1989 September/October issue Part 1

The Solace

Kathleen R. Lewis

I am waiting, Lord, on Thee,

Show me what you want from me.

I am resting; Thou art doing.

I am listening; Thou are wooing.

In the beauty of Thy will,

Draw me close, my being still.

I am trusting, Lord, in Thee,

Show me the path I cannot see.

I am foll'wing; Thou art leading.

I am hung'ring; Thou art feeding.

While I yield, though through my tears,

Pour Your comfort, calm my fears.

I am resting, Lord, in Thee,

Keep my eyes on Calvary.

I am praying; Thou art giving.

I am dying; Thou are living.

Not my will, but Thine instead,

Pured-out wine, and broken bread.

1989 March/April issue Part 3

There Are No Accidents

   My friend Judy Squire of Portola Valley, California, is one of the most cheerful and radiant woman I know. I met her first in prayer meeting at the beginning of a conference. She was sitting in a wheel chair and I noticed something funny about her legs. Later that day I saw her with no legs at all. In the evening she was walking around with crutches. Of course I had to ask her some questions. She was born with no legs, she had artificial ones which she used sometimes, but they were tiresome, she said (laughing) and she often left them behind. When I heard of a little baby boy named Brandon Scott, born without arms or legs, I asked if she would write to his parents, she did;

   “The first thing I would say is that all that this entails is at least one hundred times harder on the parents than the child. A birth defect by God’s grace does not rob childhood from its wonder, nor is a child burdened by high expectations. Given a supportive, creative, and loving family, I know that I enjoyed not a less-than-average life nor an average life, but as I’ve told many, my life has not been ordinary but extraordinary.

   “I am convinced without a doubt that a loving Heavenly Father oversees the creative miracles in the inner sanctum of each mother’s womb (Psalm 139), and that in His sovereignty there are no accidents.

   “’What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Creator calls a butterfly.’ As humanity we see only the imperfect, underside of God’s tapestry of our lives. What we judge to be ‘tragic- the most dreaded thing that could happen,’ I expect we’ll one day see as the awesome reason for the beauty and uniqueness of our life and our family. I think that’s why James 1:2 is a favourite verse of mine. Phillips translation put it this way: ‘When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders but welcome them as friends. ‘

1989 January/February issue Part 5

God's Curriculum

"I, Thy servant, will study Thy statutes. / Thy instruction is my continual delight; / I turn to is for counsel. / I will run the course set out in Thy commandments, / For they gladden my heart" (Psalm 119:23, 24, 32; NEB).

One day recently something lit a fuse of anger in someone who then burned me with hot words. I felt sure i didn't deserve this response, but when i ran to God about it, He reminded me of part of a prayer I’d been using lately: “Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that your will governs all.”

  Where could that kind of peace come from? Only from God, who gives “not as the world gives.”

  His will that I should be burnt? Not exactly, but His will governs all. In a wrong-filled world we suffer (and cause) many a wrong. God is there to heal and comfort and forgive. He who brought blessing to many out of the sin of the jealous brothers of Joseph means this hurt for my ultimate blessing and, I think, for an increase of love between me and the one who hurt me. Love is very patient, very kind. Love never seeks its own. Love looks to God for His grace to help.

  “It was not you who sent me here but God,” Joseph said to his brothers. “You meant to do me harm; but God meant to bring good out of it” (Genesis 45:8, 50:20; NEB).

  There is a philosophy of secular education which holds that the student ought to be allowed to assemble his own curriculum according to his own preferences. Few students have a strong basis for making these choices, not knowing how little they know. Ideas of what they need to learn are not only greatly limited but greatly distorted. What they need is help- from those who know more than they do.

  Mercifully God does not allow us to choose our own curriculum. His wisdom is perfect, His knowledge braces not only all worlds but the individual hearts and minds of each of His loved children. With intimate understanding of our deepest needs and individual capacities, He chooses our curriculum. We need only ask, “Give us this day our daily bread, our daily lesson, our homework.” An angry retort from someone may be just the occasion we need in which to learn not only longsuffering and forgiveness, but meekness and gentleness, fruits not borne in us but borne by the Holy Spirit. As Amy Carmichael wrote, “A cup brimful of sweetness cannot spill even one drop of bitter water no matter how suddenly jarred.”

