Many of us have heard these inspiring words that are the title of a famous book of selected Scripture meditations. However, fewer people are familiar with the life of the man who made these words his testimony. Although Oswald Chambers lived to be only forty-three years old, his life after his conversion was characterized by a desire to love the Lord with all his heart, all his soul, and all his might. In secret, Chambers was the same man that he was in public—a wholehearted servant of the Lord.

Oswald Chambers was born on July 24, 1874, in Aberdeen, Scotland. His parents were Clarence and Hannah Chambers. Both of them had been heavily influenced by the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and both had been baptized by Spurgeon himself. Hannah Chambers was converted under Spurgeon’s preaching, and Clarence was among the first students at Spurgeon’s Pastors’ College.

At the time of the birth of Oswald, his seventh child, Clarence Chambers was serving as the pastor at Crown Terrace Baptist Church. Young Oswald flourished in his loving Scottish family and was noted as being a joyful child. Although he was born at Aberdeen, most of his boyhood was spent in Perth, where his father was called to serve as pastor. 

Oswald Chambers showed a keen interest in art from an early age. He once did a chalk drawing of a golden eagle on the school blackboard that his teachers refused to erase for a long time. When he was fifteen years old, he was excited to learn that his parents were moving the family to London! Surely there he would have more opportunities to develop his skills as an artist.

But something greater awaited in London. Soon after their arrival in the great metropolis, his father took the family to the Metropolitan Tabernacle to hear Charles Spurgeon, now nearing the very end of life, preach the everlasting Gospel. That night, under the preaching of Spurgeon, the Lord moved in the heart of Oswald Chambers in a personal way as never before. His eyes were opened to see his own sin and the perfections of the Savior. On the way home, Oswald Chambers told his father of his need to be saved. There in the streets of London, underneath a street lamp, Chambers gave himself to God. His life was no longer his own, for he was bought with a price.

For a time, Chambers pursued his interest in art. He attended the University of Edinburgh and studied under the masters. He produced a portrait of Beethoven that is one of the best portraits of the brilliant musician. During these days, Chambers convinced himself that the Lord could use his skills as an artist for His glory. As some of his friends urged him to become a minister of the Gospel, he always demurred, even telling one friend that he would not enter the ministry unless God took him “by the scruff of the neck.”

As time went on, Oswald Chambers sensed that the Lord was indeed leading him to abandon the pursuit of a career in art and to devote himself to fulltime Christian ministry. He spent an entire night in prayer at Arthur’s Seat, a rugged old volcanic peak overlooking Edinburgh, wrestling with the Lord in prayer and eventually surrendering his life entirely into the hands of the Almighty.

The very next morning, Chambers was surprised to find a piece of mail delivered to him, a brochure from Dunoon Training College. For almost a decade, from 1897 to 1906, Oswald Chambers spent many valuable hours under the teaching and mentorship of Pastor Duncan MacGregor, a Godly teacher who tried to follow the example of the Lord Jesus in his own discipleship. He and his wife opened their home to the students of Dunoon Training College. The couple shared meals with their students, lived with them on a daily basis, and taught practical Christianity, even while the students studied academic subjects, such as Greek, church history, logic, and rhetoric.

Oswald Chambers began receiving invitations to preach in churches in the surrounding towns. He went through a dark period where he was keenly aware of his own weakness and longed for full surrender to the Holy Spirit. God gave him strength to carry on, and he eventually found refuge in the promise of the Lord Jesus in Luke 11:13, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

Chambers became active in the beginning of the Holiness Movement and was part of the League of Prayer. He took a world tour from 1906 to 1910, traveling first to America and then to Japan, preaching in churches and Bible schools.

When he journeyed to America, Gertrude Hobbs, who was the daughter of a friend of his, was sailing on the same ship. While on the voyage, a friendship sprang up between the two that soon blossomed into love. Chambers wrote to Gertrude during his travels around the world. When he returned home, he took her on a tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. There, he pledged his love to her and asked her to become his wife and companion in the Lord’s service. 

At the time of her engagement, Gertrude was trained as a stenographer; however, as Mrs. Oswald Chambers, her skills in taking shorthand would be greatly used by the Lord. Each time her husband preached, she recorded his sermon verbatim in shorthand. Oswald Chambers often called his wife “Beloved Disciple,” and this nickname was eventually shortened to the initials “BD,” which the adoring husband pronounced as “Biddy.”

Together, the Chambers opened a Bible school on the south side of London. It was their hope to operate their school after the live-in discipleship pattern that Chambers had experienced in the home of Duncan Macgregor. The Lord provided a nineteen-room house that could accommodate twenty-five students in the Bible Training College. The Lord blessed the Chambers family with a daughter in 1913. They named her Kathleen.

The school operated for only a few short years before the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. England sent her best and bravest to the battlefield. Oswald Chambers heard of the needs among the soldiers for the Gospel, and he volunteered to serve as a chaplain with the Y.M.C.A. in Egypt.

He spent his final years preaching among the British soldiers stationed around Cairo. His wife Biddy and young daughter Kathleen accompanied him. Kathleen, now a toddler, won the hearts of the soldiers as she offered them biscuits (the British term for cookies) and Gospel tracts. Biddy Chambers regularly served Sunday afternoon tea to a crowd of 700 soldiers who came to hear her husband preach.

The rigorous schedule, the climate, the flies, and the mosquitoes took a toll on Chamber’s health. His wife became worried about him and urged him to go to the doctor, but Chambers did not want to take a hospital bed away from the needy troops. When he finally did seek medical attention for severe abdominal pain, it was too late. His appendix had ruptured, and he died suddenly.

Egyptian laborers joined the crowd of high-ranking military officers and diplomats that assembled to follow the funeral procession to the British military cemetery in Cairo. The soldiers who loved their pastor gave him a funeral with full military honors. Friends all over the world were shocked to receive the cable from Egypt, “OSWALD IN HIS PRESENCE.”

Mrs. Chambers would not let the voice of her husband lie in silence. She carefully went through his notes and published a sermon each month, sermons that were printed and distributed to 10,000 soldiers in the Middle East. Before her death in 1966, Biddy Chambers typed and printed thirty books, the best known of which was a selection of readings for each day of the year, My Utmost for His Highest. That book has been in continuous print since the day it first was given to the world, inspiring many others to love and serve the Lord, in secret as well as in public, with all their heart, soul, and might.

Sources and Further Reference:
McCasland, David. Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God. Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers, 1993.