My Utmost For His Highest

My Utmost For His Highest

One of the most famous Christian authors actually wrote only one book—a book that most of his readers have never heard of.

OSWALD CHAMBERS was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1874, the son of a Baptist minister. As a teenager he accompanied his father to hear the famous Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. Afterward, young Oswald told his father that if there had been an opportunity at the service, he would have given himself to the Lord. His father quickly answered, “You can do it now, my boy.” And there on a London street with his father, Oswald Chambers quietly surrendered his life to Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord.

After studying at Edinburgh University, Chambers entered Dunoon Gospel Training College in 1897 to prepare for the ministry. He then served as a tutor at the school for eight years. While he was there, his faith grew, and he developed a great zeal for evangelism. He next served as a traveling Bible teacher for the Pentecostal League of Prayer. In 1911 he became the first principal of the Bible Training College at Clapham Common, London. However, World War I soon exploded upon Europe, and the college was closed in 1915.

Chambers then joined the staff of the YMCA and with his wife, Gertrude, known to all as Biddy, was sent to Egypt to minister to the English and Australian troops stationed in Zeitoun and Ismailia. The YMCA constructed seventy-two-by-forty-foot “huts” constructed with “walls” of matting made of local reeds so that the army soldiers would have a place to come and relax. Chambers was to supervise them.

When he arrived in Zeitoun, he immediately put up a sign that read: “YMCA Study Hut Open 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. for Reading, Writing & Study. A Blackboard Lecture Each Evening at 7:30 P.M.” Within a week he had four hundred soldiers packed in each night to hear him teach the Bible. Hundreds came to Christ. He wrote in his diary, “There are so many ‘saved’ souls waiting instruction, and they take it with zest. There is no difficulty at all in getting men to ‘decide’ for Christ, they do it readily.”

In 1916 the YMCA planned evangelistic crusades throughout all the Egyptian military camps with Chambers as the evangelist. Chambers wrote in his diary of the meeting at the Ismailia camp: “We had some magnificent decisions, and I would not allow any singing or even bowing of heads but just told them to come out before all their comrades if they meant business, and out they came.”

On October 17, 1917, Chambers returned from a Wednesday night prayer meeting feeling ill. Intense abdominal pain continued until finally on October 29 he allowed himself to be taken to the Gizeh Red Cross hospital. The surgeon operated immediately to remove Chambers’s appendix. Chambers began to recover, but on November 4 he developed a blood clot, and on November 15, 1917, he died. His wife, Biddy, cabled back to England the simple message “Oswald in His Presence.”

Chambers had written just one book before he died, Baffled to Fight Better, but he had kept a journal. Biddy was a trained court stenographer and had taken down word for word many of his hundreds of messages delivered at colleges and military camps.

Several years after Oswald’s death, Biddy began editing his material into 365 daily readings and named it My Utmost for His Highest. She completed it in 1927, ten years after Oswald’s death. Today the book remains among the top-ten Christian titles sold annually.

Biddy edited twelve more books from Oswald’s material and published them under his name, never once mentioning her own.

Reflection

Oswald Chambers left a legacy both in the lives he influenced and in the words he spoke. What do you think will be your legacy? Not many of us will ever find our words in print, but all of us can make a difference in the lives of those around us.

Your lives are a letter written in our hearts, and everyone can read it and recognize our good work among you. Clearly, you are a letter from Christ prepared by us. It is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on stone, but on human hearts.

2 Corinthians 3:2-3