  God’s curriculum for all who sincerely want to know Him and do His will will always include lessons we wish we could skip. But the more we apply ourselves, the more honestly we can say what the psalmist said, “I, Thy servant, will study Thy statutes. / Thy instruction is my continual delight; / I turn to it for counsel. / I will run the course set out in Thy commandments, / for they gladden my heart” (Psalm119:23, 24, 32; NEB).

1988 March/April issue Part 3

The Ultimate Contradiction- Part 2

When we learned recently from dear friends that they had lost their baby, this is what I wrote to them (I’ve been asked to print it here for others who are bereaved);

“Your little note was waiting for us when we returned yesterday from Canada. How our hearts went running to you, weeping with you, wishing we could see your faces and tell you our sympathies. Yet it is ‘no strange thing’ that has happened to you, as Peter said in his epistle (1 Peter 4:12)- it gives you a share in Christ’s suffering. To me this is one of the deepest but most comforting of all the mysteries of suffering. Not only does He enter into grief in the fullest understanding, suffer with us and for us, but in the very depths of sorrow he allows us, in His mercy, to enter into His, give us a share, permits us the high privilege of ‘filling up’ that which is lacking (Colossians 1:24) in His won. He makes, in other words, something redemptive out of our broken hearts if those hearts are offered up to Him. We are told that He will never despise a broken heart. It is an acceptable sacrifice when offered wholly to Him for His transfiguration. Oh, there is so much for us to learn here, but it will not be learned in a day or week. Level after level must be plumbed as we walk with the Shepherd, and He will do His purifying, purging, forging, shaping work in us, that we may be shaped to the image of Christ Himself. Such shaping takes a hammer, a chisel, and a file- painful tools, a painful process.

Your dear tiny Laura is in the Shepherd’s arms. She will never have to suffer. She knew only the heaven of the womb (the safest place in all the world- apart from the practice of abortion) and now she knows the perfect heaven of God’s presence. I’m sure that your prayer for both your children has been that God would fulfil His purpose in them. It is the highest and best we can ask for our beloved children. He has already answered that prayer for Laura.

1988 January/February issue Part 2

Why is God doing this to me?

An article appeared in the National Geographic fourteen years ago which has affected my thinking ever since. "The Incredible Universe," by Jenneth F. Weaver and James P. Blair, included this pargraph:

  "How can the human mind deal with the knoweledge that the farthest object we can see in the universe is perhaps ten billion light years away? Imagine that the thickness of this page represents the distance from the earth to the sun (93,000,000 miles, or about eight light minutes). Then the distance to the nearest star (4-1/3 light years) is a 310-mile stack, while the edge of the known universe is not reached until the pile of paper is 31,000,000 miles high, a third of the way to the sun."

  Thirty-one million miles. That's a very big stack of paper. By the time i get to the thirty-one-and-a-half million i'm lost- aren't you? I read somewhere that our galaxy is one (only one) of perhaps ten billion.

1986 November/December issue Part 1

The Mother of the Lord

We see her first, that little Mary (may I say little? I think she was a teenager), as a simple village girl in a poor home in an out-of-the-way place. She is bending over her work when suddenly the light changes. She raises her eyes. A dazzling stranger stands before her with a puzzling greeting. He calls her "most favored one" and tells her the Lord is with her. She is stunned. I don't believe her thought is of herself (Who am I? or Am I ever lucky!) Mary is troubled. She discerns at once that this has to do with things infinitely larger than herself, far beyond her understanding. What can it mean?

  The angel does not weigh in immediately with the stupendous message he has been sent to deliver. He first comforts her. "Don't be afraid, Mary." Mary. She is not a stranger to him. He is assuring her that he has the right person. He explains what she has been chosen for-to be the mother of the Son of the Most High, a king whose reign will be forever. She has one question now-not about the Most High, not about an eternal king-those are things too high for her-but motherhood is another matter. She understands motherhood, has been looking forward to it with great happiness. Her question is about that: "How can this be? I am still a virgin." He does not really explain. He simply states a mystery: "The power of the Most High will overshadow you." He goes on to tell her of another miraculous pregnancy, that of her old cousin Elisabeth, well past child-bearing age. "God's promises can never fail," he says. They won't fail for you, Mary. Rest assured.

