" ...that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory." Eph 1:12
"The joy of anything... is to fulfill its created purpose: 'that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.' (Eph 1:12)
"We are not here to win souls, to do good to others. That is the natural outcome, but it is not our aim, and this is where so many of us cease to be followers. We will follow God as long as He makes us a blessing to others, but when He does not, we will not follow.
"Suppose our Lord had measured His life by whether or not He was a blessing to others. Why, He was a 'stone of stumbling' to thousands, actually to His own neighbors, to His own nation... and in His own country 'He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief' (Matt. 13:58).
"If our Lord had measured His life by its actual results, He would have been full of misery. We get switched off when instead of following God we follow Christian work and workers. We are much more concerned over the passion for souls than the passion for Christ....
"The passion for souls in not a New Testament idea at all, but religious commercialization. When we are taken up with this passion, the joy of the Lord is never ours but only an excitable joy which always leaves a snare behind."
The habit of enjoying the disagreeable
"That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." 2 Cor. 4:10
"...It is not a question of being saved from hell, but of being saved in order to manifest the life of the Son of God in our mortal flesh, and it is the disagreeable things which make us exhibit whether or not we are manifesting His life. Do I manifest the essential sweetness of the Son of God, or the essential irritation of ‘myself’ apart from Him?
'The only thing that will enable me to enjoy the disagreeable is the keen enthusiasm of letting the life of the Son of God manifest itself in me. No matter how disagreeable a thing may be, say 'Lord, I am delighted to obey Thee in this matter,' and instantly the Son of God will press to the front, and there will be manifested in my human life that which glorifies Jesus.
"There must be no debate. The moment you obey the light, the Son of God presses through you in that particular; but if you debate you grieve the Spirit of God. You must keep yourself [spiritually] fit to let the life of the Son of God be manifested, and you cannot keep yourself fit if you give way to self-pity. Our circumstances are the means of manifesting how wonderfully perfect and extraordinarily pure the Son of God is. The thing that ought to make the heart beat is a new way of manifesting the Son of God. It is one thing to choose the disagreeable, and another thing to go into the disagreeable by God’s engineering. If God puts you there, He is amply sufficient." (May 14)
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Oswald Chambers (1874 - 1917)
Oswald Chambers was not famous during his lifetime. At the time of his death in 1917 at the age of forty-three, only three books bearing his name had been published. Among a relatively small circle of Christians in Britain and the U.S., Chambers was much appreciated as a teacher of rare insight and expression, but he was not widely known.While there are more than 30 books that bear his name, he only penned one book, Baffled to Fight Better. His wife, Biddy, was a stenographer and could take dictation at a rate of 150 words per minute. During his time teaching at the Bible College and at various sites in Egypt, Biddy kept verbatim records of his lessons. She spent the remaining 30 years of her life compiling her records into the bulk of his published works. His daily devotional: "Utmost For His Highest" has sold millions of copies and is well known in modern evangelicalism today.
Oswald Chambers was born July 24, 1874, in Aberdeen, Scotland. Converted in his teen years under the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he studied art and archaeology at the University of Edinburgh before answering a call from God to the Christian ministry. He then studied theology at Dunoon College. From 1906-1910 he conducted an itinerant Bible-teaching ministry in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
In 1910, Chambers married Gertrude Hobbs. They had one daughter, Kathleen.
In 1911 he founded and became principal of the Bible Training College in Clapham, London, where he lectured until the school was closed in 1915 because of World War I. In October 1915 he sailed for Zeitoun, Egypt (near Cairo), where he ministered to troops from Australia and New Zealand as a YMCA chaplain. He died there November 15, 1917, following surgery for a ruptured appendix.
Although Oswald Chambers wrote only one book, Baffled to Fight Better, more than thirty titles bear his name. With this one exception, published works were compiled by Mrs. Chambers, a court stenographer, from her verbatim shorthand notes of his messages taken during their seven years of marriage. For half a century following her husband's death she labored to give his words to the world.
My Utmost For His Highest, his best-known book, has been continuously in print in the United States since 1935 and remains in the top ten titles of the religious book bestseller list with millions of copies in print. It has become a Christian classic.
Oswald Chambers was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on July 24th, 1874, to Clarence and Hannah Chambers, the seventh of seven children. Years earlier, Hannah converted to Christ under the dynamic preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Both she and Clarence were baptized by Spurgeon; and Clarence was one of the first students to enroll at Spurgeon’s Pastor’s College at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
After accompanying his father to hear C.H. Spurgeon preach, Oswald surrendered his life to Christ, and was duly baptized by Rev. Briscoe. At Rye Lane Baptist, he faithfully attended Bible classes and prayer meetings. Anxious to apply his newly-acquired knowledge, he engaged in street evangelism and preached at missions.
In 1895 he received an Art’s Master’s Certificate. Thereafter he pursued his education at the University of Edinburgh, where he excelled in rigorous classwork as well as successfully maintaining a balanced devotional life. Attending a gathering of the Christian Union, he heard Hudson Taylor, founder of China Inland Mission, preach winningly on the faithfulness of God, nudging Chambers yet further toward ministry. After much prayer, he surrendered to missionary service.
On October 29th, 1917, Chambers, suffering severe pains in his abdomen, was rushed to a Red Cross hospital in Cairo where an emergency appendectomy was performed. Recovering somewhat, he relapsed from a blood clot, and died on November 15th, 1917.