My title for this fifth talk is "Offering." If God has given us a gift, it's never only
for ourselves. It's always to be offered back to Him and,
very often, it has repercussions for the life of the world. Jesus Himself offered Himself to be bread
for the life of the world. He said, "The bread that I will give is My
body, and I give it for the life of the world." For a Christian, the pattern is Jesus. What did He do? He offered Himself a perfect and complete
sacrifice for love of -- for the love of God. And you and I should be prepared, also, to
be broken bread and poured-out wine for the life of the world. Think of the gifts of others whom you know
which have been a great blessing and joy to you. I think of the gift of music. I have a nephew who's a concern violinist. That's a tremendous gift. But he doesn't just play his violin all by
himself in his little apartment. That gift is for the sake of the world. And I believe that that's true of every gift
that God gives to us in some way, which is not always apparent right at the beginning. Among the great gifts of my life are my husband,
my daughter, my grandchildren. And there are times when I could be very selfish
about those gifts, and yet I have to recognize that it's not just for me. But these also, that I think of as -- as my
own, must be held with an open hand and offered back to God along with my body and all that
I am. You're familiar with Paul's word: "I beseech
you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living
sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is an act of intelligent worship." I particularly like that translation -- "an
act of intelligent worship." Now, if I present to God my body as a living
sacrifice, then that includes everything that the body contains. My brains, my personality, my heart, my emotions,
my will, my temperament, my prejudices, my failings, all the rest of it is presented
to God as a living sacrifice. God has, after all, given me a body to live
in. Everything in my life I begin to see as a
gift, and I mean everything. Now, that may seem like sheer poppycock to
some of you, but I hope that, in the context of the things that I've been saying, you'll
begin to see that everything can be seen as a gift, even my widowhood. I began, very slowly, to recognize, after
my first husband was killed, that it was within the context of widowhood that God wanted me
to glorify Him. It was not my idea. It was something which God not only allowed
but, in a very real sense -- which I began, slowly, to understand -- He had given me because
He had something else in mind. And this was a gift not just for me, but for
the life of the world, in some mysterious sense which I did not need to understand because
I could trust Him. Now, again, let me help you with three things,
and I'll try to tell you what I'm going to say, and then I'll try to say it, and then
I'll try to tell you what I said, so that there may be a little bit closer relationship
between the things which I mean to say, and what you hear me saying, and what you've got
in your notebook, and what you think I said when you talk about it tomorrow, when somebody
says, "Did you go to hear that woman? Well, what in the world did she say?" Under this heading of "Offering," let's put
down three things -- number one: everything is a gift. Number two: there are several kinds of offerings
which I can make to God. Let's shorten that down and just simply say
that we want to think about an offering as a sacrifice. And when I use the word "sacrifice," with
regard to my own life -- sacrificing my body, for example, as a living sacrifice, presenting
my body as a living sacrifice -- the emphasis is not on loss and desolation and giving up. The emphasis is on the fact that God has given
me something which I can offer back to Him. We'll come to that a little bit later. And number three: the greatest -- the offering
of obedience -- I'll stop with that as the heading. Number one: everything is a gift. Number two: offering as a sacrifice, and the
offering of obedience. When I get up in the morning, I do try to
make it a practice to do some of my praying first thing in the morning -- it's a good
thing to talk to God before you start talking to anybody else -- and I try to begin my prayers
with thanksgiving. There's always a long list of things to be
thankful for, and one of them is that I can get up in the morning; that I can be in a
comfortable place, looking out over a very beautiful view. I thank God for the sleep of the night, for
health and strength, and for work to do. I'm very grateful for work. I think about somebody like Joni Eareckson,
and what Joni wouldn't give to just have a chance to wash dishes, maybe, one time, or
do the worst job that you and I might hate. Thank God that you can get up. I thank Him for my house, and my husband,
and my health, and the money that we have, and the food that we have, and the clothes
for our backs, and grandchildren, and my daughter, and on and on and on. And you all have equally long lists, I'm sure. But then I don't always find it easy to include
on that list the thorn in the flesh: the word that my husband spoke to me which hurt me. Yes, he does that once in a while. I'm married to a sinner. I don't know what you other married women
are married to but, far as I know, there really isn't anything else to marry. And it's always a good exercise for me to
remember that my poor husband is also married to a sinner. So, I thank God for that husband, with his
perfections -- which are not very many. But I thank Him for the particular set of