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 September/October issue Part 1

How to Discover What God Wants

A young woman came in great perplexity to a Scottish preacher, asking how she could resolve the question of her own desires when they seemed to be in such contradiction to the will of God. He took out a slip of paper, wrote two words on it, handed it to her with the request that she sit down for ten minutes, ponder the words, cross out one of them, and bring the slip back to him.

1985 May/June issue Part 5

Four Ways God
Answers Prayer

1. No, that's not the best for you.
2. No, not yet.
3. Yes, I thought you'd never ask.
4. Yes, and there is much more.

(from Linda Schuck, Phoenix)

1985 March/April issue Part 2

Indecision

It is painfully obvious that young people today have an awful time making up their minds about anything. They're not "really sure" what college to go to, what to major in, whom to room with, what career to prepare for, whether or whom to marry, whether to bother with children if they do marry, when to bother with them, what to do with them if they get them, whether to attempt to instill any "values" in their children (not to make up your mind on this issue is, of course, already to have instilled a value in the mind of the child).

1984 May/June issue Part 5

Ever Been Bitter?

Sometimes I've said, "0 Lord, you wouldn't do this to me, would you? How could you Lord?" I can recall such times later on, and realize that my perspective was skewed. A scripture passage which helps me rectify it is Isaiah 45: "Will the pot contend with the potter, or the earthenware with the hand that shapes it? Will the clay ask the potter what he is making? ... Thus says the Lord, would you dare question me concerning my children, or instruct me in my handiwork? I alone, I made the earth and created man upon it." He knows exactly what He is doing. I am clay. The word humble comes from the root word humus, earth, clay. Let me remember that when I question God's dealings. I don't understand Him, but then I'm not asked to understand, only to trust. Bitterness dissolves when I remember the kind of love with which He has loved me-He gave Himself for me. He gave Himself for me. He gave Himself for me. Whatever He is doing now, therefore, is not cause for bitterness. It has to be designed for good, because he loved me and gave Himself for me.

1984 May/June issue Part 4

Questions and Answers

Considering the fact that you worked with In-
dians in the jungles of Ecuador and now live in an
academic community in Massachusetts, you ob-
viously have experienced many changes. What
things should one keep in mind when facing
change?

Circumstances make no difference at all to:
     1. Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday,

today and forever

2. His power, always available through prayer

3. His purpose for me-that I reflect His image,

live for his glory

4. My job-to love Him and make Him loved
    Paul wrote, "I have learned to find resources in
myself whatever my circumstances. I know what
it is to be brought low, and I know what it is to
have plenty. I have been very thoroughly ini-
tiated into the human lot with all its ups and
downs-fullness and hunger, plenty and want. I
have strength for anything through Him who
gives me power." (Phil. 4:11-13, New English Bible)

I have found, too, that when the Lord opens a
new door, He closes the one behind. I must leave
it closed, forget what is behind, press on toward
the goal, "the prize of the high calling of God."
Those who refuse to let go of the past stultify

present opportunities, and stunt spiritual growth.

The rules Andrew Murray made for himself 

have helped me:

1. He brought me here, it is by His will I am in 

this strait place: in that fact I will rest.

2. He will keep me here in His love, and give me

 grace to behave as His child.

3. He will make the trial a blessing, teaching
me the lessons He intends for me to learn, and
working in me the grace He means to bestow.

4. In His good time he can bring me out again-

how and when He knows. Let me say I am here:

1) by God's appointment

2) in His keeping

3) under his training

4) for His time.

1983 November/December issue Part 6

My Vow.

Whatsoever Thou sayest unto me, by thy grace I will do it.

 

 

My Constraint.

Thy love, O Christ, my Lord.

 

 

My Confidence.

Thou are able to keep that which I have committed unto Thee.

 

 

My Joy.

To do Thy will, O God.

 

 

My Discipline.

That which I would not choose, but which Thy love appoints.

 

 

My Prayer.

Conform my will to Thine.

 

 

My Portion.

The Lord is my portion of inheritance.

Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee more faithfully; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will, O Lord our God.

(From Gold Cord by Amy Carmichael, 1867-1957, founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship of South India.)