[This transcript has been edited for easier reading]

Today I would like to share the story of Oswald Chambers. 

There is a book that has benefited me a lot over many, many years. Some of you will know this book, it's called "My Utmost for His Highest". This is one of the bestselling Christian books - it's a little devotional book and there's probably been about 13 million copies sold since 1927 when it was published, and it has been translated into over 40 languages. So today, I thought I would tell you the story of the man and the woman behind this book. 

Oswald Chambers was born in the 1870s. He was raised in northern Scotland in a place called Aberdeen. He was born into a Christian home; he was the second youngest of about nine children. His father was the Reverend Clarence Chambers, a very stern sort of man, and his mother was a very nurturing woman, by the name of Hannah. 

Oswald grew up with really good teaching at home - he learned a lot about the Scripture, and he was taught to have a childlike faith. Even his older brothers remember when he was about five years old, they used to sneak next to his bedroom at night, just before he said his prayers, because they loved to listen to his prayers that he would say out loud - he said very elaborate prayers. I particularly remember a time when he really wanted guinea pigs. He was desperate for these guinea pigs. He prayed fervently every single night, asking God to make a delivery of two guinea pigs. When these guinea pigs arrived, when he saw them, he went straight to his room, and he thanked God for sending the two guinea pigs and never once did he ask his brothers or his parents who brought them because he was convinced that God had delivered them personally. That was Oswald Chambers. Growing up, he had a very childlike faith, and good Bible teaching. 

Now his education wasn't particularly interesting in any way - he didn't excel particularly - but he was very good at art. In fact, he drew a beautiful eagle in school, and the school would bring out the picture of the eagle and put it in the foyer whenever they had visitors. He was also quite good at playing the piano, but unfortunately, his older brother was far better than he was playing the organ, and so he was perhaps overshadowed by his brother in that way. 

By the time he was 15, the family moved from Aberdeen in northern Scotland, all the way to London. Fifteen year old Oswald Chambers was thrilled. He loved to draw, he loved his art, and he really wanted to pursue it, and London was the place to do that. London was the place where he would be able to make a career of art and refine his skills. So he was thrilled with this move. But when he was in London, it was it was such a new experience for him compared to Scotland. In London, there was more of everything. And he wrote a little poem when he was a teenager - he was very much the artist, through and through, writing poetry.  He wrote, 

Thoughtless, flippant, godless Londoners, 
 Tricky, grasping, cruel plunderers, 
 Doing ever done by never, 
 Thoughtless flippant, godless Londoners. 

This is just one stanza from a long poem about London. But that's what he noticed in London. Even as just a teenager, he saw more luxury and more extravagance than he'd ever seen - you know, the hotels and the glitzy theaters. But sometimes, in the same street, he saw more poverty than he'd ever seen as well, in the street urchins and the people living on next to nothing. And so Oswald Chambers knew in his heart that, although he had grown up in a Christian home with very strong Christian teaching, he was still searching for something. He hadn't committed his life personally to God. 

So one day, when he was almost 16 years old, his father decided to take him to listen to a famous preacher that had come to speak in London. This preacher was CH Spurgeon, or Charles Spurgeon, and he was speaking regularly at different evening meetings. When Oswald listened to the words of Spurgeon he was really struck, but when Spurgeon asked, "if you want to believe, if you want to accept the Lord, come out the front", Oswald held back, and he didn't go. He admitted this to his father on the way home as they were walking through the streets. He said, "I might have gone. Maybe if I have another chance, I would have gone up the front." And so his father stopped him right there in the middle of the street and said, "Well, my boy, you can do it right now. You can make a decision right now." And so the father and son stood under the streetlight of a London street and there Oswald Chambers gave his life to the Lord. He was definitely very clearly born again, and he was baptized soon after, just after his 16th birthday. 

Although his brothers didn't know what had happened, and what transpired under that streetlamp, they certainly noticed something very different. In Oswald Chambers, their little brother, there was a different intensity - he lived differently - and they saw that God was changing him very dramatically. 

Now Oswald had not forgotten about his art and his desire to become an artist, but his father was very against it - it wasn't practical - the idea of his son doing fine art - no, that wouldn't be good! Firstly, it's not a good career. Secondly, his father thought it was immoral, the idea of pursuing art. But Oswald, ever the artist, said to his father, "Art is God's gift to man to make life on this earth bearable. We must have art - art is for the glory of God. I know that my art is a gift, and I need to use it to serve the Lord." 

His father was not moved by this and organized an apprenticeship for Oswald to become an engraver. But unfortunately, just before the apprenticeship was to start, Oswald fell off a tram and he was injured and wasn't able to start the apprenticeship. And so it went by and he never was able to become an engraver. 

It was probably Oswald's mother, that swayed Clarence Chambers, and maybe persuaded him, but for some reason, by the beginning of the new school term, Oswald Chambers managed to be enrolled in the National Art Training School in London. His father had come around and agreed that maybe he needed to pursue art after all. 

