1989 May/June issue Part 3

Letter to a Missionary

When my father and mother were newly married they sailed to Belgium where they were to work with the Belgian Gospel Mission. They were twenty-four and twenty-three. Recently my brother Jim Howard unearthed a letter to them by an older missionary of the china Inland Mission dated July 21, 1922. It spoke to me freshly and powerfully when I received it yesterday, so I give it to you;

1987 March/April issue Part 1

My Life for Yours

Ten years ago a young Canadian woman sat in the assembly hall at the University of Illinois in Urbana, along with 17,000 other students attending Inter-Varsity's missionary convention. She thrilled to the singing of the great hymns, led by Bernie Smith. She heard the speakers, "and I remember the incredible excitement and desire to know and serve God that I experienced at that time. Now I have walked through some deep waters, and I feel compelled to write to you," her letter to me said. She had

read two of my books just before the convention, and I happened to be among the speakers. Another was Helen Roseveare, author of Give Me This Mountain and other books. Barbara was especially moved by the thought of the cost of declaring God's glory. Her letter told me this story:

Three years after Urbana she married Gerry Fuller, "a wonderful man who demonstrated zeal for Christ, a passion for souls, a beautiful compassion for hurting, broken people who needed to know the healing love of Jesus Christ." Following seminary and student pastorates, he became a prison chaplain and an inner-city missionary. Then he married Barbara and together they worked in Saint John, New Brunswick, with street kids, ex-convicts, and glue-sniffers.

  The time came when Barbara saw Gerry seeking the Lord with such great intensity it made her question her own commitment to Christ. Was she prepared to die to self as he was? What was it that drove him to pray as he did-at least once until four in the morning? Was her own love for the Lord as deep as his, or was it perhaps shadowed by her love for her husband?

1986 January/February issue Part 5

The Spirit of Renunciation

Francois Coillard, missionary of the Zambesi, wrote, "When we see missionary festivals so run after-when we hear these stirring hymns, these sublime and moving protestations of our compassion for the perishing Heathen, and of our entire devotion to Him whom we acknowledge as King, should we not expect to see a whole crusade on the march for the conquest of the world, singing'Onward, Christian Soldiers? One might suppose that, all we have and all we hope for had been laid on the altar, waiting for nothing but the fire from heaven. And, in reality, what have we done? What have we given? What have we sacrificed? Where does this spirit of renunciation show itself in the details of daily life? What discipline are we willing to submit to? What ease, what luxuries have we denied ourselves? "Have we not indeed often grudged to God's service what we could spare? And alas even this half-hearted zeal soon evaporates. The fit of spasmodic devotion once over, we take back from God what we had professed to give Him; we return to the idols of our hearts, refuse His claims, and leave the Heathen to perish without compunction." (Quoted by Amy Carmichael in a private letter, May 2, 1899)

1985 November/December issue Part 2

Moonless Seas

Some of you are perhaps feeling that you are voyaging just now on a moonless sea. Uncertainty surrounds you. There seem to be no signs to follow. Perhaps you feel about to be engulfed by loneliness. There is no one to whom you can speak of your need. Amy Carmichael wrote of such a feeling when, as a missionary of twenty-six, she had to leave Japan because of health, went to China for recuperation, but soon thought God

1985 July/August issue Part 1

But Also to Suffer

Amy Carmichael once spent a day in solitude in a cave in Japan, wrestling in prayer over some secret matter which she never fully revealed to anyone. It seems she feared loneliness. The words which were given to her then in answer to her cry were Paul's to the Philippians when he was in prison and they were being persecuted: "Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake" (Phil 1:29 AV). She understood then that the Lord was not promising escape from the thing she feared, but assurance that whatever He might allow of suffering in her life would be a privilege and a gift-a thing given to her to give to Him, something which she could expect would accompany her faith.

1985 May/June issue Part 3

My Spiritual Mother

Katherine Morgan has been a missionary in Pasto, Colombia, for fifty years. She has been a friend of mine for thirty-four of those years and has done for me what Paul said Onesiphorus did for him: refreshed me often. Katherine's husband died when they had been married only six years, but she carried on their missionary work and reared their four little girls. To Katherine I owe more than I can ever tell. She more or less booted me to Ecuador. I was a missionary candidate without a field, didn't know quite how to find one, talked to her, and within months found myself in Quito. She had had me in her home many weekends, giving me previews of coming attractions-what not to expect from "supporters," what to expect from them, what to expect from Ecuadorians and from jungle Indians, what to take (a sense of humor, for one thing), what not to take (a sense of smell, a trunkful of inhibitions and Plymouth Brethren prejudices, an inflated idea of my own importance, and the notion that people are longing to hear the gospel).

1985 January/February issue Part 1

Our Share of Suffering

Most of us know next to nothing about real persecution or what it's like to be in chains. When Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians, they were being severely persecuted, and he himself was actually chained between two guards in a Roman prison, somewhere between 61 and 63 A.D. Even though we may not know the first thing about that kind of suffering, what the apostle has to say about the subject applies to oar- kind, too, whatever it may be. For, you see, we have been given two gifts: the privilege of believing in Christ, and (here's that mystery again the privilege of suffering. Amy Carmichael, missionary to India, told of how God had

1983 November/December issue Part 2

What if my wife doesn't feel called?

This question is often asked by men who are preparing to be ministers or missionaries. I've never heard it asked by anyone who was headed for the insurance business, medicine, or an airline pilot's career. The ministry and the mission field are the ones to which people somehow believe there has to be a special call, separate and distinct from all other vocations, requiring a spiritual revelation of some kind for the wife as well as for the husband. And if she hasn't got it, there's nothing he can do about it except change his plans.