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There is no question that this daily devotional deserves to be on the list. It has sold millions of copies and is the best-selling daily devotional of all time. It is kept on the nightstands of Chris-{ 48 } tians of all persuasions and supplies a regular stream of pithy quotes for ministers and writers around the world.
So the question is why? How did this book become so popular? And why is it still a best-seller decades after the death of its author, especially when there are so many other excellen t devo-tionals in print?
Born in Scotland in 1874, Oswald Chambers studied to be an artist and read widely in literature, from Balzac to Ibsen. He became a Christian under the ministry of the great London preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon. After training for the ministry, Chambers traveled internal ionally, speaking at conferences in Japan and the United States. After a four-year stint as principal of a Bible training college in England, he ministered to British troops in Egypt during World War I. About two years later, he took ill and died suddenly at the age of forty-three.
Though he died in 1917, it wasn 't until 1924 that his wife, Biddy, began collecting material from his talks. During his life, she had taken shorthand notes of his sermons and speeches, so now it was her task to transcribe them and edit them into daily meditations. She explains in her foreword to the book that the material had been "selected from various sources, chiefly from the lectures given at the Bible Training College״ and "from talks given night by night in the YMCA huts, Zeitoun, Egypt.״ Although Biddy's name is never mentioned in the book, she was the genius behind it.
But it was Chambers's unique personality mix that God used to make the book unique. He was an artist who read broadly. (In Egypt he said he was appropriately reading the Book of
Deuteronomy and The Arabian Nights.) He had a deep sense of holiness and yet he was not afraid to express himself in man-on-the-street language. ("Be godly in the grubby details.") He loathed hypocrisy and enjoyed a sense of humor. Once he put up a sign announcing his YMCA meetings: "Beware! There is a religious talk here each evening. " A Scandinavian friend once said to him, "Ah, I see how you do it. You use humor and lightheartedness to plow, and then you sow the seed."
Two other classic devotionals of the day were Spurgeon's Evening by Evening and Tillotson's Daily Strength for Daily Needs.
Notice the difference in the entries for May 1, for example:
Spurgeon: "Whatever there may be of beauty in the material world, Jesus Christ possesses all that in the spiri- . tual world in a ten-fold degree.״ t 49 }
Tillotson: "That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations."
Chambers: "Some of us always want to be illuminated saints with golden haloes and the flush of inspiration. . . .
A gilt-edge saint is no good; he is abnormal, unfit for daily life.... We are here as men and women (not as half-fledged angels) to do the work of the world. . . . God will give us touches of inspiration when He sees we are not in danger of being led away by them. We must never make our moments of inspiration our standard; our standard is our duty."
You can see the bristling clarity in Chambers's writing, the crisp language, the touch of humor, and the practical com-mentary—especially compared to the other options available. Chambers ushered in a new style of devotional writing, less inspirational, more practical, aimed not so much at the emotions but at the will.
Before Biddy Chambers died in 1966, she had published sixty books, all bearing her husband's name. Of course, none of them rivaled My Utmost for His Highest, the best-selling devotional book of the twentieth century.