Jeffery David Dean

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Utmost and Highest

Don’t be clever; do be careful. Don’t be controversial; do be consecrated. Don’t be conceited; do be concentrated. Never choose a text, let the text choose you….When a text has chosen you, the Holy Spirit will impress you with its inner meaning and cause you to labor to lead out that meaning for your congregation.” (1) With words such as these, Oswald Chambers instructed students at his Bible Training College, and, while the implorations may seem unremarkable for a twentieth-century Holiness preacher, the story of how the words came to be spoken and to be published is remarkable, indeed. If ever a story embodied the ideals of Holiness Christianity, that life most certainly was Oswald Chambers’.