Craig T. Owens

So Send I You is a series of lectures from Oswald Chambers to Christian missionaries. Check out my full review of this book by clicking here.

“Intuition is the power to sense things without reasoning, and is a better guide than what is stated explicitly; but there is something infinitely more satisfactory—the entrance of the Holy Spirit into a man at new birth enabling him to see the kingdom of God and to enter into it.”

“The realization of the call of God in a man’s life may come as with a sudden thunder-clap or by a gradual dawning, but in whatever way it comes, it comes with the undercurrent of the supernatural, almost the uncanny; it is always accompanied with a glow—something that cannot be put into words. We need to keep the atmosphere of our mind prepared by the Holy Spirit lest we forget the surprise of the touch of God on our lives.”

“We are apt to have the idea that a man called to the ministry is called to be a different kind of being from other men. According to Jesus Christ, he is called to be the ‘doormat’ of other men; he is their spiritual leader, but never their superior. … I am not to come among men as a superior person, I am to come among men as the love-slave of Jesus Christ.” 

“Loose, trailing, uninspired thinking about sin will very soon trip us up. Gird up your thinking about sin, about holiness, about the eternal realities and the call of the unseen things.”

“To be a witness of Jesus means that when any duty presents itself we hear His voice just as He heard His Father’s voice, and we are ready for it with all the alertness of our love for Him.”

“Never put a thing aside because it is insignificant. If you trace it down, the insignificant thing has at the back of it the disposition of my right to myself. … Never discard a conviction; if it is important enough for the Spirit of God to have brought it to your mind, that is the thing He is detecting. You were looking for a great big thing to do, and God is telling you of some tiny thing; but at the back of the tiny thing is the central citadel of obstinacy.”

“Our Lord never called us to successful service; He calls us to present Him: ‘I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.’ God saves men; we are sent out to present Jesus Christ and His Cross, and to disciple the souls He saves. The reason we do not make disciples is that we are not disciples ourselves, we are out for our own ends.”

“In order to plough a straight furrow, you must look neither at the plough nor behind you, but at the far end of the field ahead. When once the call of God comes, begin to go and never stop going, no matter how many delightful resting places there may be on the way.”

“The attitude of the Christian life is that we must be prepared now, this second; this is the time. … It is easy to talk, easy to have fine thoughts; but none of that means being a disciple. Being a disciple is to be something that is an infinite satisfaction to Jesus every minute, whether in secret or in public.”

“The method of missions is clearly stated in each of the four Gospels. St. Matthew records the farewell command which Jesus gave to His disciples, and that command is to teach, i.e., disciple all nations; not make converts to our way of thinking, but make disciples of Jesus. In St. Mark’s Gospel the method is defined as preaching the gospel to every creature, accompanied by the power to cast out devils, and to speak with new tongues. In St. Luke’s Gospel the method is described as preaching repentance and remission of sins unto all the nations, and in St. John’s Gospel the method is described by Our Lord as feeding His sheep and tending His lambs.”

“If you put the worship of God first, and get the revelation of Who God is, then, when the call comes you will be ready for it, because of the worship and preparing in the unseen life, when the strain comes you are perfectly fit to be relied on by God. Worshiping is greater than work in that it absorbs work.”

“‘I have given them the glory that You gave Me’ [John 17:22]. What was the glory that Jesus had when He was Son of Man? It was not an external glory; Jesus effaced the Godhead in Himself so effectually that man without the Spirit of God despised Him. His glory was the glory of actual holiness, and that is the glory He says He gives to the saint. The glory of the saint is the glory of actual holiness manifested in actual life here and now.”

“If we try to get ‘head first’ into what Our Lord teaches, we shall exhibit the same stupidity as the disciples did, until we have received the Holy Spirit and learned to rely on Him, and to interpret the words of Jesus as He brings them to our mind.”

You can read some of the longer passages from this book that I share in my weekly “Thursdays With Oswald” feature.