- This is the conclusion of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• Keep your soul fit to manifest the life of the Son of God. Never live on memories; let the word of God be always living and active in you. 135

• The unfathomable sadness of the “might have been”. Never be afraid when God brings back the past. Let memory have its way. It is a minister of God with its rebuke and chastisement and sorrow. God will turn the “might have been” into a wonderful culture for the future. 94

• The initiative against despair—let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ, and go out into the irresistible future with Him. Never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action. 49

• Our present enjoyment of God’s grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the irreparable past in His hands, and step out into the irresistible future with Him. 366

• There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled. 53

• God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• Faith must be tested, because it can be turned into a personal possession only through conflict. 242

• Troubles nearly always make us look to God; His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere. 22

• Abraham did not choose the sacrifice. Always guard against self-chosen service for God; self-sacrifice may be a disease. If you are not living in touch with Him, it is easy to pass a crude verdict on God. You must go through the crucible before you have any right to pronounce a verdict, because in the crucible you learn to know God better. 316

• God gets us alone by affliction, heartbreak, or temptation, by disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted affection, by a broken friendship, or by a new friendship He reveals the plague of our own hearts. 13

• We are not quite prepared for the blows which must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. The batterings always come in commonplace ways and through commonplace people. 278

• You cannot receive your self in success, you lose your head; you cannot receive your self in monotony, you grouse. The way to find your self is in the fires of sorrow. 177

• Troubles nearly always make us look to God; His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• In the spiritual life beware of walking according to natural affinities. 264

• Supernatural sense is the gift of His Son; never enthrone common sense. Our ordinary wits never worship God unless they are transfigured by the indwelling Son of God. 222

• Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance. 350

• Growth in spiritual life does not depend on our watching it, but on concentration on our Father in heaven. 139

• The one thing that keeps the conscience sensitive to Him is the continual habit of being open to God on the inside. Keep your inner vision clear. 134

• If I allow any private deflection from God in my life, everyone about me suffers. When once you allow physical selfishness, mental slovenliness, moral obtuseness, spiritual density, everyone belonging to your crowd will suffer. 46

• If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we banish God’s riches from our own lives and hinder others from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it obliterates God and puts self-interest upon the throne. 137

• You can never be the same after the unveiling of a truth. That moment marks you for going on as a more true disciple of Jesus Christ  or for going back as a deserter. 364

• Learning to use the imagination aright.  Nature to a saint is sacramental. Bringing the imagination into captivity. Imagination is the greatest gift God has given us and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. Learn to associate ideas worthy of God with all that happens in Nature. Provoke yourself by recollection. 41-42

• Nature to a saint is sacramental. Bringing the imagination into captivity.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• Either Jesus Christ is the supreme Authority on the human heart, or He is not worth paying any attention to. He understood the terrible possibilities that are in the heart. 208

• It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves! 12

• Most of us are much sterner with others than we are in regard to ourselves; we make excuses for things in ourselves whilst we condemn in others things to which we are not naturally inclined. 340

• When I get into the presence of God, I do not realize that I am a sinner in an indefinite sense; I realize the concentration of sin in a particular feature of my life. 185

• I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God. 169

• When I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the natural man—the very thing Jesus means it to do. The bedrock in Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possession; not decisions for Jesus Christ, but a sense of absolute futility—I cannot begin to do it. The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works. 203

• It is not a question of our equipment but of our poverty, not of what we bring with us, but of what God puts into us. The comradeship of God is made up out of men who know their poverty. The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. 217

• The thing I am blessed in is my poverty. If I know I have no strength of will, no nobility of disposition, then Jesus says—Blessed are you, because it is through this poverty that I enter His Kingdom. I cannot enter His Kingdom as a good man or woman, I can only enter it as a complete pauper. 234

• The comradeship of God is made up out of people who know their poverty.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• Being ambitious only to be pleasing to Him. I have to learn to relate everything to the master ambition, and to maintain it without any cessation. My worth to God in public is what I am in private. 77

• The danger of taking the pattern and print of the religious age we live in, making eyes at spiritual success. Never court anything other than the approval of God. One life wholly devoted to God is of more value to God than one hundred lives simply awakened by His Spirit. 115