Well Oswald was an excellent art student; he was incredibly good at pencil sketches and charcoal sketches. This is his portrait of Beethoven. He was so gifted that he easily won a scholarship and was selected to be a student that would travel through Europe learning the fine arts. And to his friends, great surprise, he turned down this huge scholarship. They thought, "What was that all about?" But he had seen other people earn these scholarships, and he'd seen other people travel through Europe pursuing art, and many of them had drifted away from the Lord, and many had really changed, and their values had shifted hugely. And so, Oswald didn't trust that he would be any different. He knew that he wanted to put God first, and so he turned down the scholarship, even though it would have meant that he would have been an incredible artist. Instead, he decided that he would enroll himself into a course at Edinburgh University. This was quite a painful decision for him, because during this time, and he was now about 21 years old, he already had fallen in love with a girl by the name of Chrissy. She was also a dedicated Christian and the two of them encouraged each other in the Lord. The idea of leaving London and going all the way back up to Scotland was a difficult one, but he thought it was the right thing to do. And Chrissy determined in her heart that she would wait for his return.

Now, the University of Edinburgh was a very good place for a budding artist to go. It was internationally renowned for the fine arts, and they had many professors from overseas. So being there was a good steppingstone into a very good career. Oswald threw himself into work. He really wanted to excel, not for his own benefit, but he wanted to use his art and his definite gift in drawing and art to glorify God. That was his aim. He became quite a reclusive kind of student, just focusing on the art, and it paid off - he earned a third prize medal in the Faculty of Fine Arts, he won several prizes for his essays and the various artworks that he did. This to him seemed to verify that God had called him to be an artist, an artist that would glorify Him. 

But things didn't stay that way. We know that there was one term in the following year where he was not able to pay the tuition - his family couldn't afford it - and so he had to drop out, simply because he couldn't afford it. Then he was selected for his portfolio of artwork to be sent to a very prestigious London magazine for publication. There was a lot of positivity about this - this would lead on to the next thing, and - but nothing came of that. Then he had this tiny feeling inside himself that perhaps he was meant to do something different. Maybe it wasn't art, after all. But he put that to the back of his mind. He wrote to Chrissy, "Oh, if, in the infinite goodness of God, he would permit me to be of use to his great cause of art, then how could I contain such honor?" But in his heart, he started thinking about becoming a minister. He knew this wasn't from himself, because the idea freaked him out. He did not want to become a minister. Then other people, random people, other Christians, started coming up to him and saying, "I feel that God is calling you into the ministry, to to become a minister." Oswald was quite baffled by all of this. He was so sure about his art, and the direction his life was taking, and suddenly he was starting to have these doubts. So many people had assured him that his calling was otherwise. He wrote in his diary, "I shall never go into the ministry, unless God takes me by the scruff of my neck and throws me in." 

One evening he was so in so much inner turmoil about this - he didn't know what direction his life was going to take - that he decided that he would climb up to a place called Arthur's Seat - a cliff that overlooks all of Edinburgh. And he climbed up there at sunset, and he said to God, "I am not leaving until I hear your answer." And so he walked through the crags and the mountain top there all night. And he prayed out loud, and said, "God, what is Your way with me? What do you want? Make Your way plain so I can see which direction You want me to go." And finally, just before dawn, he heard God answer. And God said to him, "I want you in My service. But I can do without you." 

When he went home, he found that morning amongst his post, a little flyer, which said, Dunoon Bible College, which is in a little town in Scotland, and he took that as something that had been delivered by God. So he wrote to the head of this college, a Rev Duncan McGregor, and he applied. But just after he written that letter, he again had doubts, even though he had heard God speak. It didn't really make a lot of sense to him, what he was doing. He still had doubts about whether he was doing the right thing. But just at that time, a man by the name of Hudson Taylor came to visit the University of Edinburgh to speak to the students. One line that he said amongst all his speeches, one line really stuck with Oswald. It was, "Have faith in the faithfulness of God, not in your own faithfulness." And those simple words made Oswald decide that, yes, maybe doing something that made no sense at all is the right thing to do, because it's the thing that God wants him to do. So he got a train ticket to Glasgow and then on to Dunoon, and he joined this Bible College. 

His friends and family thought he was crazy. He was leaving the University of Edinburgh and all the prospects that attendance at that University held with its international professors and so on. And he was leaving that to go to a little town in some far-flung place in Scotland, where there was one man who was teaching in a relatively unknown Bible college with about 30 students, all of whom probably would never even make it into university. He was going from the ocean to a tiny mud puddle. That's what people thought. And so everyone was thinking, "Are you really a sure? Are you absolutely sure, that this is what God wants you to do?" And he was. 

