1984 September/October issue Part 2

Reprove, Correct, Exhort

A woman in West Virginia writes of a pastor who has decided that it is an infringement of people's "rights" to call things sin. Within the Body of Christ, he says, there must be no judging of one another. Hence he has given the church's approval to a man who deserts his wife and children. The pastor says the man's "gut feelings" may be the voice of God. Who takes responsibility nowadays to reprove, exhort, and correct Christians who are acting irresponsibly? Whose business is it to inquire into private lives when it becomes known that Christians are not "walking worthy of the Lord" and thereby are causing others to stumble? Who will submit to questioning or follow godly counsel? We shudder to think of being"cross-examined," "judged," called to account for what we say is nobody's business but our own. Am I suggesting some sort of police

1984 September/October issue Part 1

The World Must Be Shown

When Jesus was speaking with His disciples before His crucifixion, He gave them His parting gift: peace such as the world can never give. But He went on immediately to say, "Set your troubled hearts at rest and banish your fears.... I shall not talk much longer with you, for the Prince of this world approaches. He has no rights over me, but the world must be shown that I love the Father and do exactly as He commands." (Jn 14:27, 30-31, NEB) A few weeks ago a young mother called to ask for "something that will help me to trust in the Lord." She explained that she has several small children, she herself is thirty years old, and she has cancer.

1984 July/August issue Part 7

Questions and Answers

Can you share some ideas to help us learn how to teach obedience to our children?

Here are some which my parents used on the six of us, and which I found effective in teaching my only child:
1. Establish trust. Never make an empty threat or an empty promise. Carry through. Love is very patient, very kind, and very inexorable.

2. Speak in a normal tone of voice, and speak once. (Be sure you have the child's attention first-look straight at him, let him know he has your attention.) If you repeat every command two or three times, you are teaching him that he needn't listen the first time.

3. Obey the Bible and use ;1 rod for correction (See Prov 13:24;20:30;23:13) If you start this soon enough (a small switch for a small child) you'll not need to use it often.

4. Following punishment, repentance, and the resultant obedience, assure the child of your love. Never argue with him. Explanations should follow, not precede the command when dealing with a small child. Training, as my mother used to say, comes before teaching.

1984 July/August issue Part 6

Recommended Reading

Herbert Schlossberg: Idols for Destruction, Thomas Nelson. A stunning treatment of the ways in which idolatry corrupts the modern Christian's thinking. Secularization connotes a turning away from Christian faith, but Scholoss- berg clearly shows what it is that we turn to as substitutes for God: nature, mankind, power, history, social or political systems. In his chapter, "Idols of Humanity," he writes: "In its refusal to acknowledge will and responsibility in those over whom it establishes its protection, humanitar-

ianism could be speaking of cocker spaniels or Chevrolets rather than people.

"This view of humanity is a twisted and deformed travesty. It is ironic that for human- itarians only poor people, minorities, and those who have run afoul of the law are assumed to be shaped by the iron grip of circumstance. If we look at the villains-the police, politicians, social workers, businessmen-instead of at the victims, we find that the humanitarians have given them free will. They do not speak about the industrial- ist's tyrannical father, the loan shark's miserable childhood in an orphan home, the politician's neurotic mother. Those people are responsible for their acts, and therefore are human. Humanism thus awards its enemies the status of human beings while taking that status from its wards." (p.83)

1984 July/August issue Part 5

A New Grandchild

In the March/April Newsletter I asked for prayer for Valerie, for a safe delivery and a

healthy child. Both requests were granted, as well as another: older brother Walter, who is seven, had been asking the Lord for a brother if that was all right with Him (two sisters were enough for a while. James Elliot Shepard was born on April 18

in Laurel, Mississippi, weighing nine pounds ten,

ounces. Elisabeth, who is nearly five, said "Yip-
pee!" I don't know what Christiana said. She is
two, and has a way of filling in the blanks
between the words she can say with "hm-hm" as
in, "Mama, Lolly hm-hm my teddy-bear." (Lolly

seems to be the best she can do to say Elisabeth. Nobody knows where she got that.)

