Oswald Chambers

(1874-1917)
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. 

Quotes:
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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.
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Our true character comes out in the way we pray.
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Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.
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Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.
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Until we know Jesus, God is merely a concept, and we can't have faith in Him. But once we hear Jesus say, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9) we immediately have something that is real, and our faith is limitless.
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Human fellowship can go to great lengths, but not all the way. Fellowship with God can go to all lengths.
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God never gives strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the minute.
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A saint's life is in the hands of God as a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see; He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says, I cannot stand any more. But God does not heed; He goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly.
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Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.
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God has one destined end for mankind - holiness! His one aim is the production of saints. God is not an eternal blessing-machine for men. He did not come to save men out of pity. He came to save men because He had created them to be holy.
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Every now and again, Our Lord lets us see what we would be like if it were not for Himself; it is a justification of what He said - "Without Me you can do nothing." That is why the bedrock of Christianity is personal, passionate devotion to the Lord Jesus.
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Jesus Christ became Incarnate for one purpose, to make a way back to God that man might stand before Him as He was created to do, the friend and lover of God Himself.
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Sum up the life of Jesus by any other standard than God's, and it is an anticlimax of failure.
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Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people - the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.
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The agony of man's affliction is often necessary to put him into the right mood to face the fundamental things of life. The Psalmist says. Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now I have kept Thy Word.
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Wait on God and He will work, but don't wait in spiritual sulks because you cannot see an inch in front of you! Are we detached enough from our spiritual hysterics to wait on God? To wait is not to sit with folded hands, but to learn to do what we are told.
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Perseverance is more than endurance. It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen.
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source:
http://christian-quotes.ochristian.com/Oswald-Chambers-Quotes/