Duncan McGregor, the principal of this Bible college, was a very unusual man. He wasn't your typical principal, that's for sure. He started this Bible college because he saw the need to build men of faith and equip people with the skills to serve the Lord. That didn't mean intellectual theology and all that kind of stuff. He wanted to encourage people to live for the Lord, to be disciples. He had one interview question for all his students. And the question was, "When were you converted?" That was it. That was the prerequisite. You had to be born again. Nothing else mattered to Duncan McGregor.

This time in Dunoon was a very rich time of learning for Oswald Chambers. He loved the countryside. He would roam the hills with his Border Collie called Tweed, and he organized walks and he hiked. He studied very hard, and he learned a lot. But he really learned more from Duncan McGregor himself, the life of this man and the way he conducted himself. 

Duncan involved many other people in the college, and there was a particular man by the name of FB Meyer, who came to visit. FB Meter spoke to the students about the Holy Spirit, and he said to the students, "If you want to be effective in God's work, you must be filled with the Holy Spirit. If not, then everything you do is in vain." Oswald thought to himself, "That is what I want. I want to be effective in my work for the Lord." Already, he was starting to teach classes at this Bible College, and already he'd been asked to preach, and he wanted to be effective. He went into his bedroom, and he prayed, and he asked the Lord to fill him with the Holy Spirit. 

Well, this began one of the darkest times in Oswald Chambers' life because when he asked to be filled with the Holy Spirit, he felt nothing. Instead of feeling even closer to the Lord and having stronger communication with the Lord and communion with Him, He had less, and the Bible, which he knew should fill him with such joy, was boring and uninteresting. He didn't want to read it. He forced himself. And then he felt guilty that he was forcing himself to read God's word. Soon, he became so keenly aware of his own failings, his own sin, that he had no joy and no peace at all. He knew that he needed to lay many things on the altar and one of the things that he laid down before the Lord was his relationship with Chrissy. It was very, very painful for both of them. He had thought that he would marry Chrissy, but instead, he ended their relationship. He felt that that was something he needed to do. In addition, he also realized that he was still hanging onto his dream of becoming an artist, and he also decided that he needed to lay that down as well.

During this, he felt that perhaps now the Lord would be able to fill him with the Holy Spirit and he would be effective in his work. But that wasn't the case. He still felt as empty and dry and dull as anything. During this time he continued teaching - he even continued to preach whenever he was asked to. On the outside, not one person would have known what was going on inside of him. In fact, people used to praise him and look up to him as a young man of great example. He used to flinch, and he wrote to Chrissy and said, "I just want to run away", and sometimes he did run away. He would go up to the mountain of Ben Nevis - quite a treacherous summit - and he used to push himself to get to the top of that mountain. He used to start well before sunrise and try to get to the top by sunrise - this quite treacherous mountain - and he would physically push himself to the absolute limit and, in some way, he got some emotional release from that. 

In this dark period of depression, his work was still actually quite effective. But inwardly he was such a wreck, and it came to such a point that Duncan McGregor and his wife did know what was going on. Duncan looked out the window some nights and had seen Oswald pacing through the hills, obviously not being able to sleep. Duncan didn't know what to do for this young man, but he loved him unconditionally and prayed for him constantly. And Oswald wrote later that he might have ended up in an asylum had it not been for the love of that couple. He wrote another poem. This is one of the stanzas. 

Oh, Lord Jesus, hear my crying  
 For a consecrated life? 
 For I bite the dust in trying 
 For relief from this dark strife. 

This lasted some years, but finally Oswald Chambers read one verse. It was a verse he had read many times before. It was Luke, chapter 11 verse 13. "If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those to those who asked him." And suddenly, this clicked with Oswald Chambers. He realized that there was nothing more. He needed to have that childlike simplicity that he had over 20 years ago with those two guinea pigs. He needed that again, to reach out and realize that God was his Father, and that it was not that he needed to be in some way qualified or ready for the Holy Spirit to come. He simply needed to ask. 

So one day, in a prayer meeting, Oswald Chambers stood up in front of everybody and he confessed to everybody how empty and dry he'd been, how he had not wanted to read the Bible, how he had not wanted fellowship, how he instinctively wanted to run away from everything and everyone, and how he really needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And so, in front of everyone, he prayed again, and asked the Lord to fill him with the Holy Spirit. And after that, he felt nothing. He had no inward change, there was no change in his mood and the dark feeling that shrouded his life. 

Two days later, he was asked to preach as usual. And he preached, and 40 people were saved - 40 people came forward wanting to be saved and to know more of God, and Oswald ran, he ran away, and let those 40 people talk to others, to the other workers there. He was so scared. He thought, "I don't understand." And he went and spoke to Duncan McGregor about all of this, and McGregor said, "Well, didn't you ask for the Holy Spirit? You did. You asked. And you received the Holy Spirit. And He has worked." And suddenly Oswald's eyes were opened, because he realized that he had been waiting for some sort of power that came from him, from his own hand, and that he was looking for something essentially from himself. He realized that he had the Holy Spirit within him, and that was enabling his work to be fruitful, even though he himself didn't feel that it was coming from him. And with this simplicity, and this understanding, the chains fell off. The tyranny of his own sin fell away. It really was, as he wrote in his journals, a new beginning for Oswald Chambers. 

