Reading the biography Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God – The Life Story of the Author of My Utmost for His Highest by David McCasland affected me deeply. I would like to share some of it with you.
Before reading this book, the only thing I knew about Oswald Chambers was that he was the author of the famous and well-loved devotional My Utmost for His Highest. I enjoy reading biographies of great Christians since their lives can be encouragements for us Christians living today. This book took me into the lives of Oswald Chambers, his parents and siblings, his wife, his child, and his many friends living for Christ in another time and place. He and his wife “Biddy” (Gertrude) were godly real life examples of Christians who lived and died within the past century. Oswald died in 1917 in World War I at the age of 43. His wife Biddy died in 1966.
He lived a life full of the Holy Spirit, which was the source of his joyful service. He refused to worry. He lived a “restlessly restful” life, as he liked to say. He did not value mere money and personal influence. Christ was his life, as the Apostle Paul said of himself.
Oswald was born in 1874 in England to a loving Christian family in which his father was a pastor and later, an evangelist, and his mother always cheerfully trusted God to work out whatever difficulties came to them. Oswald spent most of his happy boyhood in Scotland, but the family moved back to England later. Oswald gave his heart to Jesus Christ at age sixteen and grew in faith and service to his Lord. His schooling and career path was unclear for a number of years, as he was initially interested in serving God through art. He had a gift of art and music. His father favored more practical pursuits for Oswald, but Oswald did have two years of art schooling. He was also an astute learner of literature, philosophy, and history. Although he was offered a scholarship to continue his study of art, he decided not to accept it, as he observed moral problems with the study of art. Through various people, he felt God was leading him into the ministry of teaching God’s Word. Over time, he taught at three theological or Bible training schools, as well as teaching through Bible training correspondence courses. Part of his gift of teaching was his own “insatiable hunger for knowledge”.
Oswald had a spiritual “crisis of surrender” for four years from the ages of 23 to 27 (years 1897 – 1901). According to what I understand from this book, the crisis was due to the fact that he had not fully given himself to the Lord and had been relying on man’s high esteem of him and his obvious gifts in teaching and preaching God’s Word. Though on the outside, he seemed to be his usual likeable and outgoing self, inside he knew his sin and he struggled with it greatly. It seemed to me that he was trying to get closer to God, but was relying on his own efforts to do so. The praise of men kept him from God. Finally, he gave up his fear of what people would think of him and humbly repented and asked God to live in him. Clinging to the verse Luke 11:13 (“If ye being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.”), he asked the Holy Spirit to live in his life.
This spiritual breakthrough in 1901 changed his life forever. Though many aspects of his life appeared the same on the outside, one difference that some noticed was that before, on occasion, he could be caustic and bitter. He didn’t always accept criticism without defending himself. After this spiritual crisis, he was able to hear criticism without defending himself. Also, afterward, he exhibited tact, compassion, and love to a much greater degree. This was the time at which he put himself fully in God’s hands and trusted Him for his future in however God wanted to use him. One of his mottos was to “Trust God and do the next thing”. He felt that the one great crime for a disciple of Christ was worry. “Whenever we begin to calculate without God, we commit sin”. Instead of worry, his practice was to bathe the entire situation in prayer and then wait to see what God would do.
He was blessed with a pleasant personality and he loved people. People were drawn to him. He wrote, “Ever since I learned not to teach any consciously as an aim, men seem to come in many ways to me.” He was a man with “an energetic, inspiring personality”. He prayed every morning for others and prayed for an anointing from God. This gave him “such a skillful touch with souls”. The author wrote, “He was such a gloriously unconventional man.”
Besides teaching at the theological training school and the other Bible training colleges, he worked under the auspices of the Pentecostal League of Prayer. In exercising his duties and calling, he would travel to various parts of the world (England, Scotland, Japan, and America) and preach and teach God’s Word. Oswald led many people to Christ.
