My Utmost for His Highest: Classic Language

by Oswald Chambers

Are we prepared for God to do in us al that He separated us for? And then after His work is done in us, are we prepared to separate ourselves to God even as Jes...

The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God's standpoint. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him wil rule us. Are we prepared...

The one and only characteristic of the Holy Ghost in a man is a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, and freedom from everything that is unlike Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit's ministrations in us?

Exhaustion means that the vital forces are worn right out. Spiritual exhaustion never comes through sin but only through service, and whether or not you are exhausted wil depend upon where you get your supplies.

The process of being made broken bread and poured out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other souls until they learn to feed on God. They must drain you to the dregs. Be careful that you get your supply, or before long you wil be utterly exhausted.

Before other souls learn to draw on the life of the Lord Jesus direct, they have to draw on it through you; you have to be literal y "sucked," until they learn to take their nourishment from God. We owe it to God to be ...

Has the way in which you have been serving God betrayed you into exhaustion? If so, then ral y your affections. Wher...

Continual y go back to the foundation of your affections and recol ect where the source of power is. You have no right to say - "O Lord, I am so exhausted." He saved and sanctified you in order to exhaust you. Be exhausted for God, but remember that your supply comes from Him. "Al my fresh springs shal be in Thee."

The people of God in Isaiah's day had starved their imagination by looking on the face of idols, and Isaiah made them look up at the heavens, that is, he made them begin to use their imagination aright.

Nature to a saint is

sacramental. If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in Nature. In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of G...

The test of spiritual concentration is bringing the imagination into captivity. Is your imagination looking on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work? Your conception of what a worker should be? Your experience of salvation and sanctification? Then your imagination of God is starved, and when y...

If your imagination is starved, do not look back to your own experience; it is God Whom you need. Go right out of yourself, away from the face of your idols, away from everything that has been starving your imagination. Rouse yourself, take the gibe that Is...

One of the reasons of stultification in prayer is that there is no imagination, no power of putting ourselves deliberately before God. We have to learn how to be broken bread and poured out wine on the line of intercession more than on the line of personal contact. Imagination is the power God gi...

Is your imagination

stayed on God or is it starved? The starvation of the imagination is one of the most fruitful sources of exhaustion and sapping in a worker's life. If you have never used your imagination to put yourself before God, begin to do it now.

It is no use waiting for God to come; you must put your imagination away from the face of idols and look unto Him and be saved. Imagination is the greatest gift God has given us and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. If you have been bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, it wil be one of the greatest assets to fait...

Learn to associate ideas worthy of God with al that happens in Nature - the sunrises and the sunsets, the sun and the stars, the changing seasons, and your imagination wil never be at the mercy of y...

We have sinned with our fathers; . . . and have forgotten" - then put a stiletto in the place where you have gone to sleep. "God is not talking to me just now," but He ought to be. Remember Whose you are and Whom you serve. Provoke yourself by recol ection, and your affection for God wil increase tenfold; your imagination wil not be starved...

We show how little we love God by preferring to listen to His servants only. We like to listen to personal testimonies, but we do not desire that God Himself should speak to us. Why are we so terrified lest God should speak to us? Because we know that if God does speak, either the thing must be done or we must tel God we wil not obey Him.

The destiny of my spiritual life is such identification with Jesus Christ that I always hear God, and I know that God always hears me (John 11:41). If I am united with Jesus Christ, I hear God, by the devotion of hearing al the time.

A lily, or a tree, or a servant of God, may convey God's message to me. What hinders me from hearing is that I am taken up with other things. It is not that I wil 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.

The child attitude is always, "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." If I have not cultivated this devotion of hearing, I can only hear God's voice at certain times; at other times I am taken up with things - things which I say I must do, and I become deaf to Him,...

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.

where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet. If you open your mouth in the dark, you wil talk in the wrong mood: darkness is the time to listen. Don't talk to other people about it; don't read books to find out the reason of the darkness, but listen and heed.

If you talk to other people, you cannot hear what God is saying. When you are in the dark, listen, and God wil give you a very precious message for ...

