July has come and gone!
I finished just one book last month, but I really enjoyed it! David McCasland traces the life of Oswald Chambers from his childhood in Scotland to his journeys around the world. In one sense, Oswald couldn’t “sit still” – he traveled to Japan, England, and the US (where he briefly taught at the Bible college my parents attended). During WWII, he found himself in Egypt where he served as a YMCA chaplain until his death. This godly man was certainly devoted to the Lord. His wife was completely committed too. Because of her tireless work, many of Chambers’ lectures and sermons are preserved to this day.
As always, some of the quotes that stood out to me this month are listed below!
“Hudson Taylor said last night that Our Lord’s words ‘Have faith in God’ really mean ‘Have faith in the faithfulness of God,’ not in your own faithfulness.”1 Holiness is not an attainment at all, it is the gift of God.... He makes holy, He sanctifies, He does it all. All I have to do is come as a spiritual pauper, not ashamed to beg, to let go of my right to myself and act on Romans 12:1–2. It is never ‘Do, do and you’ll be’ with the Lord, but ‘Be, be, and I will do through you.’1 The world is very wide and God is reigning.1 One of the blessed things about this life is that a man carries his kingdom on the inside, and that makes the outside lovely.1 He looms large tonight. Nothing is worth living for but just Himself. I see churches and... movemements all tagged with His name but how little of Himself? I wish every breath I drew, all speech I made could make Him come and seem more real to men.1 A man who would live for Christ in a turbulent world must draw his life from the depths of God himself, not from the froth and foam of surface experience.1 Oswald’s approach to the future was simple: “Trust God and do the next thing.”1 He sounded a constant warning to people who said, “Thank God I’m saved and sanctified, now it’s all right.” The result of resting on experience, according to Oswald, was “fixed ideas, moral deterioration, and utter ignorance of God’s book. Always beware of the danger of finality.”1 “What we need,” he concluded, “is to begin to walk in the way we already know.”1 “There will come one day a personal and direct touch from God when every tear and perplexity, every oppression and distress, every suffering and pain, and wrong and injustice will have a complete and ample and overwhelming explanation.”1 It is in the years of peace that wars are prevented and that those foundations are laid upon which the noble structures of the future can be built. But peace will not be preserved without the virtues that make victory possible in war. Peace will not be preserved by pious sentiments expressed in terms of platitudes or by official grimaces and diplomatic correctitude....2
1Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God, David McCasland
2Churchill: The Power of Words, edited by Martin Gilbert
The Mitcheners 