Oswald Chambers Quotes

It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.

God may not guide us in an obvious way because he wants us to make decisions based on faith and character.

Character is the result of hundreds and hundreds of choices you make that gradually turn who you are, at any given moment, into who you want to be.

People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves.

The future success of our nation depends on our ability to understand the difference between right and wrong and to have the strength of character to make the right choices.

You always have a choice. It's just that some people make the wrong one.

There’s more time spent on teaching kids about recycling than on character development in the American schools.

Worthy character is best forged from a life of consistent, correct choices centered in the teachings of the Master.

The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.

We are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do. We cannot save ourselves nor sanctify ourselves, God does that; but God will not give us good habits, He will not give us character, He will not make us walk aright. We have to do all that ourselves.

Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character.

Holiness is not a series of do’s and don’ts but conformity to the character of God and obedience to the will of God.

Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves - on God's grace and on our will to be holy.

Holiness, as taught in the Scriptures, is not based upon knowledge on our part. Rather, it is based upon the resurrected Christ in-dwelling us and changing us into His likeness.

It's true the Holy Spirit alone can reproduce the character of our Lord Jesus, and we must always abide in Christ. But the Bible also makes us active partners in the process, and we must be diligent to do our part. "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed".

No man can always be right. So the struggle is to do one's best, to keep the brain and conscience clear, never be swayed by unworthy motives or inconsequential reasons, but to strive to unearth the basic factors involved, then do one's duty.

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature...

Where are the vehicles to character development in secular society?

Creative powers can just as easily turn out to be destructive. It rests solely with the moral personality whether they apply themselves to good things or to bad. And if this is lacking, no teacher can supply it or take its place.

We all have a dark place in us. It's what we do with it and the choice we make.

It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.

By making choices consistent with eternal truth you will develop righteous character.

Character cannot be summoned at the moment of crisis if it has been squandered by years of compromise and rationalization. The only testing ground for the heroic is the mundane. The only preparation for that one profound decision which can change a life, or even a nation, is those hundreds of half-conscious, self defining, seemingly insignificant decisions made in private. Habit is the daily battleground of character.

Brethren, do not become children in sense: but in malice be children, and in sense be perfect.

Sanctification is not a work of nature, but a work of grace. It is a transformation of character effected not by moral influences, but supernaturally by the Holy Spirit.