Holding Oswald Chambers’ Bible: the (Literal) Book that Changed My Life

I don’t know, exactly, when I first got a copy of Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest.

It’s a paperback, and I’m pretty sure it cost $5. I don’t think I bought it, though.

I think someone gave to me, or perhaps to my Sunday School teacher husband.

But about 12 years ago I picked it up and started to use it as a daily devotional. It’s beautiful arranged that way–366 pages including a short verse and Chambers’ thoughts on what it means, with room to write things at the bottom.

I’ve confined myself to birthdays so I remember to pray or even send a card (usually late) on the appropriate day.

(You can also find each day’s devotion at www.utmost.org.)

Over the years I’ve taken Oswald’s wisdom and applied it to a life that rarely lives up to the calling of Jesus.

Oswald, of course, would expect that. You should, too.

Many of you know his famous call to being “broken bread and poured out wine.” It’s helpful to remember that on days when I feel broken, discouraged and as if I have little left to give.

Days like that, of course, are often when the Lord can use me best.

Changes in me.

My attitudes have changed through reading this devotional; I’m a better follower of Jesus Christ as a result. Each day I find myself nodding and challenged anew.

I then turn to my designated Bible readings and feel fit for service in God‘s Kingdom.

Usually after I have to confess some sin or realign my focus with my Redeemer’s call.

Often the Scripture passages mirror what Oswald has said, and I’m struck anew at how God engineers our circumstances to speak to our souls. It’s a heady thing.

During a terrible event when I was tormented my prayers had been pointless and wasted, I avoided God for several days.

When I finally returned to my discipline, I started with Oswald Chambers’ devotional. The headline for August 28 was “What’s the Good of Prayer?”

Oswald’s signature wisdom restored my faith:

It is not so true that “prayer changes things” as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition.

God let his servant Oswald Chambers answer the questions tearing me apart. Click to Tweet

I love it when God does that.

Who was Oswald Chambers?

Chambers was born in the nineteenth century and died in 1917 at the age of 43.

He was consecrated to God in ways that sober and thrill. David McCasland wrote an excellent biography called Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God.

I’m working on a book that includes Oswald Chambers, and so recently I spent two days at Wheaton College’s Special Collection Library going through the Oswald Chambers papers donated by McCasland.

I read through archival boxes of letters, diaries, notes. I studied photos and handled “ephemera.” And then Archivist Keith Call brought out several startling items:

 This is Biddy’s Chambers’ Bible. The poor thing was in several parts, obviously well read and worn.

He also brought out the typewriter on which she transcribed Oswald’s words in My Utmost for His Highest.

I ran my fingers across the round keys and felt like I had brushed eternity–both by the knowledge Biddy and Oswald’s fingers had typed, but also recognizing the words that came through the black inked ribbon had affected so many people–including me.

Then Keith brought out a white box closed with Velcro. I opened it up to this:

I turned the thin paper and found lots of pages that looked like this:

This is Oswald Chambers’ Bible and the above are his notes on Pentecost.

This very book and me

As I held the worn leather volume in my two hands, I thought of how this very book, along with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had affected Oswald Chambers’ mind, life and ministry.

From this very volume, he had written the sermons, lectures and lessons which Biddy Chambers faithfully transcribed and then turned into thirty books, the most famous of which is My Utmost for His Highest.

My life had been changed for the better by, literally, this very Bible.

Both Biddy and Oswald would laugh at such a conceit–they knew, and I know very well, that it’s God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit who does the changing. Oswald, Biddy–and me, too–are only servants.

But it was exciting to hold Bibles both Oswald and Biddy loved and used.

My thanks to Wheaton College, Keith, Biddy, Oswald, and God.

Are you familiar with Oswald Chambers and My Utmost for His Highest? How have the devotionals affected you?

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Holding Oswald Chambers’ Bible in my hands. Click to Tweet