Week 1: Introduction — "My Utmost for His Highest"

1.The title *My Utmost for His Highest* sets a high bar from the very first word. In your own words, what do you think Chambers means by "utmost"? What would it actually look like to give your utmost to God in the season of life you are in right now?

2.Chambers's wife Biddy compiled this book from lecture notes and shorthand transcripts after Oswald died unexpectedly at age 43. Knowing this, how does it change the way you approach the meditations — as polished essays, or as something more like urgent, personal exhortations?

3.Chambers often distinguishes between being a Christian and being a *disciple* — between conversion and consecration. How would you describe the difference in your own words? Where do you think you currently fall on that spectrum?

4.One of Chambers's most consistent targets is what he calls "the servant's vision" — the tendency to define our Christian life by what we *do* for God rather than by who we *are* before God. Where do you see this tendency in yourself or in Christian culture around you?

5.Chambers was deeply shaped by the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition and its emphasis on "entire sanctification" — the idea that God wants not just our sins forgiven but our whole self transformed and surrendered. Does this idea excite you, frighten you, or both? Why?

6.Read Romans 12:1 slowly. Chambers insists that being a "living sacrifice" is paradoxically harder than being a martyr, because a living sacrifice keeps crawling off the altar. Do you find that to be true in your experience? What tends to pull you off the altar?

7.What personal hopes or fears do you bring to this study? What is one specific area of your relationship with God where you most want to grow over these thirteen weeks?

8.Chambers wrote to be read slowly and revisited. If you have read *My Utmost* before, what has stayed with you? If this is your first time, what has surprised you so far about Chambers's voice or approach?