History Book: “Spend and be spent”

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, July 22nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: the WORLD History Book. One hundred fifty years ago this week, the birth of Oswald Chambers, known best for his daily devotional: “My Utmost for His Highest.”

Here’s WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde.

CALEB WELDE: As the son of a pastor, Oswald Chambers couldn’t remember a time he didn’t believe in God. But on the walk home from a Charles Spurgeon sermon in 1889, he tells his dad he wants to surrender and give his life to the Lord.

He’s 15 years old and a talented artist, but people are encouraging him to follow in his father’s footsteps. Robert Bell as the voice of Chambers.

CHAMBERS: I shall never go into the ministry until God takes me by the scruff of the neck and throws me in.

But one morning after a long night of prayer, he receives a brochure in the mail for a small theological school near Glasgow. He believes it’s a sign. It’s confirmed later when he hears missionary Hudson Taylor speak, saying Christians must place their faith in God’s faithfulness—not their own, adding that it’s only in this condition when men will “dare to obey Him,” however unwise “it may appear.”

Chambers enrolls in Dunoon Training College. The school has just one “professor” Duncan MacGregor who mentors Chambers. At Dunoon, Chambers asks God:

CHAMBERS: Simply and definitely for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, whatever that meant.

Fellow students and ministry leaders are impressed as he is leading people to Christ, but he says he has no conscious communion with God even after claiming the gift of God at a small college prayer meeting.

CHAMBERS: I was as dry and empty as ever, no power or realization of God, no witness of the Holy Spirit.

Yet two days later forty souls came forward while he spoke at a meeting. He was terrified and found Mr. MacGregor to tell him what had happened.

CHAMBERS: He said, 'Don't you remember claiming the Holy Spirit as a gift on the word of Jesus, and that He said: "Ye shall receive power . . . "? This is the power from on high.' And like a flash, something happened inside me and I saw that I had been wanting power in my own hand.

Chambers later says if those four years had been “hell on earth,” life now is “truly heaven on earth.”

CHAMBERS: Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God. Love is the beginning, love is the middle and love is the end. After He comes in, all you see is ‘Jesus only, Jesus ever.’

Chambers teaches at Mcgregor’s seminary for several years before joining the League of Prayer—an interdenominational holiness and revival group.

In 1905, a thirty-one-year-old Chambers is invited to a widow’s house for tea. She has two daughters.

MICHELLE ULE: He never expected to be married.

Michelle Ule is author of the biography: “Mrs. Oswald Chambers.”

ULE: He spent a lot of time talking to kind widows and he didn't think much of it…

But three years later, Chambers gets a letter from the widow.

ULE: I understand you're sailing on the same ship as my daughter who's going to America to be a stenographer. She's traveling by herself. Could you maybe look in on her?

Out of a sense of duty, he tracks down Miss Gertrude Hobbs.

ULE: And whoa, wait. That's right. She was pretty. Oh, she was interesting. And oh, wait. She knew all about the Pentecostal League of Prayer.

Chambers begins “looking in on her'' several times a day. His sister’s name was also Gertrude, so Chambers nicknamed Miss Hobbs: “beloved disciple” or “B-D” … which morphed into “Biddy.”

ULE: That was his reflection of her character, she was a beloved disciple of Jesus.

They part ways in New York but exchange addresses and write regularly. A few months later they’re both back in the UK, and Chambers bluntly proposes.

ULE: It's going to be an arduous, hard life, there won't be any money, but we will have each other and we will have God. Are you interested? Will you marry me?

“Biddy” says yes.

For a few years the couple runs a live-in missionary training school for the League of Prayer. The Bible training college has no endowment, and usually only enough funds to meet next week’s expenses. “Spend and be spent” is a favorite motto, along with “do the next thing.” Chambers emphasizes…

CHAMBERS: Prayer does not fit us for the greater works; prayer is the greater work.

The couple continues classes through the first jarring headlines of a world war. Chambers is now 40 and feels God calling him to be a chaplain. On October 10th, 1915, he boards a troop transport to Egypt, writing Biddy:

CHAMBERS: The sense of God’s presence is real and beautiful. The sense also is so entire that my going is of Him and His ways, that, although I cannot begin to discern what I am to do out in Egypt, I am not even concerned.

He sends for his family in December— now including two-year-old Kathleen.

In Egypt, the trio make their way into a mud hut in Zeitoun Camp on the outskirts of Cairo. The troops outside are mostly Aussies and New Zealanders, and there’s a cavalry unit here—meaning flies everywhere. There’s also many diseases, and the air is 120 degrees. Chambers writes of his delight of desert sunrises and star-lit walks with Biddy.

But Chambers continues to live “aggressively,” as he calls it.

ULE: He drove himself mercilessly because again, their lives teetered on eternity. They had to hear the gospel. He preached it everywhere.

In October of 1917, Chambers goes to a Red Cross hospital with severe abdominal pain he’d initially dismissed as a stomach virus. Doctors operate immediately on his ruptured appendix. He begins to heal, but then his lungs start to bleed and he dies on November 15th, 1917. He was 43 years old. Biddy had believed God would heal him. All she telegrams home is, “Oswald in His presence.”

The soldiers insist on a military funeral with full honors through old Cairo. Biddy’s graveside musical request, I Will Lift Mine Eyes from Psalm 121.

Biddy Chambers stays in Egypt and continues the work until the camp closes at the end of the war. In 1924 she self-publishes a daily devotional with some of the stenography notes she’d taken during Oswald’s sermons and lectures. Here’s an excerpt from January 1st’s entry:

CHAMBERS: Shut out every other consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only — “My Utmost for His Highest.” I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone.

Oswald Chambers’ ministry continues today—more than 100 years after his death. His daily devotional has been translated into 40 languages and sold more than 13 million copies.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Caleb Welde.

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