• If I put my trust in human beings first, I will end in despairing of everyone; I will become bitter, because I have insisted on man being what no man ever can be—absolutely right. Never trust anything but the grace of God in yourself or in anyone else. 152

• Christian perfection is not, and never can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship to God which shows itself amid the irrelevancies of human life. I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my life produces a longing after God in other lives, not admiration for myself. 337

• My worth to God in public is what I am in private.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• The snare in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you. Beware of the people who make usefulness their ground of appeal. If you make usefulness the test, then Jesus Christ was the greatest failure that ever lived. The lodestar of the saint is God Himself, not estimated usefulness. It is the work that God does through us that counts, not what we do for Him. 243

• There is a difference between devotion to a Person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. 184

• Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ.  The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him. 18

• If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a doormat. 171

• The mainstream of Paul’s service is not love for men, but love for Jesus Christ.  If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men. 54

• The call of God is essentially expressive of His nature; service is the outcome of what is fitted to my nature. Service is expressive of that which is fitted to my nature: God’s call is expressive of His nature. 17

• We count as service what we do in the way of Christian work; Jesus Christ calls service what we are to Him, not what we do for Him. Discipleship is based on devotion to Jesus Christ, not on adherence to a belief or a creed. Today we have substituted creedal belief for personal belief, and that is why so many are devoted to causes and so few devoted to Jesus Christ. 171

• There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes. Am I so in love with Him that I take no account of where I go? or am I watching for the respect due to me; weighing how much service I ought to give? 21

• What do I really count dear? If I have not been gripped by Jesus Christ, I will count service dear, time given to God dear, my life dear unto myself. Practical work may be a competitor against abandonment to God, because practical work is based on this argument—Remember how useful you are here, or—Think how much value you would be in that particular type of work. Never consider whether you are of use; but ever consider that you are not your own but His. 64

• The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• A great many Christian workers worship their work. There is no responsibility on you for the work; the only responsibility you have is to keep in living constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your co-operation with Him. 114

• The Church ceases to be a spiritual society when it is on the lookout for the development of its own organization.  194

• Spiritual leakage. It is the peril of our soul’s welfare that we get caught up in practical work and miss the fulfillment of the vision. 71

• The battle of being so absorbed in work that we are not ready to face Jesus Christ at every turn. Jesus rarely comes where we expect Him; He appears where we least expect Him, and always in the most illogical connections. The only way a worker can keep true to God is by being ready for the Lord’s surprise visits. It is not service that matters, but intense spiritual reality, expecting Jesus Christ at every turn. 89

• Active work and spiritual vitality are not the same thing. Active work may be the counterfeit of spiritual activity. 192

• The central thing about the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship to Himself, not public usefulness to men. 293

• The ministry of the interior; I must take time to realize what is the central point of power. The disciple who abides in Jesus is the will of God, and his apparently free choices are God’s foreordained decrees. Mysterious? Logically contradictory and absurd? Yes, but a glorious truth to a saint. 159

• We are not turned into spiritual mediums, but into spiritual messengers; the message must be part of ourselves. The Son of God was His own message, His words were spirit and life; and as His disciples our lives must be the sacrament of our message. The natural heart will do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin, and baptized by the Holy Ghost, and crumpled into the purpose of God before the life becomes the sacrament of its message. 70

• Beware of outstripping God by your very longing to do His will. We run ahead of Him in a thousand and one activities, consequently we get so burdened with persons and with difficulties that we do not worship God, we do not intercede. 92

• Jesus Christ’s life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God’s. But what seemed failure from man’s standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God’s, because God’s purpose is never man’s purpose. His call is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after. A Christian is one who trusts the wits and the wisdom of God, and not his own wits. 218

• The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him. 6

• A river touches place of which its source knows nothing. God rarely allows a soul to see how great a blessing he is. Keep right at the Source. 250

• Worship aright in your private relationships, then when God sets you free you will be ready, because in the unseen life which no one saw but God you have become perfectly fit, and when the strain comes you can be relied upon by God. 254

