My Utmost for His Highest

My Utmost for His Highest is structured as a daily devotional, with 366 entries, one for each day of the year. Each entry is short, usually less than 400 words, based on a single scripture verse, and written with a directness that most devotional literature deliberately avoids. Chambers was not trying to encourage you. He was trying to clarify your thinking and, where necessary, challenge your assumptions.

The entries were assembled by his wife Biddy from transcripts of his talks and lectures, delivered primarily at Bible Training College in London between 1911 and 1915. She had attended every session with a shorthand notebook. After his death in Egypt in 1917 she spent years organising the material and preparing it for publication. The book appeared in 1927.

What distinguishes My Utmost from other devotionals is its refusal to offer comfort as a primary product. Chambers believed that a Christianity focused on feeling better was a distorted Christianity. His entries regularly challenge readers to examine whether their spiritual life is built on genuine encounter with God or on the emotional residue of past experiences. The distinction matters, he argued, because the residue fades and you need to know what is underneath.

Some of his most quoted passages deal with the relationship between circumstances and faith. He argued that God engineers circumstances, not to punish or reward but to develop. The discomfort you are in, his writing suggests, is more likely purposeful than accidental. Whether readers find this encouraging or disturbing tends to depend on their circumstances at the time of reading.

The book has sold millions of copies and has been in continuous print since 1927. It was for many years the bestselling devotional in the American market. It is the kind of book people return to for decades, finding different entries relevant at different points. Chambers did not live to see any of this. His wife did. She outlived him by 49 years.