gifts that He has given me in that man, which I can offer back to God with thanksgiving. When Joseph was taken into captivity, he could
not possibly have imagined what God had in mind years later. But, in Genesis 45:8, we read Joseph's words
to his brothers, "It was not you that sent me here, but God." What looked like a horrible thing -- jealous
brothers hating their younger brother, wanting to get rid of him, deciding to kill him, then
realizing they could make some money out of him; selling him into captivity, he goes down
to Egypt and is made a slave, and eventually ends up in prison, and one thing and another
-- does that look like a gift from God? And yet he says, "It was not you who sent
me; it was God." Paul said, "There was given to me a thorn." Jesus refers to the "cup" which His Father
"had given" Him. Now, all of these things represent great suffering,
not trivial things at all. And Joseph was able to say, when he named
his son "Ephraim," "God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction." It's not the experience that changed him;
it was his response. And Joseph trusted God. Now, what is God's intention when He gives
you and me something? He is giving me something in my hands to offer
back to Him with thanksgiving. I remember when I was a little girl wanting
to buy Christmas presents for my parents, and I had no way at all of earning money. My brothers had paper routes, and earned maybe
25 cents a week or something like that, back in the Depression days. But I had to depend on an allowance, so I
would've had absolutely nothing to give to my mother for Christmas if my mother hadn't
given something to me first. And that's the way it is with us with God,
isn't it? We are totally destitute. Everything that we have comes from Him, and
we have nothing to offer except what He has given us. There's an old thank -- prayer of thanksgiving
at the offering time: "All things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given
Thee." We receive it from Him, we accept it in our
hands, we say, "Thank you," and then we offer it back. This is the logical sequence of the things
which I have been talking about. Everything is a gift. Everything is meant to be offered back. And this lesson became a powerful, life-changing,
transforming lesson during the time of my husband's illness. And when I would awaken in those wee, small
hours of the night -- which Amy Carmichael calls "the hours when all life's molehills
become mountains" -- my mind would be filled with vivid imaginings of the horrible things
that were going to happen to my husband between now and death. Now, death was the unarguable conclusion of
what my husband had, medically speaking. There was no possibility that he was going
to survive. So I had faced that fairly squarely. But the doctors were predicting hideous mutilations
that they were going to practice on him between now and death, and I felt I could not stand
it. And, in those wee small hours, I began to
cry out to the Lord. And it came to me with great clarity one night,
I suppose about two or three o'clock in the morning, that my agony, my anguish -- which
was vicarious, for my husband -- was something which God had put in my hands to offer back
to Him. It was a gift. Now, let's think about this second thing:
the idea of sacrifice. There are many occasions in Scripture where
the word "sacrifice" is used, and it was a very important part of the Hebrew life back
in Old Testament days. Blood sacrifice was a daily occurrence in
the tabernacle, and the people's whole lives were controlled by the rituals of sacrifice. But the Old Testament also speaks of the "sacrifice"
of thanksgiving in the Psalms. And the verse that came to me in those hours
of fear was "a broken and a contrite heart I will not despise." The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. "A broken and a contrite heart I will not
despise." I'm talking to people, I'm sure, who have
a broken spirit, a broken heart. God will not despise that offering, if that's
all you have to offer. I felt as if I was destitute, like the widow
of Zarephath. You remember the story of how Elijah was fed
by ravens for a time, and then God told him that the ravens were going to stop and that
he was to go down to a place called Zarephath where there was a widow who would feed him? Now, I don't think we can begin to imagine
the absolute dereliction of a widow in those ancient times, but she was the most helpless
and poor of all. Now, why in the world would God Almighty,
who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, choose a destitute woman to feed his prophet Elijah? And you remember that, when Elijah reaches
Zarephath, he finds this woman out gathering a couple of sticks, and he asks her for a
drink of water. And then he asks her for the most unreasonable
request imaginable. And he says, "Bake me a cake." Well, if she were speaking modern English,
she would've said, "Surely you've got to be kidding! I'm out here gathering two sticks so that
I can bake the last handful of flour and the last few drops of oil into a little cake which
is the only thing that stands between me and my son and death. We are starving to death, and you ask me to
bake you a cake?" But the woman recognized that this was a man
of God, and so, to her, it was a matter of obedience to God. And she baked him a cake. She believed his word that the cruse of oil
would not fail, nor would the barrel of meal be empty. What had God done in sending the prophet to
a destitute woman? He had put into that woman's hands something
to offer back. But what a pitiful offering! One little handful of flour, a few drops of
oil. Do you remember when the little boy brought
