hurt Him in doing it, I may be sure it was not my duty, because it has not fostered the meek and quiet spirit, but the spirit of self-satisfaction.

We imagine that whatever is unpleasant is our duty! Is that anything like the spirit of our Lord - "I delight to do Thy wil , O My God."

God never speaks to us in startling ways, but in ways that are easy to misunderstand, and we say, "I wonder if that is God's voice?" Isaiah said that the Lord spake to him "with a strong hand," that is, by the pressure of circumstances. Nothing touches our lives but it is God Himself speaking.

Get into the habit of saying, "Speak, Lord," and life wil become a romance. Every time circumstances press, say, "Speak, Lord"; make time to listen.

Chastening is more than a means of discipline, it is meant to get me to the place of saying, "Speak, Lord." Recal the time when God did speak to you. Have you forgotten what He said? Was it Luke 11:13, or was it 1 Thess. 5:23? As we listen, o...

Shal I tel my "Eli" what God has shown to me? That is where the dilemma of obedience comes in. We disobey God by becoming amateur providences - I must shield "Eli," the best people we know. God did not tel Samuel to tel Eli; he had to decide that for himself. God's cal to you may hurt your "Eli;" but if you try to prevent the suffering in another life, it wil prove an obstruction between your soul and God....

Never ask the advice of another about anything God makes you decide before Him. If you ask advice, you wil nearly always side with Satan. "Immediate...

Our cal ing is not primarily to be holy men and women, but to be proclaimers of the Gospel of God. The one thing that is al important is that the Gospel of God should be realized as the abiding Reality.

Reality is not human goodness, nor holiness, nor heaven, nor hel ; but Redemption; and the need to perceive this is the most vital need of the Christian worker to-day. As workers we have to get used to the revelation that Redemption is the only Reality.

Personal holiness is an effect, not a cause, and if we place our faith in human goodness, in the effect of Redemption, we...

Paul did not say he separated himself, but - "when it pleased God who separated me. . ." Paul had not a hypersensitive interest in his own character. As long as our eyes are upon our own personal white...

Workers break down because their desire is for their own whiteness, and not for God. "Don't ask me to come into contact with the rugged reality of Redemption on behalf of the filth of human life as it is; what I want is anything God can do for me to make me more desirable in my own eyes." To tal...

touch me; there is no reckless ab...

God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own character. Paul is unconscious of himself, he is recklessly abandoned, separated by God for o...

We are apt to make sanctification the end-al of our preaching. Paul al udes to personal experience by way of il ustration, never as the end of the matter. We are nowhere commissioned to preach salvation or sanctification; we are commissioned to lift up Jesus Christ (John 12:32).

It is a travesty to say that Jesus Christ travailed in Redemption to make me a saint. Jesus Christ travailed in Redemption to redeem the whole world, and place it unimpaired and rehabilitated before the throne of God.

The fact that Redemption can be experienced by us is an il ustration of the power of the reality of Redemption, but t...

The one passion of Paul's life was to proclaim the Gospel of God. He welcomed heart-breaks, disil usionments,

tribulation, for one reason only, because these things kept him in unmoved devotion to the Gospel of God.

God makes us broken bread and poured-out wine to please Himself. To be "separated unto the gospel" means to hear the cal of God; and when a man begins to overhear that cal , then begins agony that is worthy of the name. Every ambition is nipped in the bud, every desire of life quenched, every outlook completely extinguished and blotted out, saving one thing only - "separated unto the gospel."

Woe be to the soul who tries to put his foot in any other direction when once that cal has come to him. This Col ege exists for you, and you - to see whether God has a man or woman here who cares about proclaiming His Gospel; to

see whether God grips you. And beware of competitors when...

When a merely moral man or woman comes in contact with baseness and immorality and treachery, the recoil is so desperately offensive to human goodness that the heart shuts up in despair. The marvel of the Redemptive Reality of God is that the worst and the vilest can never get to the bottom of His love.

Very few of us know what it means to be held in a grip by the love of God; we are held by the constraint of our experience only. The one thing that held Paul, until there was nothing else on his horizon, was the love of God.

"The love of Christ constraineth us" - when you hear that note in a man or woman, you can never mistake it. You know that the Spirit of God is getting unhindered way in that life.

We wil take everything that happens as happening to Him, whether it be praise or blame, persecution or commendation. No one can stand like that for Jesus Christ who is not constrained by the majesty of His personal power.

This abandon to the love of Christ is the one thing that bears fruit in the life, and it wil always leave the impression of the holiness and of the power of God, never of our personal holiness.

Are you wil ing to be offered for the work of the faithful - to pour out your life blood as a libation on the sacrifice of the faith of others? Or do you say - "I am not going to be offered up just yet, I do not want God to choose my work. I want to choose the scenery of my own sacrifice; I want to have the right kind of people watching and saying, 'Wel done.'

It is one thing to go on the lonely way with dignified heroism, but quite another thing if the line mapped out for you by God means being a door-mat under other people's feet.

Suppose God wants to teach you to say, "I know how to be abased" - are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket - to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you wil ing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to mini...

"I am ready to be offered." It is a transaction of wil , not of sentiment. Tell God you are ready to be offered; then let the consequences be what they may, there is no strand of

complaint now, no matter what God chooses.

God puts you through the crisis in private, no one person can help an other. External y the life may be the same; the difference is in wil . Go through the crisis in wil , then when it comes external y there wil he no thought of the cost. If you do not transact in wil w...

The altar means fire - burning and purification and insulation for one purpose only, the destruction of every affinity that God has not started and of every attachment that is not an attachment in God. You do not destroy it, God does; you bind the sacrifice to the horns of the altar; and see that you do not give way to self-pity when the fire begins.

After this way of fire, there is nothing that oppresses or depresses. When the crisis arises, you realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do. What is your way of fire? Tel God you are ready to be offered, and God wil prove Himself to be al you ever dreamed He would be.

Anything that savours of dejection spiritual y is always wrong. If depression and oppression visit me, I am to blame; God is not, nor is anyone else.

Dejection springs from one of two

sources - I have either satisfied a lust or I have not. Lust means - I must have it at once. Spiritual lust makes me demand an answer from God, ins...

What have I been trusting God would do? And to-day - the immediate present - is the third day, and He has not done it; therefore I imagine I am justified in being dejected and in blaming God. Whenever the insistence is ...

The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not of the answer. It is impossible to be wel physical y and to be dejected. Dejection is a sign of sickness, and the same thing is true spiritual y. Dejection...

We look for visions from heaven, for earthquakes and thunders of God's power (the fact that we are dejected proves that we do), and we never dream that al the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us...

One of the most amazing revelations of God comes when we learn that it is in the commonplace things that the De...

Are we prepared for what sanctification wil cost? It wil cost an intense narrowing of al our interests on earth, and an immense broadening of al our interests in God.

Sanctification means intense concentration on God's point of view. It means every power of body, soul and spirit chained and kept for God's purpose only.