The Search for Serenity

thank you for coming back this afternoon my third talk is the search for serenity and i've been reminding you of the three conditions of discipleship the first deny yourself or give up your right to yourself the second is the taking up of the cross and the third is following and that means simply putting one foot in front of the other and going where jesus goes doing what jesus does back in those years so long ago when i was a jungle missionary i often traveled on the jungle trails there was no other method of travel other than canoes and the indians found it absolutely astonishing and and ridiculous that i couldn't make any difference i couldn't notice any difference between human trails and animal trails and so they used to make a great joke out of making me be first on the trail just so they could watch when i would go off on what turned out to be nothing but an animal trail and they would laugh their heads off and ask where in the world do you think you're going and i would say well i know isn't this the trail and they said you mean you can't tell the difference between an animal trail and a human trail well indians walk putting one foot right in front of the other so trails are about the width of a human foot and animals walk exactly the same way four-legged animals also put one foot in front of the other so i was constantly making great mistakes but i learned of course that only had one thing to do and that was to follow the indian he would graciously take the front place after i'd made a few mistakes like that but i didn't have any arguments with him as to where he was going i didn't question as to whether he knew where he was going and that's exactly the way we need to learn to follow christ he may take us into strange and unexpected places and we suddenly find ourselves faced with difficulties that we can't imagine how we will ever be able to solve but we have a shepherd who has been over the trail it's such a comfort to know that there had there was only one experience early in my jungle missionary work when i went with another missionary who was also fairly new in the jungle and of course we got hopelessly lost that was a great lesson barbara and i were invited by the indians to go on a fishing trip with them but they told us that they were going to go first to a certain place where they were just going to be spending the night with an indian family but they said from there we go to such-and-such a river and they told us how to get there and you had to go around so many curves and across so many brooks and passed so many k-pop trees and other palm trees and they gave us all these very complicated directions but my friend barbara had a little indian boy who was really almost adopted by her at that time he was six years old but being an indian she knew that he would be able to help us find the trails well he did very well up to a point but then we did eventually get totally lost and had to spend the night absolutely in nothing but jungle there were no there was no shelter of any kind and no clearing we had a horse with us who was carrying our pot cooking pot and a couple of blankets and a poncho and a lantern and as we walked and walked and walked expecting every moment that we were going to come around the bend and find the indian camp which they had told us about night fell and night falls very quickly in tropical forests and we found ourselves in the middle of the jungle with absolutely nothing to do but just stop and tie the horse to a tree spread our rubber poncho out on the ground and the three of us lay down to spend the night the next about probably an hour or two after we went to sleep we were awakened by great plops of water on the canopy above us and the jungle where it's virgin jungle which is what this was is very open underneath but of course it's a canopy which is almost as impermeable as an umbrella until it begins to rain very hard and so we heard these few plops and realized that it was about to rain so we quickly traded put the wool blanket on the ground lay down again put the rubber poncho on top of us i don't think we went to sleep but suddenly the little boy who was sleeping between us began to giggle and we wondered what was so funny neither barbara nor i thought there was anything at all funny about our situation and here was this poor little boy lying in a lake of water because we forgot that there's a hole in the middle of a poncho so all the water was just pouring down on top of little vicente he's laughing his head off well of course we all we were all wet before the evening before the night was over and we woke up stiff and cold in the morning and feeling very discouraged and not having any idea where to go next and so my colleague barbara who happened to be british as most of my missionary colleagues were when i said well i think we better get moving there was a long pause and she said oh i say betty why don't we just lie here a little longer and vicente looked up at me and said in part spanish and part english he said senora what does this mean a little longer well to make a long story short we spent a very miserable day we never did find the people but as we were trying to find our way back home and we were on different trails from what we thought suddenly there at a fork in the road stood an indian he was just standing there as if he had been waiting for us he didn't say a word he just turned around and started walking well what do you think we did we followed with no questions no ifs ands or butts and in about 30 minutes we broke out into the clearing where we lived the lord knows the way through the wilderness all we have to