Today we have substituted doctrinal belief for personal belief, and that is why so many people are devoted to causes and so few are devoted to Jesus Christ.

People do not really want to be devoted to Jesus, but only to the cause He started. Jesus Christ is deeply offensive to the educated minds of today, to those who only want Him to be their Friend, and who are unwilling to accept Him in any other way. Our Lord's primary obedience was to the will of His Father, not to the needs of the people--the saving of people was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father.

If I am devoted solely to the cause of humanity, I will soon be exhausted and come to the point where my love will waver and stumble. But if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity, even though people may treat me like a "doormat."

The secret of a disciple's life is devotion to Jesus Christ, and the characteristic of that life is its seeming insignificance and its meekness.

Yes it is like a grain of wheat that "falls into the ground and dies"--it will spring up and change the entire landscape (John 12:24).

Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) from My Utmost for His Highest

Always measure your life solely by the standards of Jesus.  Submit yourself to His yoke, and His alone; and always be careful never to place a yoke on others that is not of Jesus Christ.  It takes God a long time to get us to stop thinking that unless everyone sees things exactly as we do, they must be wrong.  That is never God's view.  There is only one true liberty--the liberty of Jesus at work in our conscience enabling us to do what is right.

Don't get impatient with others.  Remember how God dealt with you--with patience and with gentleness.  But never water down the truth of God.  Let it have its way and never apologize for it.  Jesus said, "Go....and make disciples..." (Matthew 28:19), not, "Make converts to your own thoughts and opinions."

Oswald Chambers

How many people have you made homesick for God?

Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)

When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship--when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.  

There are vast areas of stubbornness and ignorance the Holy Spirit has to reveal in each of us, but it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone.  Are we alone with Him now?  Or are we more concerned with our own ideas, friendships, and cares for our bodies?  Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet all our intellectual questions and get alone with Him.

Oswald Chambers

If for one whole day, quietly and determinedly, we were to give ourselves up to the ownership of Jesus and to obeying His orders, we should be amazed at its close to realize all He had packed into that one day.

Oswald Chambers

The most marvelous ingredient in the forgiveness of God is that He also forgets, the one thing a human being can never do.

Oswald Chambers