Duncan McGregor continued to be a wonderful example for Oswald and despite their 25 year age gap, they were very close friends, and Oswald learned a lot. On one occasion, there was a situation which alarmed Oswald a little bit. Duncan was known in the town as someone who really loved the children. A lot of the street kids used to come out and follow him around and give him hugs and things like that, and he would have time for all these street kids. One day, he was walking with Oswald and a little girl who came. She had head lice and she had matted hair, her face was covered in grime and her clothes were all tattered. She came and embraced Duncan. And then she stopped and put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a half-sucked lolly from deep inside her filthy pocket. Then with great sacrifice, she handed it to Duncan. Duncan took it with great thanks and put it in his mouth. And Oswald was thinking, "Please don't." But he could say that this man really understood the children and loved the children and was willing to do anything. 

During this time, DL Moody had been traveling through England, and had had a huge impact across the UK, including up in Scotland, where Chambers grew up. And so, after this time, there were many people who saw that there was a need. In England previously, there were many tiny denominations, but the denominations didn't come together at all. After Moody, because of his big meetings and many people being saved, there seemed a need to unite the churches a little more. 

There was a very famous barrister at this time by the name of Reader Harris, and he decided that he wanted to do something to unite the Christians across England. So he developed what was called the "League of Prayer", to try to get Christians, regardless of denomination, to come together and pray for the country, to pray for all these new converts that had come in over the past several years, and also to learn together and to forget the boundaries of denomination that existed at the time. Oswald Chambers started to be involved in this. It opened his world up from the little town of Dunoon, where he studied in his Bible College, now being involved in the League of Prayer. Suddenly, things opened up in a big way. He started traveling around, he was involved in preaching, he was involved in publishing things for the magazines and so on, and, of course, he met many people. 

On one particular Sunday lunch, he was invited to a home with a number of people, and there he met for the very first time a young lady by the name of Gertrude Hobbs. They noticed each other and saw each other from time to time, but neither of them would ever have guessed that in two years from that first meeting, they would be married.

Chambers met many people through the League of Prayer. He met a missionary by the name of Juji Nakada, who had worked in Japan and set up a very small Mission Society there, and the two became really good friends. They had nothing in common at all. Nakada was short and a little bit chubby, and Oswald was as tall and thin as a rake. They looked quite comic when they stood next to each other. But they had one thing, and that one thing was the experience of asking the Lord for the Holy Spirit. Juji Nakada had had a similar period in his life, and the two men had wonderful fellowship and became very firm friends. Oswald Chambers ended up following Nakada to Japan and working there for a while, preaching at various meetings, with Nakada translating. This also opened his eyes to idol worship and what was happening in other places around the globe. Oswald had never seen such spiritual hunger as he saw in Japan at that time.

But his time in Japan was very short - he soon returned to England, and he was again involved in the League of Prayer, preaching at meetings around the country. When he was in London, he would stay with his older brother. His nieces and nephews loved their uncle - he was very much a favorite. Little Irene used to particularly love when Uncle Oswald would come to stay. She would even sneak downstairs really early in the morning when she knew that Oswald would be at the kitchen table reading the Bible, and she would just sit with him and watch, and sometimes she would pretend to be reading or writing or doing whatever he was doing, just watching as he spent those morning hours. One day, he had promised that he would play with her after the meeting or that they would do something together, and so she was desperate for the meeting to be over. Finally, the meeting was over, and they were about to head out the door when an elderly lady came in and stopped Oswald Chambers and said, "Oh, Mr. Chambers. I feel I need to tell you all about myself." And Irene's face dropped. She thought, "Oh, no, that's at least going to take two hours." And so she stormed off and stood outside the door and waited, settling herself into a chair and thinking, "I wonder how long this can take." Two minutes later, Oswald emerged with the lady, and Irene ended up trotting home about two and a half minutes later with Oswald. And after the lady was some distance away, she said, "That was quick." And Oswald said, "Well, I simply asked her if she'd ever told God all about herself. And she said she hadn't. So, I told her to go home and tell God all about herself first. If only folks would go straight to headquarters." 

Working with the League of Prayer meant a lot of traveling, including traveling to America. These voyages were pretty much his rest days, his time to rest and recover. On one voyage, he happened to be on the same ship as none other than Gertrude Hobbs. Now Gertrude was quite an unusual lady herself. She was traveling to America, and she had a one-way ticket, $16 in her pocket and she was going to start a new life in the new country, America. 

