QUOTES (Oswald Chambers)

Definition of Quote:
Repeat of words or a text by another person.

Synonyms of Quote:
Recite, repeat, reproduce, restate, echo, reiterate, excerpt, etc.

These notes are from recovery in AA and/or related 12 step programs.
Readers are encouraged to click external links for more detail.
We hope you find them helpful.

Love in fellowship.

God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside. –Oswald Chambers

The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting. –Oswald Chambers
God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome. –Oswald Chambers

I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God. – The most important aspect of Recovery (Christianity) is not the work we do but the relationship we maintain with our HP and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship. –Oswald Chambers

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

Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking. — The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone –Oswald Chambers

Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God. –Oswald Chambers
Let the consequences of your obedience be left up to God. –Oswald Chambers

The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience. –Oswald Chambers

The deadliest Pharisaism today is not hypocrisy, but unconscious unreality. — Leave the broken, irreversible past in God’s hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him. –Oswald Chambers

If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed. — The degree of panic activity in my life is equal to the degree of my lack of personal spiritual experience. –Oswald Chambers

Take yourself by the scruff of the neck and shake off your incarnate laziness. — The whole meaning of prayer is that we may know God. –Oswald Chambers

God is not preparing you for anything; obedience is its own end in the purpose of God; be faithful to Him. — The more you fulfill yourself, the less you will seek God –Oswald Chambers

Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step. –Oswald Chambers
The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations—it is a picture of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His unhindered way with us. –Oswald Chambers

If you are faced with the question of whether or not to surrender, make a determination to go on through the crisis, surrendering all that you have and all that you are to Him.
And God will then equip you to do all that He requires of you. –Oswald Chambers

It takes me a long while to realize that God has no respect for anything I bring Him. All He wants from me is unconditional surrender. –Oswald Chambers
If we only give up something to God because we want more back, there is nothing of the Holy Spirit in our abandonment; it is miserable commercial self-interest. –Oswald Chambers

Oswald Chambers was born in Scotland in 1874, was educated at London’s Royal College of Art and the University of Edinburgh. At the age of 22, he felt that God was calling him to become a minister. After studying and later teaching in a small theological college in Dunoon, he moved into a preaching ministry that spanned Britain, America and Japan.

When you are joyful, be joyful; when you are sad, be sad. If God has given you a sweet cup, don’t make it bitter; and if He has given you a bitter cup, don’t try and make it sweet; take things as they come. –Oswald Chambers

NB: Quotes are accredited to Oswald Chambers and are contributed by individual program members

Dreaming about a thing in order to do it properly is right; but dreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong. When we are getting into contact with God in order to find out what He wants, dreaming is right; but when we are inclined to spend our time in dreaming over what we have been told to do, it is a bad thing and God’s blessing is never on it. God’s initiative is always in the nature of a stab against this kind of dreaming, the stab that bids us “neither sit nor stand but go.”–Oswald Chambers

God’s initiative is always in the nature of a stab against this kind of dreaming, the stab that bids us “neither sit nor stand but go. –Oswald Chambers

The delight of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, not fling it away. Oswald Chambers | More…

Have I ever been carried away to do something for God not because it was my duty, nor because it was useful, nor because there was anything in it at all beyond the fact that I love Him? –Oswald Chambers | More…

The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him.… We have to pitch our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be. –Oswald Chambers | More…

What is the thing that not only disturbs you but makes you a disturbance? Persist in the disturbance until you yet get face to face with the Lord Himself. You have to come to the place where you believe Him to be Almighty. Faith is not in what Jesus says but in Himself; if we only look at what He says we shall never believe. –Oswald Chambers | More…

The root of faith is the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest snares is the idea that God is sure to lead us to success. –Oswald Chambers | More…

We need to rely on the resurrection life of Jesus much deeper down, to get into the habit of steadily referring everything back to Him. We make our commonsense decisions and ask God to bless them. He cannot, it is not in His domain. When we do anything from a sense of duty, we can back it up by argument; when we do anything in obedience to the Lord, there is no argument possible –Oswald Chambers | More…

The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him.… We have to pitch our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be. ==Oswald Chambers | More….

None of us ever had misgivings about ourselves; we know exactly what we cannot do, but we do have misgivings about Jesus. We are rather hurt at the idea that He can do what we cannot. My misgivings arise from the fact that I ransack my own person to find out how He will be able to do it. My questions spring from the depths of my own inferiority. If I detect these misgivings in myself, let me bring them to the light and confess them ==Oswald Chambers | More….