On May 25, 1910, he married Gertrude (“Biddy”) Hobbs, whom he had met at his brother Arthur’s church five years previously and then got reacquainted with her 2-1/2 years later when her mother asked him to look after her on the ship they both were taking to America. At this time, he wrote, “Life was always interesting in the providence of God.” In marriage, Oswald and Biddy were united in service to the Lord and in love for each other. They trusted God to lead them and to provide for them. A blessing to so many students, they opened their hearts and home to everyone in hospitality. They gave to anyone who asked for help. On May 24, 1913, their daughter Kathleen was born. What a blessing she was to them and all the students at the Bible college!
When World War I began on August 5, 1914, several Bible school students left for the war. Oswald prayed and struggled with how to handle responsibilities to his family, his country, and to the college. After this time of prayer, Oswald decided to join the war effort as a chaplain in the Y.M.C.A., which supported the British army. Since Egypt wasn’t in the combat zone, the Y.M.C.A. gave permission for his family to come to Egypt too.
As a Y.M.C.A. chaplain, Oswald came to serve the soldiers and strove to bring men to Christ. Everyone there realized that half of the men would be killed when they shipped out to battle. The men were ripe for hearing God’s truth. So, Oswald first started a nightly prayer meeting, which grew from just a couple men the first night. Then he added a midweek service, a Sunday service, and 45-minute nightly talks or lectures on Biblical topics that related to the issues that were on men’s minds. “Soldiers whom no one could accuse of being religious turned out night after night to study the Bible”.
Oswald and Biddy worked tirelessly for God among the soldiers for two years. Oswald became ill with appendicitis in October, 1917, developed a ruptured appendix, had surgery, and developed blood clots in the lung and died at age 43. It was a huge loss to all. In our day of modern medicine and in our practical mindset, it seems to be such a tragic waste. But, this too was in God’s hands and was used for His glory. His sermons and lectures were transcribed by Biddy into written format, and books were published, For three years, Biddy labored on the daily devotional that she titled one of Oswald’s often-used phrases My Utmost for His Highest.
Now that the background of Oswald Chambers’ life has been presented, the rest of the report will contain some more of Oswald’s statements and two of Biddy’s statements. Their lives as Christians have inspired and encouraged me to try, with God’s help, to live more as they did.
Their lives had no contradiction between what they believed and how they lived.
When Oswald and Biddy were faced with the unknown future, they would pray and wonder what God was going to do.
Oswald had a deep, settled peace in his soul. He felt the purpose of prayer was to get in step with God. He would ask Him and then wait.
From a letter to Florence, one of his sisters (1907):
“I feel unspeakably at home among men now [that] I know God.”
“One of the blessed things about this life is that a man carries his
kingdom on the inside, and that makes the outside lovely.”
From a letter to Biddy after their engagement, Oswald wrote:
Be patient and so utterly confident in God that you never question His
ways or your waiting time.
I am so amazed that God has altered me that I can never despair of
anybody.
Criticism of others kills spirituality every time.
To a friend, often he would write: “Be absolutely His!”
The author wrote, “Chambers had a rare capacity to trust matters to God in prayer and wait for Him to move.”
When Oswald got to Egypt in October, 1915, in his diary he wrote, “I am watching with interest the new things God will do and engineer.”
From his diary in 1916, “in any dilemma produced by providential circumstances, the temptation is to yield to ordinary common sense rather than wait for God to fulfill His purpose. God’s order comes to us through the haphazard.”
Chambers emphasized “discovering God’s will through what he called ‘the haphazard circumstances of life’”.
Oswald said, “The one right thing is to be a believer in Jesus Christ”. “To me (Biddy), he is always that preeminently.”
Biddy, upon leaving Egypt 19 months after Oswald’s death, wrote, “We thanked Him, for the abiding fellowship with the one who had lived before us the Great Life of believing in Jesus Christ”.
From Oswald Chambers’ book, Shade of His Hand, here is a quotation: “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.”
I hope that these excerpts from the book have given you a better understanding of what kind of Christian man Oswald Chambers was. I thank the Lord for him and his wife Biddy and all they did for their fellow man on behalf of Jesus Christ. May they encourage us all to live for Him and serve Him in whatever we do for the glory of God.