his lunch to Jesus? or the disciples extorted that lunch from him, who knows? We don't really know whether that little boy
gave it up willing or what happened. I've often wondered about that little boy,
but anyway. He had five loaves and two fishes which the
disciples brought to Jesus, and they put it into Jesus' hands, and one of the disciples
said this: "What is the good of that for such a crowd?" Now, I'm speaking to some of you who feel
as if you have nothing whatsoever to offer to God. You don't have any huge sufferings, perhaps. You don't have any great gifts. You were behind the door when they gave out
the gifts, and "Poor little me! I can't sing, and I can't preach, and I can't
pray, and I can't write books, and I can't be the 'hostess with the mostest,' so I really
can't serve the Lord. If I had so-and-so's gifts, then it would
be a different story." I don't know who I'm talking to, but I'm sure
that there are some of you who would be saying, "What is the good of my offering for such
a crowd? You're telling me that I have something which
is going to matter for the life of the world?" And I say "yes," that's what I'm telling you,
because God takes a widow with nothing, God takes a little boy's lunch and He turns that
into something for the good of the world because that individual let it go. And I began to see -- again, very dimly -- and
don't imagine that I was some kind of spiritual giant to see this thing -- it was the Holy
Spirit of God that said to me, "Give it to me. Let it go. Offer it up, a sacrifice; something in your
hands to give me." How does a mother feel when her tiny little
two-year-old comes into the house with a smashed dandelion clenched in his little, sweaty fist,
and he offers her the smashed dandelion? It means everything in the world, because
love transforms it. That's what this is about. Suffering and love are inextricably bound
up together, and love invariably means sacrifice. We talked about the sacrifice of fathers and
mothers. What about the sacrifice of husbands and wives? What about the sacrifice of those who are
prepared to be single for the rest of their lives for the glory of God? I think of Amy Carmichael. She believed that God was actually calling
her to remain single, and it scared her. She felt that she might perhaps be desolate
with loneliness, and God brought to her mind the words, "None of them that trust in Me
shall ever be desolate." And out of that offering, that brokenness,
that living sacrifice which was the life of Amy Carmichael, came a great missionary work
which continues to this day. Amy Carmichael, a single woman, became the
mother of thousands of Indian children. There was a time when the family that she
founded as the Dohnavur Fellowship -- little children rescued from temple prostitution
-- numbered, that family numbered over 900 people at one time. And she worked there for 53 years. And she wrote these words in one of her poems:
"If Thy dear home be fuller, Lord, because a little emptier my house on earth, what rich
reward that guerdon were." You and I have no idea what God has in mind
when we make the offering, but everything is material for sacrifice. Again and again, I've had people say to me,
"How do you handle loneliness?" And I say, "I can't handle loneliness." "Well, didn't you spend a lot of time alone
in the jungle?" "Yes, I did. I spent a good many more years alone than
I did married." "Well, how did you handle it?" "I didn't. I couldn't. I have to turn it over to somebody who can
handle it." In other words, my loneliness became my offering. And so, if God doesn't always remove the feeling
of loneliness, it is in order that, in every minute of every day, perhaps, I have something
to offer up to him and say, "Lord, here it is. I can't handle this." Now, I don't know what your emotions may be
that you can't handle, but I believe that every one of us knows something about loneliness. The singles always imagine that the married
are not lonely, but I can testify that there are different kinds of loneliness, and they
are just one example of the offering that I'm talking about today. I have never forgotten what a missionary speaker
said in chapel when I was a student. We had compulsory chapel five days a week
at Wheaton College, so we heard hundreds of speakers and remembered practically nothing
of most of them. But I have never forgotten what this woman
said. She spoke about the little boy bringing his
lunch to Jesus, and she said, "If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it may be because
pieces will feed a multitude when a loaf would satisfy only a little boy." What have you got in your hand to give to
Him? Is it a gift that you recognize as a gift? A talent, for example? Is it the willingness to be a mother, and
to take the criticism of the women who say that a woman who's got half a brain will put
her children in somebody else's care and get out and do something, quote, "fulfilling"? Is it the willingness to take the flack from
the rest of the world about something which you've decided to do for Jesus' sake? Is it the willingness to be unrecognized,
unappreciated? You know, we've got a very twisted idea of
this word "ministry." We think that a ministry means just a very
short list of things: preaching, or singing, or doing a seminar, or writing a book, or
teaching a Sunday School class. Of course those are ministry. They're forms of service, but the word "ministry"
just means "service," and service is a part of our offering to God. People would think of my ministry as being
my missionary work, my writing, my speaking, but, you know, I don't spend most of my life
