This book is not one to be read in a chunk, but rather a book of daily devotional thoughts written by Mr. Chambers, a Scots YMCA chaplain before and during World War I. Chambers died in 1917, and his wife compiled this book of daily devotional thoughts from Chambers’ writings.
However, the term “devotional thoughts” may give the wrong impression. These daily essays on how to understand and live the Christian life are not your typical little encouraging stories or aphorisms. Here’s an example, the selection for March 14th:
“His servants ye are to whom ye obey.” Romans 6:16
The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point away back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him.
Yield in childhood to selfishness, and you will find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. There is no power in the human soul of itself to break the bondage of a disposition formed by yielding. Yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust (remember what lust is: “I must have it at once,” whether it be the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind) – once yield and though you may hate yourself for having yielded, you are a bondslave to that thing. There is no release in human power at all but only in the Redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One Who can break the dominating power viz., the Lord Jesus Christ – “He hath anointed me . . . to preach deliverance to all captives.”
You find this out in the most ridiculously small ways – “Oh, I can give that habit up when I like.” You cannot, you will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you yielded to it willingly. It is easy to sing – “He will break every fetter” and at the same time be living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. Yielding to Jesus will break every form of slavery in any human life.
President George W. Bush used to read My Utmost for His Highest each morning when he was president, probably still does. According to Newsweek (2003), “George W. Bush rises ahead of the dawn most days, when the loudest sound outside the White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone. His text isn’t news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.”
You can read these brief, but meaningful daily reflections here.
Wisdom in a Time of War:
What Oswald Chambers and C.S. Lewis teach us about living through the long battle with terrorism by JI Packer.
I have a leather bound copy of this, I love it so much.
I actually have the “updated” version, which is one of the only “books” where I think the updated English is just as good as the original. The story of how it came to be updated is in the Forward of that version.
I was intrigued by the story of his wife, Biddy Chambers, who recorded in shorthand his preaching and talks while he was alive and then spent the rest of her life publishing them in book form. See, for example, the Foreward to My Utmost for His Highest.
There is a short book that has been written about ‘BC’: Searching for Mrs. Oswald Chambers. Not a conventional biography, but I appreciated a glimpse into the life of this Christian woman role model.