Gertrude had quite an interesting upbringing, because she was a very sickly child, which meant she couldn't go to school a lot - she had to stay at home. She was quite intelligent, so she didn't just wile away the hours, she decided that she would teach herself shorthand - a shorthand code to make her the fastest note taker ever. She had one ambition; she was going to be the secretary to the Prime Minister of England. That was her ambition. She realized that there would be a lot of people who could do shorthand, and so she invented an even quicker code for herself, to make her faster than all the other secretaries that would be out there so that she would be selected to be the secretary for the Prime Minister of England. Her older sisters would read out articles at top speed, and she would write them down word for word. Then they would check it and cross check it for accuracy. She also practiced when people were speaking. She would take down notes, but she had the ability to hear what they were saying, and almost put it into the written language at the same time. By understanding the meaning and chunking it she was able to turn spoken language into written language very quickly. By the time she was old enough to get a job, she was able to write 250 words per minute, which is probably faster than any human can talk. She was very, very good. 

The time that they spent on this voyage together, those few weeks, kindled their love. They'd known each other in passing, but this was a time where they were able to talk to each other, and they started to write to each other. Oswald who was famous for his various nicknames. He called Duncan MacGregor, Grand Old Mac. So he couldn't call her Gertrude because his older sister was called Gertrude and that just wouldn't be right. So he started - it must have been in a letter - to call her Beloved Disciple. But that was a bit of a mouthful, so he shortened that to BD. And then that got turned into Biddy, and Biddy was the name that stuck with her for the rest of her life. 

When Biddy came back to London, they met up, and again, ever the artist, Oswald decided that he would propose to her in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. He wanted to be in front of Holman Hunt's famous painting, "The Light of the World" and there, in front of this great painting, in the middle of St. Paul's Cathedral, they pledged their love to each other.  Actually, they pledged their love to Christ first, and his work in a dark world. Together, they shared the same vision, "to spend and be spent", that was their line. Just a year later they were married - that was 1910. 

Now Oswald kept up a really hectic schedule - his involvement with the League and his work capacity was huge. He started a correspondence Bible course, and he was marking 3000 papers from students as they were being sent from all over the country. He also was preaching and teaching. And people said to him, "How do you do it? How on earth do you manage to keep going - every morning you wake up early, you spend time with the Lord. Sometimes you're all night doing something and you still wake up early? How do you do it?" Well, Oswald Chambers said very simply, "My advice is this. Get out of bed. Think about it later." 

Now, he and Biddy had no fixed plans. And in fact, after their honeymoon, during which Oswald was speaking at several speaking engagements, and doing a whole lot of other things, they returned to England on a boat, and they had no plans, no direction, no money, no house. You would think that this would be the topic of robust conversation during the week long voyage to England, but instead, they were really okay with it. Oswald and Biddy lived by, and used to say, "Trust God, and do the next thing." What duty lay next at hand, if it's to take a nap, take that nap. That's what they did. They trusted the Lord for the next thing, they didn't need to know everything. 

Oswald had always wanted to start his own Bible Training College. He was so inspired by Duncan McGregor in those years, and he saw the need to equip people for the ministry, whatever that happened to be, whether being missionaries or whatever it was, but he wanted people to be disciples. He saw that that was the most important thing. Theology had its place and was important, and he was the first to acknowledge that, but he wanted people to be on fire for the Lord. He knew that would make them effective. 

This desire came to be very quickly. Through the League of Prayer there was a group of donors, and they found a house. This house could have 25 people staying there, including Oswald and Biddy, and they would have day students. Soon Oswald was writing out lesson plans and outlines. He had an idea of teaching Biblical psychology and exegesis. He wanted to go through the Gospels, he wanted to do Theology. He even wanted to teach Bible memorization and to have classes for all the local Sunday School teachers as well. This all happened very quickly and soon it was open, and they had one enrollment. Unfortunately, when he came and he saw that he was the only enrollment, he left during the night, never to be seen again. But after that they got another enrollment, and they just had one enrollment for maybe a week. But then, soon enough, they were filled to capacity, and this Bible training college began being quite a hub of activity.

Biddy excelled in hospitality. She was incredible with her ability to run the house, do the accounts, and answer the letters. There was a time when she got two hours’ notice that a family of missionaries, a family of seven, had just arrived from the African bush and they needed a place to stay immediately and for an indefinite period of time. She was also told that the children had never been out of the African bush; they'd lived with a tribe. And so, when they arrived in London they would be quite shocked. So she scurried around and in two hours she had arranged bedrooms for them, had moved students around, had cooked a hot meal for the seven family members, found clothing for all the children - not the second hand type, the throwaway type, but really good, proper clothing so that they would feel cared for - and she'd even gone out and bought toys for each of them to put on their pillow. That was the person she was. She was always above and beyond, and her hospitality was incredible. She saw that everybody who walked through her door was a guest of the Almighty, and the Bible Training College really was a haven for many students. Other than for the teaching, the students knew that it was open 24/7. They could come for counseling at any time. 

