The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections  Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page July 9 Today's Reading: My Utmost for His Highest Joshua 24:19 "Joshua said to the people, 'You cannot serve the Lord . . .'" The One Who Found Me I am not holy, but the One who dwells within me is holy. When I surrendered my will, self, and sin to Him, I gave Him permission to override my will. He now sits on the throne of my life. I am not holy, but He is — and because He lives within me, the place where He dwells is holy. My body is His temple. I cannot serve Him in my own strength. I am not worthy, my strength is weak, my faith falters, and my trust wavers. But when I draw on the grace of God, I am supplied with His strength, His faith, His trust, His holiness, His worthiness, and His grace. I put myself in the position to be used by Him. His life lived through me. I serve by letting His light shine through Him in me. He makes me holy because He is working...

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections  Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page July 7 Today's Reading: My Utmost for His Highest Matthew 7:13–14   " Enter by the narrow gate…  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life…" The Difficult Way, The Beautiful Way Summary Chambers’ message today is: “All Efforts of Worth and Excellence Are Difficult.” This devotional is my reflection — my testimony. It became long because the subject is serious, and surrender is not a light matter. Because of that, I asked Microsoft Copilot to create a short summary so you wouldn’t have to read the entire piece unless you want to.  This reflection tells the story of how God opened my eyes after 68 years of living saved but unsurrendered — how He lifted decades of burdens, softened my heart, poured out grace, and began molding me into someone He can trust and use. It is the journey from self‑effort to Spirit‑led living, from heaviness to pe...

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections   Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page July 5 Today's Reading: My Utmost for His Highest Psalm 37:5 "Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass" Laying It All Down Wow. I started planning something today and I forgot to ask God what His will was. I stopped, backed up, and had a conversation with the Lord. I do not want to make mistakes with my new life. I want God involved in all planning. I’m still learning how to do that. I’ve lived 68 years without considering God in my planning, and now I have to build new habits and always involve Him. God will upset your plans anyway—He delights in it. We tend to think it’s not appropriate to consider God in the planning of “unspiritual” things. But God is a God of the practical and the spiritual. We must consider Him in all planning. And we don’t need to put on our Sunday best before we come near Him. If you think about it, He is a...

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections   Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page   Jun 16  Today's Reading: My Utmost for His Highest  John 15:13, 15  “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends… I have called you friends…” The Throne of Your Life Jesus has not asked us to literally die for Him… but He has asked us to lay down our life for Him. This means we give Him our life — the one where we are in control. We surrender our right to ourselves, and He gives us His life in return. The self is selfish and willful. It does not want to give up control. It is a hard thing to understand and a hard thing to do. We call it our “free will.” God created the will and set it in our hearts for a purpose — so that we might choose Him freely. He will not force Himself on us. It is our God-given freedom to accept Him or reject Him. But in another sense, we are not truly free. We are burdened with sin, fear, str...

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections   Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page   Jun 11 Today's Reading: My Utmost for His Highest Matthew 11:28    "Come to Me..."  His Way... Surrendered First we are convicted of our need to be cleansed. And now Jesus is saying, "Come to Me," and I will cleanse you. And He will ... if... you will come.  You must be willing to come to Him as a little child comes to a parent when they skin their knee. He will clean it, doctor it, and put you back on your feet. You come to Him in an all-trusting manner, as to a Father, ready to lean your whole weight on Him because you know He cares for you. Then you trust Him with your whole self, and He takes it and gently restores you, but gives it back to you in better form than when you gave it to Him.  It is when we determine in our heart that Jesus is the way, and come to Him with a surrendered heart, that He can finally have His way in your life. His w...

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections  Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page Jun 10 Today's Reading: My Utmost for His Highest Luke 11:9 “...seek, and you will find…” The One Who Seeks His Face Have you ever truly belonged to someone? Do you want to?   To belong… to Someone...  who says, “Come here.  I love you.” Step in.   This is where belonging begins. We live in a world that pulls us in every direction but toward God. Society does not emphasize Him. The world is wrapped up in itself, and we often end up wrapped up in ourselves, chasing after worldly things and worldly validation instead of chasing after God. The world does not love us unless we have something it wants. But God’s love is unconditional. Whether sinner or saint — God loves us. We need to chase after God.  Jesus Himself wept over Jerusalem because they would not come to Him. As He approached the city, “He wept over it” (Luke 19:41), grieving that they did not recog...

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections  Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page Jun 6 Today's Reading: My Utmost for His Highest Philippians 2:12–13 “…work out your own salvation… for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”   When God Becomes the Source of My Will There is a moment in every believer’s life when the battle inside finally breaks. For me, it was the day my will bowed at the feet of Jesus. I didn’t understand everything then — I only knew the chaos had to end. What I did not realize was that surrender wasn’t the end of the story. It was the beginning of a new way of living. Chambers says that the deepest part of a person is not sin — it is the will . And when we are born again, God places a new will inside us, one that naturally agrees with Him. That means the real “me” — the true will God gave me — already wants what He wants. The resistance I feel at times doesn’t come from my will at all. It comes f...

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page Apr 10 Today's Reflection from My Utmost for His Highest Romans 6:6 “...our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” A Decision That Changes Everything Oswald Chambers does not soften Paul’s words in Romans 6:6. He does not treat sin as something to manage, restrain, or gradually improve. He speaks of it the way Paul does — as something that must die. Not negotiated with. Not reshaped. Not disciplined into better behavior. Crucified. Chambers asks a direct question: Has the decision ever been made that sin must die — not be controlled, but crucified with Christ? This is not a slow drift toward better habits. It is a deliberate moral decision before God. Paul is not describing a future ideal or a theological concept. He is describing a real, definite moment in his own life when he agreed with God’s...

The Quill and Me—Devotional Blog•Oswald Chambers Reflections  Today's Devotional • Back to Home Page John 3:16   "For God so loved the world that He gave..." Chambers draws our eyes to something we rarely dare to consider: before we ever speak of our surrender to God, Scripture speaks of God’s surrender to us. John 3:16 is not a verse about human effort — it is the revelation of a God who held nothing back. “God so loved… that He gave.” Not partially. Not cautiously. Not conditionally. He gave Himself — fully, freely, without reservation. Salvation is not merely the removal of sin or the gaining of holiness. It is the miracle of being brought into union with the One who surrendered everything to draw us near. The Spirit does not simply cleanse us; He ushers us into the very life of Christ. And when we see His surrender, ours stops being a project. It becomes a response. A quiet yielding to the One who has already given all. True surrender is not self‑focused. It is not th...