• The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• We give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the Divine guidance of God through childlike people who were foolish enough to trust God’s wisdom and the supernatural equipment of God. 300

• The circumstances of a saint’s life are ordained of God. In the life of a saint there is no such thing as chance. God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you cannot understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands. God is bringing you into places and among people and into conditions in order that the intercession of the Spirit in you may take a particular line. 312

• We must never put our dreams of success as God’s purpose for us; His purpose may be exactly the opposite. What we call the process, God calls the end. It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God. If we have a further end in view, we do not pay sufficient attention to the immediate present; if we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment as it comes is precious. 210

• Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ. Beware of refusing to go the funeral of your own independence. 344

• God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. 2

• Never run before God’s guidance; wait for God to move.

• When God gives a vision and darkness follows, wait. 19

• Whenever you obey God, His seal is always that of peace, the witness of an unfathomable peace, which is not natural, but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, tarry till it does or find out the reason why it does not. 349

• The nature of spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty, consequently we do not make our nests anywhere. Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life; gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. 120

• The voice of the Spirit is as gentle as a zephyr, so gentle that unless you are living in perfect communion with God, you never hear it. The checks of the Spirit come in the most extraordinarily gentle ways, and if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice you will quench it, and your personal spiritual life will be impaired. His checks always come as a still small voice, so small that no one but the saint notices them. 226

• Beware of not acting upon what you see in your moments on the mount with God. If you do not obey the light, it will turn into darkness. 240

• We must never put our dreams of success as God’s purpose for us.

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- This is the final installment in a series that has been adapted from my study of A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God. -

Ultimately, Tozer ends The Pursuit of God precisely where he began – at the throne of God. Along the way he has coaxed and coached us into growing our spiritual eyes, our spiritual ears, our spiritual nose, our spiritual taste buds, and our spiritual touch, that we may fully welcome the Presence that does not disappoint. He artfully avoids the easy road of simply listing ten things we ought to do in our pursuit of God. Rather, he calls us to lean in a little closer each day and then wait, expecting God to whisper his sacred secrets, the secrets that bring to life a sacramental life. No wonder this book never gets old.

Is your life a sacrament unto the Lord? Have you opened up all the doors and windows of your heart, inviting him to make himself at home? Do you want the pursuit of God to anoint every thought, every act, every motive of your life? Then use this prayer as a template from which you lay everything before the One who bought you with a price and will bring to completion what he has begun.

“Lord, I would trust Thee completely; I would be altogether Thine; I would exalt Thee above all. I desire that I may feel no sense of possessing anything outside of Thee. I want constantly to be aware of Thy overshadowing presence and to hear Thy speaking voice. I long to live in restful sincerity of heart. I want to live so fully in the Spirit that all my thoughts may be as sweet incense ascending to Thee and every act of my life may be an act of worship. Therefore I pray in the words of Thy great servant of old, ‘I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee.’ And all this I confidently believe Thou wilt grant me through the merits of Jesus Christ Thy Son. Amen.”

• How can we make our lives more sacramental so that we are open to the surprising work of God in all things?

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- This is part of a series that has been adapted from my study of A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God. -

Tozer makes an important distinction,

“It does not mean, for instance, that everything we do is of equal importance with everything else we do or may do. One act of a good man’s life may differ widely from another in importance. Paul’s sewing of tents was not equal to his writing of an Epistle to the Romans, but both were accepted of God and both were true acts of worship. Certainly it is more important to lead a soul to Christ than to plant a garden, but the planting of the garden can be as holy an act as the winning of a soul.”

Here we see the principle that even the most unimportant things can be acts of worship, acceptable to the Father. But we also see that not every person is equally as useful as another. Some have been given greater gifts and others lesser gifts, but both can serve in a way that pleases God.

The intent of the heart is everything. “Let a man,’ Tozer says, “sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” The so-called secular becomes truly spiritual when the focus of your heart is the eternal. And it is equally true that when the focus of your heart is on the temporal, you can quickly downsize a sacred task into a secular act of selfishness.

Referring to the person who lives life as a sacred ministration, Tozer concludes his chapter and book with the following: “As he performs his never so simple task, he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3).

• Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act.

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