do is follow there have been times many times in my life when i have felt overwhelmed with work i felt that the demands were impossible and wondering why god loaded all these things on me and i began to realize then that god never asks us to do anything for which he will not provide the strength he will always enable us to do what we have to do and god knows what we have to do sometimes you and i think that we've got to do so and so and so and so but that doesn't happen to be on god's agenda but whatever is on god's agenda he will show us and he is also going to provide the strength and the grace and whatever else is needed whatever wisdom if any of you lack wisdom let him ask of god that giveth to all men equally without making them feel foolish i like that little touch i think it's in jb phillips translation but you mothers who are raising young children there are many times aren't there when you really do not know what to do and the lord is always there to give you wisdom and my daughter tells me that when she has two children squabbling she has very little idea who started it and sometimes she will call them both into the kitchen and she will ask them now who started this and it was very it's very difficult to get to the bottom of it isn't it if one person says well he then the other one says well she and you don't know and so valerie said in a case like that i simply kneel down i put my arms around these two children and i just say lord give me wisdom tell me what to do and sometimes what the lord tells her to do is to spank both of them so the search for serenity is going to be found as we follow jesus one day at a time and as i've mentioned earlier we only have this one day we're always loading ourselves with regrets from the past and fears from the future someone said we don't know what the future holds but we know who holds the future and i believe that it was my father that first said that my father was an editor and a writer and i don't think he ever told us that he said that but i came across some data that made me feel pretty sure that he was the one that said that he was a very simple man a very humble man but also a very godly man and a writer although he never wrote any books he was an editor all his life but we do know the one who holds the future don't we but the future does not belong to us today that which must be done by way of preparation for the future is today's work of course you have to make a grocery list don't you and you make the grocery list before you go to the grocery store that's perfectly legitimate that is today's work for tomorrow but we are forbidden to worry take no thought for tomorrow for tomorrow we'll take thought for the things of itself now what was the source of the psalmist's peace it says in psalm 119 165 peace is the reward of those who love thy law the reward of those who love thy law do you love god's law do you practice it do you ask for grace to practice it daily faithfully then you will be rewarded with god's peace what was the source of christ's peace it was certainly not the kind that the world gives it was a very strange piece if you stop and listen think about it the life of jesus that we know of those three years was one of unremitting toil without very visible results often was subject to many kinds of interruptions people were always after him even when he would try to get away by himself or away with his disciples the mobs would follow him and people were always plucking at his sleeve making unexpected demands there certainly must have been times when jesus didn't get much sleep there were times when there was very little food for him to eat little comfort he experienced many disappointments in the people that claimed to want to follow him and he certainly was misunderstood and yet he had peace all the same god's peace unremitting and filled with joy and love and he said to his disciples shortly before he left them it is my own peace that i give you not the world's peace and he wants to give that to us but we're not by any means always prepared to take it we are convinced that everything's in turmoil everything's fallen apart all these burdens are falling on me i'm my emotions are out of control try stopping everything get down on your knees lift your hands up to the lord and say lord you know about these worries you know about my anxiety anxieties my fears for tomorrow i can't handle them lord and so i hand them over to you into those wounded hands it can make a very big difference i have found that to be true you're looking at a woman who needs all the physical help she can get we all like to be spiritual we all want to be as spiritual as we possibly can but i need a whole lot of help because i am not very spiritual and i find myself at times just desperately needing something visible or tangible and so i just do that simple physical little act if i'm afraid about something or dreading something that is about to come up just get on my knees and say lord i hand over my fears i hand over my anxieties or whatever it is and somehow or other he gives us that peace do you know that beautiful hymn dear lord and father of mankind there's a stanza that says drop thy still dues of quietness till all our strivings cease take from our souls the strain and stress and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace let our ordered lives confess the beauty of our peace of thy peace that was another one of the great blessings of the home in which i grew up my parents lived ordered lives both of them were what we call nowadays meatnicks with us which is a sort of a derogatory term and psychiatrists are telling us that we are obsessive