For little James (I think he'll be Jimmy as was his grandfather until he reached high school) I pray the prayer of Jacob for his son Joseph, "By the power of the Strong One of Jacob, by the name of the Shepherd of Israel, by the God of your father- so may he help you, by God Almighty-so may he bless you with the blessings of heaven above." (Gn 49:24,25). Letters "The Newsletter has more solid content per word than any other subscription publication we receive. I hope it will not be discontinued." (from a reader in Maryland). The mother of a baby who may have Down's Syndrome writes: "We will receive the results of her chromosome study on Thursday at 10 A.M. Should God bring your minds to our need, please pray for us to respond in faith, not bitterness. Nothing will change that day. God will reveal the reality of His limits, but our destiny will remain the same: to be like Him. ]. Peter 1:23 says,'For we are not just mortals but sons of God; the live, permanent Word of our living God has given us His own indestructible heredity.' We love Him and are committed to receive what He has for us. We have so much to be grateful for to Him!"

1984 July/August issue Part 4

An Unaborted Gift

An African Christian wrote a friend in the 1-1 U.S.: "We have six children. We had agreed to stop having other children. We even started family planning after the last born, but (and a big 'but') we found out that C. was pregnant. I don't know what really happened. My wife and I started crying because we did not know what to do. We have been asking God and telling Him that six children were enough for us. However we were later comforted by God Himself because He said that He will never leave us and will protect us with the young ones. I therefore ask you to pray for us. C. is expecting the child in about three months.

1984 July/August issue Part 3

Lord of All Seasons

Last April I spoke to a group of women in

Florida about Jesus Christ being "Lord of All Seasons." The topic was their choice, and I found  myself, as usual, tested along the very lines on which I was going to speak. During the previous week, Lars and I had learned that all twenty-eight of the nice new (and very expensive) windows we had installed in our new house leaked. I was anxious about many things- my mother's health (she has had more falls lately, forgets things more), my coming grandchild, a new word pro- cessor, which I wasn't sure I was smart enough to learn to use, and (alas!) a tooth which seemed about to fall out. What a list of varied things to worry about. But Jesus died for me! He's risen and coming again! He has given me   an inheritance that nothing can "destroy or spoil or wither" (1 Pt 1:4) and a kingdom which is unshakable (Heb 12:28). That's the gospel. Has it anything to do with leaking windows, computers, grandchildren, teeth? Well, I told myself, if it hasn't, you've got no business getting up in front of those women and opening your mouth at all. If I can't give thanks, trust, and worship the Lord in every "season," in the face of any set of facts which may touch my life, I am not really a believer. It is here, in my corner (or your corner) of God's earth, that I am assigned my lessons in the School of Faith. P.S. Later: They fixed the windows for us, but now we find that all four of the outside doors must be fixed. God isn't finished with us yet.

1984 July/August issue Part 2

"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."

-Martin Luther

1984 July/August issue Part 1

Does God Allow His Children to Be Poor?

God allows both Christians and non-Christians to experience every form of suffering known to the human race, just as He allows His blessings to fall on both. Poverty, like other forms of suffering, is relative, as Lars and I were reminded while we were in India. Our country's definition of the "poverty level" would mean unimaginable affluence to the girls we saw working next to our hotel. For nine hours a day they carried wet concrete in wooden basins on their heads, pouring it into the forms for the foundation of a large building. They were paid thirty cents a day. On my list of scriptures which give clues to some of God's reasons for allowing

1984 May/June issue Part 6

Letters

"It's Six A.M., the baby's been up, fed, diapered. There's nothing like a crying, hungry baby with an oozing diaper to jolt you out of your dreams. Normally I get in bed as soon as I can and try to squeeze every last minute of sleep possible. But today was different. I decided to read God's word before the day started (that's when I need it) not after it's over. You're an example of the power of scripture in one's life. I want to thank you for taking time to speak God's clear simple

message. . (following several paragraphs in which the woman describes her childhood with a paranoid schizoid mother and later her marriage to the leader of a Christian organization. Her husband proved to be both homosexual and financially irresponsible.) "Now I am in the middle of an annulment, putting the pieces of my life back together. Why do I share this? you may ask. Because for the first time I see that I cannot weigh God's love for me based on circumstances. It is not God's fault. God's working in me is to humble me, to test me, and to make me prosper. I realize deep within me that I truly want the will of God, not mine, and will again pray, whatever the cost, Lord. I see developing within me a deep inner strength only developed through suffering, and I'm willing to suffer again if I can manifest the deep inner strength I see.. .in our Lord. God is sufficient to meet our needs, and does truly love us. "Trust and obey, for there's no other way."