After every time of darkness there comes a mixture of delight and humiliation (if there is delight only, I question whether we have heard God at al ), delight in hearing God speak, but chiefly humiliation - What a long time I was in hearing that! How slow I have been in understanding that! And yet God has been saying it al these days and weeks. Now He gives yo...

Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible for other souls spiritual y before God? For instance, if I al ow any private deflection from God in my life, everyone about me suffers. We "sit together in heavenly places." "Whether one member suffer, al the members suffer with it."

When once you al ow physical selfishness, mental slovenliness, moral obtuseness, spiritual density, everyone belonging to your

crowd wil suffer. "But," you say, "who is sufficient for these things if you erect a standard like that?" "Our suffici...

"Ye shal be My witnesses." How many of us are wil ing to spend every ounce of nervous energy, of mental, moral and spiritual energy we have for Jesus Christ? That is the m...

It takes time, be patient with yourself. God has left us on the earth - what for? To be saved and sanctified? No, to be at it for Him. Am I wil ing to be broken bread and poured out wine for Him? To be spoilt for this age, for this life, to be spoilt from every standpoint b...

My life as a worker is the way I say "thank you" to God for His unspeakable salvation. Remember it is quite possible for any one of us to be flung out as reprobate silver - ". . . lest that by any means when I have preach...

We al have any number of visions and ideals when we are young, but sooner or later we find that we have no power to make them real. We cannot do the things we long to do, and we are apt to settle down to the visions and ideals as

dead, and God has to come and say - "Arise from the dead." When the inspiration of God does come, it comes with such miraculous power that we are able to arise from the dead and do the impossible thing.

The remarkable thing about spiritual initiative is that the life comes after we do the "bucking up." God does not give us overcoming ...

When the inspiration of God comes, and He says - "Arise from the dead," we have to get up; God does not lift us up. Our Lord said to the man with the withered hand - "Stretch forth thy hand," and as soon as the man did so, his hand was healed, but he had to take the initiative. If we wil do the ove...

If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed. A human being is capable of depression, otherwise there would be no capacity for exaltation.

There are things that are calculated to depress, things that are of the nature of death; and in taking an estimate of yourself, always take into account the capacity for depression.

When the Spirit of God comes He does not give us visions, He tel s us to do the most ordinary things conceivable. Depression is a...

commonplace things of God's creation, but whenever God comes, the inspiration is to do the most natural simple thing - the things we would never have imagined God w...

The inspiration which comes to us in this way is an initiative against depression; we have to do the next thing and do it in the inspiration of God. If we do a thing in order to overcome depression, we deepen the depression; but if the Spirit of God makes us feel intuitively that we must do the thing, and we do it, the d...

The sense of the irreparable is apt to make us despair, and we say - "It is al up now, it is no use trying any more." If we imagine that this kind of despair is exceptional, we are mistaken, it is a very ordinary human experience.

Whenever we realize that we have not done that which we had a magnificent opportunity of doing, then we are apt to sink into despair; and Jesus Christ comes and says - "Sleep on now, that opportunity is lost for ever, you cannot alter it, but arise and go to the next thing." Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ, and go out into the irresistible future with Him.

If we are inspired of God, what is the next thing? To trust Him absolutely and to pray on the ground of His Redemption. Never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action.

immediately we arise we find He is there. Whenever God inspires, the initiative is a moral one. We must do the thing and not lie like a log. If we wil arise and shine, drudgery becomes divinely transfigured.

Drudgery is one of the finest touchstones of character there is. Drudgery is work that is very far removed from anything to do with the ideal - the utterly mean grubby things; and when we come in contact with them we know instantly whether or not we are spiritual y real.

It requires the inspiration of God to go through drudgery with the light of God upon it. Some people do a certain thing and the way in which they do it hal ows that thing for ever afterwards. It may be the most commonplace thing, but after we have seen them do it, it becomes different.

When the Lord does a thing through us, He always transfigures it. Our Lord took on Him our human flesh and transfigured it, and it has become for every saint the temple of the Holy Ghost.

Dreaming about a thing in order to do it properly is right; but dreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong.