539 - The Timeless Wisdom of Oswald Chambers

The Gift of Spiritual Mentorship

One unappreciated gift given the church is the fact we have those who are older and wiser than we are to help guide our way in this life with Christ. After all, it is no merit for a son to make the same mistakes his father did. Each generation must learn how to make their own way in this fallen world, but only a fool fails to learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before.

So today, we are going to glean some insight into the full, abundant life with Christ, the Higher Christian Life, as it is called, from a man who is speaking to us from a position of victory. And that man is Oswald Chambers. You may recognize his name from the classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, that was compiled from his teachings in 1929 by his wife, Biddy.

Oswald Chambers, who died in 1917 at the age of 43, lived what he speaks about and can show us, by experience, how to achieve the spiritual victory that only comes from complete, absolute surrender. Confusing? I know. But let’s look at a few of Oswald’s statements and pray to learn from him what we need to know regarding faith and surrender.

Oswald Chambers on Faith and Surrender

From 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.”

• “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you cannot understand at the time.

• “Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.”

• “Get into the habit of saying, ‘Speak, Lord,’ and life will become a romance.”

• “Faith is not intelligent understanding, faith is deliberate commitment to a Person where I see no way.

• “Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in God before you see God emerging, therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried.”

• “When I see Jesus Christ, I simply want to be what He wants me to be.”

• “The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.”

• “Sin is not wrong doing, it is wrong BEING, deliberate and emphatic independence from God.”

• “Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.”

• “Keep your life in constant contact with God so that His surprising power may break out on the right hand and on the left. Always be in a state of expectancy, and see that you leave room for God to come in as He likes.”

• “If my ruling disposition is self-interest, I perceive that everything that happens to me is always for or against my self-interest; if, on the other hand, my ruling disposition is obedience to God, I perceive Him to be at work for my perfecting in everything that happens to me.”

• “Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me? Am I full of the little things that cheer His heart over me, or am I whimpering because things are going hardly with me (or not going my way)? There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes.”

And finally, two of my favorites.

• “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.”

• “How many people have you made homesick for God?”

And with this, we are only getting our feet wet. There is so much more we will discover in this message. So join us as we learn about faith and surrender through the experienced eyes of our mentor, Oswald Chambers.

To download the slides for this message, click – HERE