There are always way too many quotes for me to share when I’ve finished reading an Oswald Chambers book! Check out my review of Our Portrait In Genesis, in which Chambers is our guide through the book of Genesis. Here is my second helping of quotes from Our Portrait.
“Every time your wits compete with the worship of God you had better take a strong dose of Isaiah 30:15-16—‘In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.’ Beware of restlessness and wits persuading you that God has made a blunder—‘God would never allow me to fall sick after giving me such a blessing’; but He has! No matter what revelations God has made to you, there will be destitution so far as the physical apprehension of things is concerned—God gives you a revelation that He will provide, then He provides nothing and you will begin to realize that there is a famine, of food, or of clothes, or money, and your common sense as well as other people’s says, ‘Abandon your faith in God, do this, and that.’ Do it at your peril. Watch where destitution comes; if it comes on the heels of a time of quiet confidence in God, then thank Him for it and stay starving and He will bring a glorious issue.”
“All the qualities of a godly life are characteristic of the life of God; you cannot imitate the life of God unless you have it, then the imitation is not conscious, but the unconscious manifestation of the real thing. … The life of God has no pretense, and when His life is in you, you do not pretend to feel sweet, you are sweet.”
“The only standard for judging the saint is Jesus Christ, not saintly qualities.”
“Always beware when you can reasonably account to yourself for the action you are about to take, because the source of such clear reasoning is the enthroning of human understanding.”
“The reason we know so little about God’s wisdom is that we will only trust Him as far as we can work things out according to our own reasonable common sense.”
“Beware of obeying anyone else’s obedience to God because it means you are shirking responsibility yourself. … Remember, trust in God does not mean that God will explain His solutions to us, it means that we are perfectly confident in God, and when we do see the solution we find it to be in accordance with all that Jesus Christ revealed of His character.”
“It is in the dark night of the soul that the realization of God’s presence breaks upon us: we never see God as long as, like Esau, we are perfectly satisfied with what we are. When I am certain that ‘in me…dwelleth no good thing,’ I begin to experience the miracle of seeing and hearing, not according to my senses, but according to the way the Holy Spirit interprets the Word of God to me.”
“The true worship of God can only be maintained when the passing moments are seen as occurring in God’s order. If you try to forecast the way God will work you will get into a muddle; live the life of a child and you will find that every haphazard occasion fits into God’s order.”
“The nature of love is to give, not to receive. Talk to a lover about giving up anything, and he doesn’t begin to understand you! Love is not blind; love sees a great deal more than the actual, it sees the ideal in the actual, consequently the actual is transfigured by the ideal. … If you love someone you are not blind to his defects but you see the ideal which exactly fits that one. God sees all our crudities and defects, but He also sees the ideal for us; He sees ‘every man perfect in Christ Jesus,’ consequently He is infinitely patient.”
To read the first set of quotes from Our Portrait In Genesis, click here.
“How strange is it, that when I have the fullest convictions that prayer is not only my duty—not only necessary as the appointed means of receiving these supplies, without which I can do nothing, but likewise the greatest honor and privilege to which I can be admitted in the present life—I should still find myself so unwilling to engage in it. However, I think it is not prayer itself that I am weary of, but such prayers as mine. How can it be accounted prayer, when the heart is so little affected—when it is polluted with such a mixture of vile and vain imaginations—when I hardly know what I say myself—but I feel my mind collected one minute, the next, my thoughts are gone to the ends of the earth. If what I express with my lips were written down, and the thoughts which at the same time are passing through my heart were likewise written between the lines, the whole taken together would be such an absurd and incoherent jumble—such a medley of inconsistency, that it might pass for the ravings of a lunatic. When He points out to me the wildness of this jargon, and asks, is this a prayer fit to be presented to the holy heart-searching God? I am at a loss what to answer, till it is given to me to recollect that I am not under the law, but under grace—that my hope is to be placed, not in my own prayers, but in the righteousness and intercession of Jesus. The poorer and viler I am in myself, so much the more is the power and riches of His grace magnified in my behalf. Therefore I must, and, the Lord being my helper, I will pray on, and admire His condescension and love, that He can and does take notice of such a creature….” —John Newton
Craig T. Owens 