Quotes from My Utmost for His Highest

“Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“The most important aspect of Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to give our attention to, and it is the one thing that is continually under attack.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not--Do your duty, but--Do what is not your duty. It is not your duty to go the second mile, to turn the other cheek, but Jesus says if we are His disciples we shall always do these things. There will be no spirit of--"Oh, well, I cannot do any more, I have been so misrepresented and misunderstood". . . Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is--Never look for justice, but never cease to live it.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is an absurdity and there is absolutely no need for it. What the world needs is not "a little bit of love," but major surgery. If you think you are helping lost people with your sympathy and understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ. You must have a right-standing relationship with Him yourself, and pour your life out in helping others in His way— not in a human way that ignores God. ”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, ". . . who will go for Us?" The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him. A great number of Christian workers worship their work. The only concern of Christian workers should be their concentration on God. This will mean that all the other boundaries of life, whether they are mental, moral, or spiritual limits, are completely free with the freedom God gives His child; that is, a worshiping child, not a wayward one. A worker who lacks this serious controlling emphasis of concentration on God is apt to become overly burdened by his work. He is a slave to his own limits, having no freedom of his body, mind, or spirit. Consequently, he becomes burned out and defeated. There is no freedom and no delight in life at all. His nerves, mind, and heart are so overwhelmed that God’s blessing cannot rest on him.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“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.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing...Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“The great enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but the good which is not good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having--viz., life with Himself. It is a question of loosening the bonds that hinder the life...”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“Never look for justice in this world, never cease to give it.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“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 willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister?”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“God gives us the vision, then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“Never allow anything to divert you from your insight into Jesus Christ. It is the true test of whether you are spiritual or not. To be unspiritual means that other things have a growing fascination for you. Since mine eyes have looked on Jesus, I’ve lost sight of all beside, So enchained my spirit’s vision, Gazing on the Crucified.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“It is possible to know all about doctrine and yet not know Jesus. The soul is in danger when knowledge of doctrine outsteps intimate touch with Jesus. ....Have I a personal history with Jesus Christ? The one sign of discipleship is intimate connection with Him, a knowledge of Jesus Christ nothing can shake.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“We imagine that whatever is unpleasant is our duty! Is that anything like the spirit of our Lord, "I *delight* to do Thy will, O My God.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our commonplace religious feet, and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in his presence.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“In Him we have . . . the forgiveness of sins . . . —Ephesians 1:7

Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God: God is so kind and loving that of course He will forgive us. That thought, based solely on emotion, cannot be found anywhere in the New Testament. The only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ. To base our forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy. The only ground on which God can forgive our sin and reinstate us to His favor is through the Cross of Christ. There is no other way! Forgiveness, which is so easy for us to accept, cost the agony at Calvary. We should never take the forgiveness of sin, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and our sanctification in simple faith, and then forget the enormous cost to God that made all of this ours.

Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ. To forgive sin, while remaining a holy God, this price had to be paid. Never accept a view of the fatherhood of God if it blots out the atonement. The revealed truth of God is that without the atonement He cannot forgive— He would contradict His nature if He did. The only way we can be forgiven is by being brought back to God through the atonement of the Cross. God’s forgiveness is possible only in the supernatural realm.

Compared with the miracle of the forgiveness of sin, the experience of sanctification is small. Sanctification is simply the wonderful expression or evidence of the forgiveness of sins in a human life. But the thing that awakens the deepest fountain of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven his sin. Paul never got away from this. Once you realize all that it cost God to forgive you, you will be held as in a vise, constrained by the love of God.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“The one thing that remains is looking in the face of God for ourselves.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship— when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“God always ignores the present perfection for the ultimate perfection.”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

“he must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest

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