More about Oswald Chambers
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) was born July 24, 1874, in Aberdeen, Scotland. Converted in his teen years under the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he studied art and archaeology at the University of Edinburgh before answering a call from God to the Christian ministry. He then studied theology at Dunoon College. From 1906-1910 he conducted an itinerant Bible-teaching ministry in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
In 1910, Chambers married Gertrude Hobbs. They had one daughter, Kathleen, who still resides in London.
In 1911 he founded and
became principal of the Bible Training College in Clapham, London, where
he lectured until the school was closed in 1915 because of World War I.
In October 1915 he sailed for Zeitoun, Egypt (near Cairo), where he ministered
to Australian and New Zealand troops as a YMCA chaplain. He died there November
15, 1917, following surgery for a ruptured appendix.
Although Oswald Chambers wrote only one book, Baffled to Fight Better , more than thirty titles bear his name. With this one exception, published works were compiled by Mrs. Chambers, a court stenographer, from her verbatim shorthand notes of his messages taken during their seven years of marriage. For half a century following her husband's death she labored to give his words to the world.
My Utmost For His Highest , his best-known book, has been continuously
in print in the United States since 1935 and in this, the last decade of
the century, remains in the top ten titles of the religious book bestseller
list with millions of copies in print. It has become a Christian classic.
The Life Story of the Author of My Utmost For His Highest
David McCasland
Discovery House Publishers
To order: Call 1-800-653-8333
Gertrude (Biddy) Chambers
Simpkin Marshall Ltd. 1933, 1938, 1959
David W. Lambert
Christian Literature Crusade, 1968
For a list of more books by or about Oswald Chambers, click here.
© 1997 RBC Ministries--Grand Rapids, MI 49555-0001
Oswald Chambers believed that nothing in his life should come before the Lord. And he acted on that belief, painfully but faithfully, until he was completely spent in service to the Lord he loved. So fervently did he hold this conviction, that he felt compelled to give up his budding career as an artist among the greats in Europe to study the Bible among no-names in a small Scottish town.
And in maybe his biggest test of putting God first in his life, Chambers was called to end a friendship with his first love, a young Christian lady named Chrissie, whom he had fallen in love with during an eight-year friendship and whom he expected to marry. Giving up art was hard. Giving up Chrissie to follow Christ was searingly painful.
As usual, he spilled his emotions onto paper.
O my beloved Jesus! Not Thy cross Nor any portion of Thine earthly life Revealed Thy love to me. But when my heart broke in its first true love, And all my feelings like a lash of pain Recoiled and stung me, till my tortured nerves Refused to aid my spirit --
Then, in that pain, I saw Thee, O my Christ! And that my first love, which so hopeless seemed, Was after all for Thee disguised indeed. But I mistook the form assumed by Thee, And now I love Thee, Jesus, with the love That lovers think they have for those they love. O rapture! where there was such pain before.
The pain was replaced by God's bottomless love, and Chambers never regretted the decision.
This seems like an almost impossible feat for a young man, on the level of Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac to God. But while Chambers is most remembered today for his book My Utmost For His Highest, he lived his life, day in and day out, according to the calling of God and His word. He sacrificed his joyful, loving relationship with Chrissie, a friendship no man could object to, because he knew in his heart that love for her could come before his love for the Lord.
It was a step of faith that God richly rewarded with a deep, unique relationship with Chambers and, later in life, a wife whose love, devotion and kinship worship of Christ was an earthly joy for him and a tool for the Lord still in use today. Columnist Cal Thomas described Chambers as "a man for all time. His mind was the mind of Christ and so his words are compelling because they reflect the thoughts of our Savior.''
With his earthly desires duly subjugated, Oswald Chambers embarked on his quest for Christ. It was a quest that took him from his native Great Britain to America, Japan and finally Egypt during the awful days of World War I.
It was a quest that would ultimately take his temporal life at a young age.
But his writings, which seem nothing short of inspired and were put on paper by his faithful wife, continue to give Christians clear paths for following Christ.
Oswald Chamber's entire life story is available by back ordering Issue 4, Number 2, for $3.50 U.S., $4.50 outside the U.S. Mail to:
The memory of the righteous is a blessing. (Proverbs 10:7)