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.

1984 May/June issue Part 3

Can Birth Be Wrong?

The wildest science fiction cannot exceed in outrage some of the legal precedents that have been set in recent years. More than a year ago I read in a magazine (Advance, Spring 1983) about "wrongful birth" suits, in which parents sue a physician because their child was born as a result of practitioner negligence, for example a failed vasectomy, failed abortion (a "failed" abortion, don't forget, means one in which the child destined for the scrap heap happens to be born alive and kicking, so to speak), or failure by the physician to provide

1984 May/June issue Part 2

Visit to Dohnavur

Because I have been invited to write a new biography of Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, Lars and I visited the work she founded in South India. We arrived on their monthly prayer day in time to attend the evening meeting. The House of Prayer is a lovely terra cotta-colored building with red tile roof and a tower which holds the chimes that play a hymn at 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. There is no furniture inside except a few chairs for older ones and decrepit foreigners such as we who aren’t used to sitting on the floor. Everyone filed in in perfect silence, bare feet moving noiselessly over polished red tiled floors, and sat in rows according to age, the tiny ones up front, dressed in brightly colored cotton dresses. Behind them sat the next age group, girls in skirts and blouses; then came those in skirts, blouses, and half-saris; finally the accals (older ones who look after the younger) in blue or purple or green saris. All had smoothly combed and oiled black hair, many of them with flowers in it. An Indian man played the pump organ while they sang several traditional hymns in English, as well as songs written by “Amma” (the Tamil term of respect, used for Amy Carmichael). There was scripture reading, then a prayer of thanksgiving for the child who had just come, a little girl of two whose mother cannot keep her. Her new mother, an accal, carried her to the platform and stood holding her while they prayed and sang “Jesus Loves Me.”

At another service in the house of prayer, Lars and I sat in the balcony which leads up to the tower. We looked down on the lovely scene, made even brighter this time because the smallest children had been given colored flags to wave in time with the music of certain songs, a custom instituted by Amma which I think should be adopted by every Sunday School and church, for it enables the tiny ones to participate by doing something even when they are too young to know the words by heart.  Older ones played tambourines, triangle, and bells, while one drummed softly with a leather flap on the mouth of a clay pot.

I was allowed to use Amma’s room for my reading and writing. Called the Room of Peace, it is spacious, had high ceilings and tiled floors, many doors and windows opening onto a verandah on three sides where there is a walk in bird cage. A brick runway leads from the verandah to a platform under the trees where, following the accident which disabled her for the rest of her life, Amy Carmichael used to be taken to sit in the cool evening. Glass-doored book cases, filled with her beloved books, stood around the walls of the room. Above them hung paintings of snowcaps by her friend, Dr.Howard Somervell of Everest fame. There were hand-carved and painted wooden texts, “Good and acceptable and perfect” (referring to the lesson she found so hard to learn after the accident, of acceptance of the will of God), “A Very Present Help,” “By one who loveth is another kindled” (from St. Augustine), and, the largest of all, blue letters on teak, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear.” Also on the walls are a mounted tiger head, a pendulum clock, and one of the very few photos taken of Amma.

In that Room of Peace I was glad not to be wearing shoes (nobody wears shoes in the houses of Dohnavur) - it seemed holy ground as I studied the marginal notes and underlinings of her favorite books, read the handwritten notebooks in which she explained for members of the Dohnavur Fellowship the “pattern shewn,” the principles and practices which the Lord had given her at the inception of her work. I thumbed through worm-eaten ledgers, clippings, photographs- priceless documents that trace the day-by-day history of a task accepted for the Lord, the rescuing of little girls from the temple prostitution and little boys from dramatic societies in which they were used for evil purposes. In later years the work included children in other kinds of need.

The most powerful witness to the quality of the service Amma rendered is to be seen in the Indian men and women who were reared there and who have remained to lay down their lives for others. Pungaja, for example, lives in the compound called Loving Place, where some of the mentally handicapped are cared for.