standing at a podium. I spend most of my life sitting at a desk,
standing at a sink, standing at an ironing board, going to the grocery store, sitting
in airports, doing a whole lot of things which are not anything for which I expect to get
medals. They are moments to be offered to Jesus. "Do the next thing," which brings me to my
third point: the offering of obedience. When my brother Tommy, "Tom," was a little
boy, about three years old, one of his favorite forms of play was to take all the paper bags
out of the drawer in the kitchen where my mother kept them and spread them all over
the floor. Well, my mother permitted that with Tommy. He was number five. I was number two, and I don't think I would've
gotten away with it, but she'd learned a lot of things by that time, and I'm sure she was
tired. But anyway, she said, "You may do that on
one condition: that you put the bags back in the drawer before you leave the kitchen." Well, he understood that perfectly well. Children usually understand far more than
we think they do. So she came into the kitchen one day and there
were the paper bags all over the floor, but no sign of Tommy. So she found him in the living room where
my father was playing the piano, playing hymns. And my mother said, "Tommy, I want you to
come and put the bags back in the drawer." And he looked up with a smile of the most
innocent and seraphic sweetness, and he said, "But I want to sing 'Jesus Loves Me.'" And my father stopped playing the piano and
took the opportunity to press home a profound lesson: to obey is better than sacrifice. Now, I'm sure he used terms which Tommy could
understand, but it's no good singing "Jesus Loves Me" when you're disobeying your mother. And the highest form of worship is obedience. What do I have to offer to God which is more
important than my obedience? And there's a great lesson on this from the
book of Ezekiel, hidden back there in the twenty-fourth chapter. "God said, 'Son of man, I'm about to take
the delight of your eyes away from you at a stroke, yet you shall not mourn or weep,
nor shall your tears run down. Sigh, but not aloud. Make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban, put your shoes on your
feet, do not cover your lips nor eat the bread of mourners." In other words, forget all the ritual signs
of mourning. And Ezekiel says this: "I spoke to the people
in the morning and, in the evening, my wife died. And on the next morning, I did as I was commanded." Very short description of some pretty important
things. "In the evening, my wife died. And the next morning, I did as I was commanded." And I have discovered that there is no consolation
like obedience. And when I was trying to offer up my feelings
to God in those wee, small hours of the morning, I thanked God when it was time to get up because
there were all kinds of just simple, ordinary, down-to-earth things to do. "Do the next thing." God gave to the widow of Zarephath, and to
the little boy, and to Ezekiel something to give back to Him, something which would matter
very much to others. God enabled Ezekiel to give his sorrow back
to Him, and to get up and do what he was commanded to do for the life of the world. It wasn't just Ezekiel that God was interested
in right there. God wanted to make Ezekiel into broken bread
and poured-out wine for the life of the world. Let me ask you: who are the people who have
most profoundly influenced your life? Those who have most profoundly influenced
my life are, without exception, people who have suffered, because it has been in that
very thing that God has refined the gold, tempered the steel, molded the pot, broken
the bread, and made that person into something that feeds a multitude, of whom I have been
one of the beneficiaries. I had a wonderful letter from a woman, an
older woman, who told me that, back when she was a little girl in the Depression, her father
died, none of his friends came to the funeral, she had to wear a borrowed dress, the house
was mortgaged, her mother was left a widow with seven children, and the lawyer who was
supposed to be handling her financial affairs stole the inheritance. And the lady said this: "When we went back
to the house after the funeral, my mother picked up a broom and began to sweep the kitchen." And she said, "I look back on that now and
I realize that it was the soft swish, swish, swish of that broom that began the healing
process." She said, "My mother was a destitute woman,
and when people asked her years later, 'How did you ever make it?' she just said, 'I prayed.'" Well, she didn't just pray. She prayed, and she did the next thing. She picked up the broom. And so I say to you today, God has put something
in your hand which you can accept, you can say, "Thank you, Lord," and then you can offer
it back to Him. Let me give you another verse which encourages
me tremendously. Psalm 119, verse 91, says, "This day, as ever,
Thy decrees stand fast. For all things serve Thee." What's happening in your life today? Is it good? Then it's easy to thank God for, isn't it? Is it bad? If you can remember that this day, like every
other day, His decrees stand fast, those eternal verities are unshakable. They -- His Word is infrangible. The world and all its passionate desires will
one day disappear. The man who is following the will of God is
part of the permanent, and cannot die. I encourage you to make an offering of your
sufferings. Ugo Bassi said this: "Measure your life by loss and not by gain,
not by the wine drunk but by the wine poured forth. For love's strength standeth in love sacrificed,
and he that suffereth most hath most to give."