There was one occasion when the housekeepers, a couple employed there to run the house, were stealing from Oswald and Biddy - just a few things, the odd bit of cutlery, the odd piece of crockery, a few bits of linen, the food supplies and the students soon found out. Well, one student did, and immediately informed Oswald and Biddy and said, "These guys are stealing from you, regularly skimming off the top". And then other students came and said, “They are stealing, they're actually taking the linen.” And Oswald said, "Yes, I know." He'd refused to speak to them. The students kept saying "They are still doing it, they are stealing every week, they're stealing from you." Oswald still didn't want to speak to this couple. Several weeks later, it must have been months they were stealing, the man came to Oswald's office. In tears he confessed, and he said, "I've been, I don't know what made me, but we've been stealing from you all this time, and I just want to ask your forgiveness." And Oswald thanked him and said, "Yes, I've known about it all along, but, you see, I wanted to wait until God spoke to you first." Well, this man was so shocked by this, that Oswald and Biddy had known about this stealing all that time. He was so shocked that they let him still live there and they cared for him all that time. It was enough - he gave his life to the Lord and so did his wife. 

The students were cared for so personally they felt like one big family. One off the highlights of the Bible Training College was the birth of Kathleen Chambers in 1913. She became the queen of the college. Little Kathleen was brought up in this environment. She was cooed over by numerous students, every burp was noticed and when she would cry and wail in the middle of a class, Oswald would stop and say, "My daughter, she sings!" She was definitely the queen. 

However, during the next few years, Biddy had now the role of mother, the role of running the house and teaching, and Oswald was so busy speaking and teaching, and he would have devotionals every day for his students to encourage them in the Lord. He wrote articles and lesson plans. One night he preached on obedience, stressing that we all know how to live and which way to walk. His text was simply, "Follow Me". He said, "What we need is to begin to walk in a way that actually we already know." And this was perhaps a very important sermon because the next morning, all the headlines announced Britain at war. This was the beginning of World War I and Britain was mobilizing its troops with great force, and there they were, in the middle of London, right in the middle of everything, with all the recruitment happening. 

Oswald himself wondered what he should do. He did feel the need to serve his country. But then he didn't know in what capacity he could do that. The news was always so grim. In those first few months it was horrendous. People initially signed up with great fervor and eagerness, and then suddenly, the news was of the death in the trenches in France. It was horrific - soon every single family in London had lost someone they knew personally. Some Christians believed that the war, which they appeared to be losing at this early stage, was God's judgment on them. But others, like Chambers, felt that that was not helpful. Instead, he felt an urgency "to live aggressively for Christ", as he wrote. 

Oswald was soon accepted to work as a chaplain in an organization called the YMCA. The YMCA in those days was a Christian organization, and he was posted to Egypt, to a place called Zeitoun. He was stationed there to work amongst the troops, and he accepted because Biddy and Kathleen, who was now just a little toddler, were able to join him because it wasn't very dangerous there. So, Oswald and his family exchanged the lush green fields of England and the Highlands of Scotland, for the burning sands of Egypt. 

In Egypt 60,000 soldiers were in these camps at any one time. In Cairo they had transformed schools and amusement parks into military hospitals. They needed so many hospitals because of all the campaigns around the area had been so terrible, and the losses so significant that they needed more and more hospitals. There were troops who came to do training before they were sent out on their next mission, some of them came because they had to wait before getting orders for the next mission that they were to be sent on. This was like a crossroads for soldiers from all across the British Commonwealth. But the soldiers who came were often shattered. Many of them during that time in Egypt turned to alcohol, drugs, anything. They lived as men without restraint - the things that they had seen in the war just completely broke some of these men. In Cairo, many of them turned to prostitution, became drunk and to the point where they were then unfit for service because they had pretty much drunk themselves silly. This was a huge problem. Even the generals were calling on the YMCA to try to do something because they were losing soldiers so rapidly, the soldiers were just so destroyed. 

When Oswald arrived, he saw that the YMCA had a tent, and the soldiers were able to come. They had prayer meetings and so on, but the leader said that actually, no one comes. Oswald looked around at the walls, and on the walls were huge placards that said, "No swearing", "No stealing" - it had a really negative feel. The guy who ran the place said, "We do a prayer meeting, but there's no point - nobody comes. We offer free letter writing papers, we have a canteen where they can buy snacks to raise morale." But the whole thing felt like a failure.

Oswald was so moved as he walked through these camps and saw the troops, countless 18 and 19-year-olds who were terrified, who were so scared that they couldn't bear even to think about the next mission that they were to be sent on.  On one night, he preached, or he did a talk on the topic, "What's the good of prayer." He moved amongst the soldiers as they were writing letters, and he noticed that most of them were Australians. They were writing almost desperately letters home. He found it almost unbearable to watch their faces as they wrote these letters, and then he found that these were the men that were going to be sent the next day to a place called Gallipoli. And rumor was that not many of them would return. 

