I’m reading Oswald Chamber’s “Biblical Psychology”, a book I read perhaps 25 years ago with little understanding then. It is a compilation of his lectures and is not an easy book to read. However I have found it easier this time around – so much of what he says rings true in my experience. Here are few excerpts expressing things that I have found to be true:

On humility (chapter 15, section 2 (b)):

“What is a little child? We all know what a child is until we are asked, and then we find we do not know. We can mention his extra goodness or his extra badness, but none of this is the child himself. We know implicitly what a child is, and we know implicitly what Jesus Christ means, but as soon as we try to put it into words it escapes.”

On the heart, memory and thinking (chapter 11, section 2 (e) and (f)):

“The brain is not a spiritual thing, the brain is a physical thing. Memory is a spiritual thing and exists in the heart; the brain recalls more or less clearly what the heart remembers. In our Lord’s parable (see Luke 16:25) when Abraham said to the rich man, “Son, remember,” He was not referring to a man with a physical brain in this order of things at all….. We never forget save by the sovereign grace of God; the problem is that we do not recall easily. Recalling depends on the state of our physical brain and when people say they have a bad memory, they mean that they have a bad power of recalling.”

“Thinking takes place in the heart not in the brain. … The expression of thinking is referred to the brain and the lips because through these organs thinking becomes articulate… We may take it as a general rule that Jesus Christ never answers any questions that spring from a man’s head, because the questions which spring from our brains are always borrowed from some book we have read, or from someone we have heard speak; but the questions that spring from our hearts, the real problems that vex us, Jesus Christ answers those.”

And my favourite so far (chapter 15, section 2(b)):

“the Holy Ghost is the only Lover of God, and immediately He comes in, He will make our hearts the centre of love for God, the centre of personal, passionate, over-whelming devotion to Jesus Christ…..until we become incandescent with the very love of God. “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 21). That does not mean keep on trying to love God, it means something infinitely profounder, i.e., ‘Keep the windows of the your soul open to the fact that God loves you’; then His love will continually flow through you to others.”