Craig T. Owens

When I read an Oswald Chamber book, I feel like I could highlight every line on every page! So for Disciples Indeed (you can read my full review by clicking here), I did my very best to narrow it down to my 31 favorite quotes.

“Truth is a Person, not a proposition; if I pin my faith to a logical creed I will be disloyal to the Lord Jesus.”

“If we understood what happens when we use the Word of God, we would use it oftener.”

“Everything the devil does, God over-reaches to serve His own purpose.”

“We continually want to present our understanding of how God has worked in our own experience, consequently we confuse people. Present Jesus Christ, lift Him up, and the Holy Spirit will do in them what He has done in you.”

“Spiritual famine and dearth, if it does not start from sin, starts from dwelling entirely on the experience God gave me instead of on God who gave me the experience. …Whenever I put my experience of life, or my intelligence, or anything other than dependence on God, as the ground of understanding the will of God I rob Him of glory.”

“There is nothing so still and gentle as the checks of the Holy Spirit if they are yielded to, emancipation is the result; but let them be trifled with, and there will come a hardening of the life away from God. Don’t quench the Spirit.”

“The only sign that a particular gift is from the Ascended Christ is that it edifies the Church. Much of our Christian work today is built on what the Apostle pleads it should not be built, viz., the excellencies of the natural virtues.”

“My conscience makes me know what I ought to do, but it does not empower me to do it.”

“In the moral realm if you don’t do things quickly you will never do them. Never postpone a moral decision. Second thoughts on moral matters are always deflections.”

“You often find people in the world are more desirable, easier to get on with, than people in the Kingdom. There is frequently a stubbornness, a self-opinionativeness, in Christians not exhibited by people in the world. If there is to be another Revival it will be through the readjustment of those of us on the inside who call ourselves Christians.”

“The greatest test of Christianity is the wear and tear of daily life, it is like the shining silver, the more it is rubbed the brighter it grows.”

“We have to do more than we are built to do naturally; we have to do all the Almighty builds us to do.”

“Beware of the people who tell you life is simple. Life is such a mass of complications that no man is safe apart from God. Coming to Jesus does not simplify life, it simplifies my relationship to God.”

“God’s idea is that individual Christians should become identified with His purpose for the world. When Christianity becomes over-organized and denominational it is incapable of fulfilling our Lord’s commission; it doesn’t ‘feed His sheep,’ it can’t.”

“When you pray, what conception have you in your mind—your need, or Jesus Christ’s omnipotence?”

“Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian; not the thing that makes him alive, but the evidence that he is alive.”

“By intercessory prayer we can hold off satan from other lives and give the Holy Ghost a chance with them.”

“The greatest answer to prayer is that I am brought into a perfect understanding with God, and that alters my view of actual things.”

“See that you do not use the trick of prayer to cover up what you know you ought to do.”

“The work we do in preparation is meant to get our minds into such order that they are at the service of God for His inspiration. Conscious inspiration is mercifully rare or we would make inspiration our god.”

“Spiritual insight is in accordance with the development of heart purity.”

“Spiritual sloth must be the greatest grief to the Holy Ghost.”

“It is quite true so say ‘I can’t live a holy life’; but you can decide to let Jesus make you holy. ‘I can’t do away with my past’; but you can decide to let Jesus do away with it.”

“If I make personal holiness a cause instead of an effect I become shallow, no matter how profound I seem. It means I am far more concerned about being speckless than about being real; far more concerned about keeping my garments white than about being devoted to Jesus Christ.”

“Freedom is the ability not to insist on my rights, but to see that God gets His.”

“Beware of saying, ‘I haven’t time to read the Bible, or to pray’; say rather, ‘I haven’t disciplined myself to do these things.’”

“Weighing the pros and cons for and against a statement of Jesus Christ’s means that for the time being I refuse to obey Him.”

“If my testimony makes anyone wish to emulate me, it is a mistaken testimony, it is not a witness to Jesus. The Holy Spirit will only witness to a testimony when Jesus Christ is exalted higher than the testimony.”

“As you go on with God He will give you thoughts that are bit too big for you.”

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

“Christian service is not our work; loyalty to Jesus is our work.”