While many would have found life in the desert camps of Egypt horrendous, Oswald saw this as a wonderful place. He loved the desert, and in his journals he would write about the incredible colors of the sunrise. He decided once he was there in Egypt that he would read Deuteronomy and Arabian Nights because the air would give new meaning to these words. He just loved everything about Egypt, the color, even the heat. Other people talked about the searing burning heat - he would talk about the vibrant energy from the sun, and he talked about the colors of the sand throughout the day. So nothing in any of his journals suggested that life in Egypt was anything other than a wonderful experience. 

The soldiers were so changed by him and Kathleen and Biddy, this little family. It wasn't because Oswald was in any way compromised or didn't insist on things. In fact, he did some quite drastic things. He decided that he wanted to have a prayer meeting, but he also wanted to close the canteen on Sunday so that people would focus on the Lord on that day. He urged the soldiers to make their peace with God while they could. He wanted them to face their mortality. But apart from all of this teaching and preaching, he won them by his life and his true love for them and his care for them. They were so changed that he started running Bible classes for the troops. People on the outside, with other YMCA's across Egypt, did not believe it. They thought it was a joke - the idea that the troops were attending Bible classes, not the bars and the brothels and all the other things that most of the soldiers were doing. People came to check it out, to see if this was actually the truth. And it was - Oswald had really changed these soldiers. 

But three-year-old Kathleen had her part to play as well. She was a very gregarious and alive little girl, and she wandered through the desert camps and made friends with all the soldiers, and the soldiers loved her. Many of them were fathers themselves who missed their children at home. And so they loved to read a bedtime story with her or just listen by her window as she said her prayers for the night with her mum - it was such a wonderful reminder of home. They would listen patiently when she showed them her pet rock or lizard, or whatever she'd found. She was constantly plied with gifts and snacks and pet rabbits and an Australian by the name of Peter Kay, a very rugged old man who was saved by Oswald Chambers, gave her a pet donkey. So she literally was riding around the camp, like a princess. Peter Kay also gave Oswald Chambers an Akubra (a hat), which he was often seen in. 

Oswald and Biddy went above and beyond for these troops. Oswald decided that he would offer the troops a free afternoon tea every single Sunday, and as the canteen was closed, this is what he would do instead. The YMCA said, "You're joking, you're going to do a free light lunch pretty much, for 700 troops at a time, every single Sunday! You're joking!" But Oswald was determined. And they said, "They'll start expecting all sorts of things, they'll take advantage of it." But Oswald was convinced, and so they ended up letting him do it. 

Well, this was a massive workload for Betty. She and another missionary by the name of Mary Riley,  and a couple of other ladies, put on these free teas for 700 troops. They tried to make things from home. They made cakes, they made egg sandwiches, all these things with reminders of home, and Biddy insisted on white tablecloths and fresh flowers on the table to make it special, so that these troops would feel like they were loved. The other thing was that at the first free tea the soldiers came expecting that they would have to stay for a very long meeting afterwards. But there was no meeting. It was just the free tea, and they were quite surprised. And Oswald said, "There's not going to be meeting - you came to eat not to listen to a sermon." "It's not a gospel trap", he would say. But there was a meeting later in the evening, and many of the soldiers starting to come to that. And then after that meeting, several soldiers wanted to hear more. Sometimes Oswald would take home after the evening meeting maybe another 10 or 12 people. and Biddy would put on a light supper for the extra 13 odd people who had walked through her door at 9pm. That was normal, that was the Sunday schedule, and that is how they lived. 

The two of them had very few private moments together. In all of this busyness, they had very little time. So sometimes Oswald would take the sleeping Kathleen and carry her, and the two of them would walk through the desert late at night, just so that they could talk and unburden themselves to each other. Both of them understood that their individual walk with the Lord was most important, and if each of them encourage each other in that, then their relationship would be okay. They trusted the Lord for that too. 

Kathleen recalls her mother spending three quarters of her life in the kitchen, and that probably was true. However, Kathleen didn't know that after being in the kitchen and clearing up then Biddy Chambers would sneak out and sit in the meeting, just as Oswald stood up to preach, and with her furious shorthand, she would take down every single word he said. That was her habit. She did that even at the Bible Training College, sitting there during a devotional, she would take down every single word he said. She just kept them in boxes. But here in Egypt, she would sometimes, perhaps once a month, type up one of the sermons and send it to the League of Prayer to be published in a magazine. People would write and say how helped they had been by reading Oswald Chambers writing, though it wasn't his writing buts his speaking that she had written out for the magazine. 

Whenever he had to go to another camp or visit somewhere else, he would often leave a little note under her pillow to encourage her, and whenever they could or had some spare money, Oswald would take them out to a restaurant or go for a walk through the pyramids of Egypt. So even though it was an incredibly busy time, they were never rushed. 

