Moral[s] is What You Believe, Ethic[s] is How You Act! And God Looks at Our Hearts that We Are Sinners. We Must Be Changed From Inside Out! Have You Been Changed? A Point to Ponder . . .

Moral[s] is What You Believe, Ethic[s] is How You Act! And God Looks at Our Hearts that We Are Sinners. We Must Be Changed From Inside Out! Have You Been Changed? A Point to Ponder . . .

Disposition and Deeds

By Oswald Chambers

With a Short Bio

Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:20

The defining characteristic of Christian disciples is not that they do good things; it’s that they are good in their motives. Their motives have been made good by the supernatural grace of God.

The only thing that surpasses right doing is right being. Jesus Christ came to put a new heredity into anyone who would let him, a heredity that would surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees. Jesus says, in essence, “If you are my disciple, you must be right not only in how you live but also in your motives and your dreams, in the deepest recesses of your mind. You must be so pure in your motives that God Almighty can see nothing to censure.”

Who can stand in the eternal light of God and have nothing for God to censure? Only the Son of God. Jesus Christ claims that, by the power of his redemption, he can put his own disposition into anyone, making them as pure and simple as a child. The purity God demands is impossible for me unless I can be remade from within—and this is exactly what Jesus Christ has undertaken with his redemption.

None of us can make ourselves pure by obeying laws. Jesus Christ doesn’t give us rules and regulations. His teachings are truths which only he can interpret. If we wish to understand them, we must do so through the disposition he puts in us—his own disposition. This is what it means that Jesus Christ alters our heredity: he doesn’t alter human nature; he alters the disposition of sin that lies beneath it. This is the great marvel of his salvation.

Written By

Oswald Chambers [Who] Greeted the Dawn

IN THE WEE HOURS of this morning, 24 July 1874, pregnant Hannah Chambers woke her minister husband with an urgent note in her voice. Her labor had begun. Clarence immediately sent for the midwife and, well before dawn, a baby boy uttered his first cry in Aberdeen, Scotland. His parents named him Oswald. Little did they know that he would become a blessing to many.

As a child, Oswald was noted for the intensity of his prayers. Apart from that, his behavior was not unusual. He got into boyish scrapes and attended school. Although he showed little academic promise, he had a strong aptitude for the fine arts—writing, drawing, painting, and performing on both piano and organ were among his interests.

When he considered how he might use his talents for Christ, he hoped to do so through art, and trained for three years at Edinburgh. But eventually, he realized that he could not look to art for God’s sake, but must look to God for God’s sake. He relinquished his art and began studying for the pastorate.

At twenty-three, he prayed for the Holy Spirit’s filling. Instead, he seemed to receive the opposite. For the next four years he had no sense of God’s presence, and even Bible reading was empty to him. He felt he had to break his ties with everyone, including Chrissie, a young woman with whom he had shared his thoughts and ambitions for years in person or by letter. The Lord showed him the deepest sins in himself and put him through the fiery trial of a false sexual accusation from a young woman in his local church.

As the new century took hold, Chambers found spiritual peace. At twenty-seven, he became an effective Christian worker. He was strongly involved with the League of Prayer and his evangelistic work took him across the globe. On one voyage, he chaperoned Gertrude Hobbs, whom he affectionately nicknamed “Biddy.” After a long wait, the two married. Together they operated a Bible school, which offered classes to day students and residents, and correspondence courses for more distant students. Biddy transcribed many of her husband’s lectures and sermons into shorthand.

World War I took Oswald as a chaplain to Egypt with the YMCA. Biddy and their daughter Kathleen were allowed to join him. In Egypt, he focused on providing a loving atmosphere for soldiers as well as Bible lessons, which he refused to tie to the free meals he provided. Soldiers appreciated his true-to-life Christianity. Thousands heard his messages on practical topics like Bible psychology and Christianity in wartime. He and Biddy worked beyond exhaustion.

In 1917, Chambers developed severe abdominal pain. He did not seek medical help immediately. A major Allied offensive was underway, and with so many casualties returning from the front, he did not want to take a much-needed bed from a soldier. When the pain worsened, he saw a doctor, who immediately operated for appendicitis. Utterly worn out, Chambers struggled between life and death for over two weeks before dying of blood clots and a lung hemorrhage.

The soldiers insisted on honoring him with a military parade, and he was buried with full military honors. Afterward, Biddy published books based on the notes she had taken from her late husband’s talks. The best known of these was the devotional classic: My Utmost for His Highest. It has captured generations of readers its insightful counsels such as “The desire that comes into a disciple is not one of doing anything for Jesus, but of being a perfect delight to him.” Thus it came about that in death, Oswald Chambers reached even more with the Gospel message than he had in life.

Bio written by—Dan Graves

Adapted from https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/ and used by permission.