Tenacity is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire. Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered. One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God. Remain spiritually tenacious. –Oswald Chambers | More…

The greatest fear a man has is not that he will be damned, but that Jesus Christ will be worsted, that the things He stood for – love and justice and forgiveness and kindness among men – will not win out in the end; the things He stands for look like will-o’-the-wisps. Then comes the call to spiritual tenacity, not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately on the certainty that God is not going to be worsted. If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified. One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God. Remain spiritually tenacious. –Oswald Chambers | More…

When we no longer seek God for His blessings, we have time to seek Him for Himself. –Oswald Chambers | More…

When it comes to taking the initiative against drudgery, 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. –Oswald Chambers | More…

Jesus’s idea is that we serve Him by being the servants of other men. –Oswald Chambers | More…

It is an easy thing to argue from precedent because it makes everything simple, but it is a risky thing to do. Give God “elbow room”; let Him come into His universe as He pleases. If we confine God in His working to religious people or to certain ways, we place ourselves on an equality with God. –Oswald Chambers | More…

Tenacity is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire. –Oswald Chambers | More…

The sense of the irreparable is apt to make us despair. If we imagine that this kind of despair is exceptional, we are mistaken, it is a very ordinary human experience. –Oswald Chambers

When you are joyful, be joyful; when you are sad, be sad. If God has given you a sweet cup, don’t make it bitter; and if He has given you a bitter cup, don’t try and make it sweet; take things as they come. –Oswald Chambers | More… 

When the soul is united to God by the indwelling Holy Spirit, that is not the end; the end is that we may be one with the Father. Beware of counterfeiting the love of God by working along the line of natural human sympathy, because that will end in blaspheming the love of God. –My Utmost for His Highest | More…

If there is only one strand of faith amongst all the corruption within us, God will take hold of that one strand. –Oswald Chambers | More…

To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him. –Oswald Chambers | More… /

Joy means the perfect fulfillment of that for which I was created and regenerated, not the successful doing of a thing. –Oswald Chambers | More…

There is no choice of service, only absolute loyalty to what you discern when you are in closest contact with God. –Oswald Chambers | More…

We never enter into the Kingdom of God by having our head questions answered, but only by commitment –Oswald Chambers | More…

When you have no vision from God, no enthusiasm left in your life, and no one watching and encouraging you, it requires the grace of Almighty God to take the next step. –Oswald Chambers | More….

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. ==Oswald Chambers | More….

The underlying foundation of the Christian faith is the undeserved, limitless miracle of the love of God, a love that is not earned and can never be. –Oswald Chambers | More…

The undiminished radiance, which is the result of abundant joy, is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can change. –Oswald Chambers | More…

Defenders of the faith are inclined to be bitter until they learn to walk in the light of the Lord. When you have learned to walk in the light of the Lord, bitterness and contention are impossible –Oswald Chambers | More…

Being born again by the Spirit of God means that we must first be willing to let go before we can grasp something else. –Oswald Chambers | More…

When God gives you a clear determination of His will for you, all your striving to maintain that relationship by some particular method is completely unnecessary. Never try to live your life with God in any other way than His way. –Oswald Chambers | More…

Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally. –Oswald Chambers

It is not a lack of spiritual experience that leads to failure, but a lack of working to keep our eyes focused and on the right goal. –Oswald Chambers

We begin our Christian life by believing what we are told to believe, then we have to go on to so assimilate our beliefs that they work out in a way that redounds to the glory of God. The danger is in multiplying the acceptation of beliefs we do not make our own –Oswald Chambers

Be serious in your commitment to God and gladly leave everything else alone. Literally put God first in your life. –Oswald Chambers

We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. –Oswald Chambers

The natural man, or unbeliever, knows nothing about carnality. The desires of the flesh warring against the Spirit, and the Spirit warring against the flesh, which began at rebirth, are what produce carnality and the awareness of it. Carnality will disappear. What is the proof that carnality has gone? Never deceive yourself; when carnality is gone you will know it— it is the most real thing you can imagine. And God will see to it that you have a number of opportunities to prove to yourself the miracle of His grace. –Oswald Chambers | More…

God can afford to be misunderstood; we cannot. Our weakness lies in always wanting to vindicate ourselves. –Oswald Chambers

Much of the distress we experience comes not as the result of sin, but because we are ignorant of the laws of our own nature. –Oswald Chambers

Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same. –Oswald Chambers