Oswald’s diaries speak of a man full of joy and vitality in the Lord's work. He was always talking about others - he recognized the huge burden on Biddy with the workload that she was under. But nothing in the diaries spoke of him. The photos did though. The photos spoke of a man who was not very well. He was drawn and tired, he had sunken cheeks - this was the reality of life in Egypt. Two years, the schedule, the weather - it was a very hard life. He was feeling some symptoms, but he refused to get help. At that time, there'd been a huge battle, and there were casualties pouring in, soldiers needing surgery and all sorts of things, and so he refused to take a bed. But he had such bad stomach pain one day that he was forced to see a doctor, but by then it was a little too late. His appendix had burst, and he had to go into immediate surgery. Biddy dropped everything and made plans to be there at the hospital to give him around the clock care. The soldiers were quite shocked at this, none of them had even known that he was feeling ill. So the soldiers - they called him the Officer in Charge (OC) - they organized to pray for OC, asking the Lord for His healing hand during this time. Well, he did recover from the operation, and Kathleen came the next day with an enormous bow in her hair to cheer him up. But she hardly recognized him, he was so weak and wasted. He fought on and he gradually improved under the care of Biddy. But then suddenly, without any warning, his lung started to bleed, and just before sunrise, on November the 15th, in 1917, Oswald Chambers died, aged 43. 

Biddy was in such shock; she didn't know what to do with herself. She was there at the hospital, and she just stumbled out the door and didn't even know where to go. This was so unexpected. She needed to send a telegram, she had to send a telegram to his family in England and his friends and the League of Prayer, and she hardly knew what to write. She simply wrote "Oswald, in His presence". 

Everybody was in a state of shock, the soldiers most of all - their "Officer in Charge" had been taken suddenly. They were determined to give him a full military burial. Biddy knew that this was their way of saying goodbye, so she didn't object. On that day of the funeral, people had so many questions. How could God allow this to happen? He was so fruitful. Why hadn't he gone to the doctor earlier? Surely this was preventable. Why hadn't he gotten treatment? Why hasn't the Lord healed him? What would happen to his family? So many questions. 

Biddy herself didn't know what to do. There she was, in Egypt, in a military camp with a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, so far from family and friends, with so much to do. How on earth could she continue this alone? What was she meant to do? During a moment of quiet, she remembered a verse that Oswald had said, one of his last words. He had said, "Greater works than these shall he do, because I go to My Father." And suddenly, she felt that God spoke that verse to her. She didn't know what it meant, but she felt it was a promise. She didn't really understand, but it did comfort her, and during that time, when he was in hospital, she had written out verses because she was sure that he was going to recover. Surely, God would heal him and enable him to recover. She had written down verses that she felt were promises that he would recover. Now she went back and looked at those verses, and those verses encouraged her in a different way. The Lord opened her eyes to Scripture in a new way so that she was able to read things that she previously had not fully understood. 

The war was soon over in 1918, and so these military camps closed, and Biddy left Egypt with Kathleen and traveled the long road back to England. Kathleen had hardly any memories of England, and when they arrived, she was shocked by the color. She almost couldn't bear it; it was so green. She had not seen that amount of green before. Coming back to England was a very big culture shock for the six-year-old Kathleen, and she found it very difficult. She had been used to running through the desert camps, and with her father, riding a donkey whenever she wanted, playing with lizards, and screaming and shouting and playing rough and tumble with all the soldiers who plied her with snacks. Now she was stuck in her grandmother's London unit, she had nowhere to run. And her grandmother had so many things, but she wasn't to touch any of them. This was a very strange concept to Kathleen who was able to touch everything that she had in Egypt. So it was very hard for her to keep her voice down, to learn not to run everywhere and wave her arms about. It was very difficult. Biddy soon realized that Kathleen had been stealing from the local grocery shop downstairs, because that's what she was used to when they were in Zeitoun in Egypt. In the canteen she was Kathleen Chambers, and she could take whatever, and the soldiers even gave things to her - she didn't need to pay. She was doing that to the local grocery store until Biddy realized and set up a tab, and every month she would get a bill from the grocery store until Kathleen understood the way things were in this new culture she had arrived in. 

Biddy at this time had an idea. Her idea was that she would do something with those boxes of shorthand notes. She had so much of Oswald's speaking, and she knew that the publication's he had done previously were so encouraging for people. She had an idea - it would be a massive task - but she wanted to create a book that compiled 365 snippets of Oswald's preaching. To do that, she would have to go through his sermons and pick out paragraphs and pick out the sentences on a particular theme, that in a concise way would bring across a message that might have been preached in perhaps an hour. She knew it was a huge task. And she also knew that she would have to self-publish this. She was also still the mother of a very lively 11-year-old daughter at that time, and she had to support herself. She ran a boarding house. She was doing that and caring for her daughter. But amazingly, after three years, she had compiled her 365 different readings. Nowhere in the book did she ever mention her name. She wrote a tiny little forward, just a little thing, at the beginning and she just signed it, BC. Her sole aim was to be the channel through which Oswald's words would be conveyed to the world. But what would the title be? How could you sum it up? Well, for Biddy Chambers, that was the easy part, because this was something that Oswald had not only said many times but had lived by. He had said, "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."