“I have no professional training,” she told me. “The Holy Spirit gives me new wisdom each day to deal with them. Some are like wild animals, but the Lord Himself is my helper. I can’t see on one side, but even in my weakness He has helped me. 1 Corinthians says that God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, that no flesh should glory in His presence.

“One day I went to Amma with a burdened heart, but when she hugged me all my sorrow went.

‘’What are you doing?’ Amma asked me. I told her.

“’Do you find it difficult?’ I said yes.

“’These are soldiership years, ‘she said.

“Now it is my joy to serve these very difficult people.”

She spoke quietly, looking out into the courtyard where some of them went back and forth. She had lost an eye as a child, and her face revealed suffering, but I saw the joy spoken of written there, the joy of a laid-down life. I saw it in very many faces in Dohnavur. They do not mention that there are no diversions, no place to go, no time off (except two weeks- I asked about that). They do their work for Him who came not to be ministered unto.

We came away smitten, thinking of Amma’s own words form her little book If , “then I know nothing of Calvary love.” The meaning of the living sacrifice, the corn of wheat, the crucified life, had been shown to us in twentieth century flesh and blood. Please pray that we may never be the same again. Pray, too, for help as I try to write the book. If I try to do it alone, I shall most certainly fail. It is divine help of the sort of Pangaja draws on that I need. 

1984 May/June issue Part 1

Christians Suffer-Part 3

Strength Out of Weakness - Why

Corrie ten Boom was a woman of strong faith and a radiant face.Why? She had suffered as most of us Americans can hardly imagine. She had responded to that suffering (in a concentration camp during World War II) with trust. Learning the depth of human helplessness and weakness, she turned to the only one who could be to her a strong tower. He was faithful to His promises. One of the most soul-fortifying pictures I have of her in my mind is of her getting up in the morning, standing up in her cell, and singing in a loud voice so

1984 March/April issue Part 7

Questions and Answers

Several times this question has come: “What do you do when your husband wants you to go to work and you still have children at home and do not believe you should give that responsibility to others?”

It’s a crying that many Christian husbands have slid into patterns of the worlds thinking. They are unwilling to assume full support of the family, a God-given assignment. Sometimes they have not the courage to stand up to criticism of women who are “only” housewives. Sometimes plain greed is the motive, sometimes it’s prestige, social pressure, ambition. What do you do?

• Pray, first of all. Ask God to open the man’s eyes to his true responsibility as husband and father.
• Be quiet, caste, reverent, gentle (see 1 Peter 3:1-6)
• Take the matter to your church. The pastor and/or alders or deacons should be willing to discuss this from the scriptural standpoint with your husband. It’s their place, not yours, to teach him.
• Do not be afraid. Trust God. He may have an answer you can’t even imagine. Take the risk of faith, one day at a time.

1984 March/April issue Part 6

Letters

“I don’t know if you will remember me. You sat beside me on the train going to Belfast…. I didn’t have time to tell you, but I was going to visit my brother, he is in prison for stealing but he is on remand, he hasn’t been tried yet. Since going into prison he has become a born-again Christian, he shares a cell with a man who is also a born-again Christian. The day I met you on a train, I found that my brother and his friend had been reading about you in a book, isn’t that a marvelous coincidence? I was wondering if you could possibly find time to write them a few cheery words to help them along the path to God? These are the addresses… “

Will some reader of the Newsletter pray for these prisoners?

1984 March/April issue Part 5

Weather

Everybody keeps saying “what strange weather we’ve been having.” I came upon a possible explanation- not from the meteorologist, but from- of all people- the prophet Jeremiah. “This people has a rebellious and definite heart, rebels they have been and now they are clear gone. They did not say to themselves, ‘Let us fear the Lord our God, who gives us the rains of autumn, and spring showers in their turn, who brings us unfailingly fixed seasons of harvest.’ But your wrongdoing has upset nature’s order, and your sins have kept you from her kindly order.” (Jeremiah 5:23-25)

Modern minds will admit no explanation for anything but the “scientific.” This is the dogma that replaces religious dogma. Thus we have no need anymore for the Living Word- it doesn’t apply in this, it doesn’t apply in that, it doesn’t apply at all- except where we need a little comfort, and you don’t find much of that in science.