compulsive and i'm sure lars lives with a con obsessive compulsive wife because every single day there are about four places in my house that my eyes scan probably six or eight times a day one of them is the counter in my study is there anything on that counter that is supposed to go downstairs it's to go downstairs then next time i walk downstairs on my way downstairs i pass a dresser in the bedroom if there's something on that dresser that doesn't belong there it goes downstairs then there's also my kitchen counter and my desk so all of these places are places where i try to keep order so that i don't lose things and i know what i have to do next and we used to tease my father because he kept his desk practically empty although a great deal of work went on at his desk but he always had his pencils neatly sharpened and all of them in a neat little tray and all the points going the same way now that i'm sure is obsessive compulsive so i acknowledge that it's in my genes and we're all like that all all of my brothers and sisters sister but when i was assigned to dust my father's study which usually was my job i would take pleasure in turning one of those pencils just a little bit cockeyed just so i could spy on him when he went in there because the first thing that he did automatically without even thinking i'm sure was to fix that pencil and put it in the right place well i'm not suggesting that you should do that but order is a description of heaven heaven is a place of order and the trinity is three persons in one and yet the holy spirit witnesses to christ and christ is subject to the father there is a hierarchy god the father god the son god the holy spirit three persons yet equally one a mystery of course the bible says that god wants us to do things decently and in order and that is a spiritual matter sometimes people will say to me well i don't see what the world that's got to do with spiritual things you know where did you get that well i got it in the bible place where i take all my questions and isn't it obvious that in god's creation there is beautiful order we can be absolutely sure that the seasons are going to happen summer and winter and springtime and harvest sun moon and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness mercy and love you can count on it i can count on the tithes coming up at exactly the time that the little card on my desk says it will come up and it's different every day you know twice a day it comes up twice a day it goes down and i can look at the rocks and i can see where the tide is a god of order but he wants us to have his peace and if you're if your home and your life are in disorder there will not be peace i said this morning that the bedrock of my faith is the character of god god god's character is one of order and yet we're always thinking about the what ifs and the what abouts what if my husband does this what about if what happened what if my husband loses his job or what what if this child becomes rebellious and disobedient what if the money runs out what if i get sick we can all think of many kinds of disasters but that is not our business our only business is the present moment the search for serenity it will be found only in jesus christ in the peace that the world can never give i told you this morning about a book that i'd written called a quiet heart we can keep a quiet heart if our minds are stayed on him trust in the lord with all thine heart and lean not under thine own understanding in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths so many times i've not known what the way before me was going to be in 1996 a year ago last january my husband and i went to ecuador taking along my daughter and her husband and her oldest son to visit the indians with whom i had worked way back in the 1950s and 60s and there were so many questions about how this was going to be arranged because it's very difficult to communicate in the jungle and there are very few roads and very few radios and certainly no mail service but i had done everything that i could by way of planning ahead of time and constantly praying lord please work out all the details which you know i can't possibly do it was just an abyss and mass of mercies one thing after another from the day we left our home which was in january we were having a three-day nor'easter blizzard of snow we live one hour from the boston airport and boston airport gets closed quite often could we possibly get there because of the snow could we get on the plane if we got there would the flight be cancelled would the airport be closed the airport was not closed the flight was not cancelled almost every other flight on the screen was cancelled except ours we got to miami there was my daughter and her husband waiting for us and when we got off the plane in quito ecuador there was their son waiting for us he had taken a bus up from peru but the next question was how we were going to get to the jungle and i only knew of one road it turned out that there were two roads the one i knew about was closed because of landslides which happened frequently when i lived there too but there was also another road to my great surprise so the lord took care of that we were able to go down by car on the other road but then my great most pressing question was how in the world am i going to find venancio a quiche indian man a dear wonderful man who really became the leader of the church and the teacher in the school after my husband jim was killed fenancio loved jim and had been taught everything he knew by jim and he is still serving the lord faithfully down there in the jungle and i had been corresponding with him but i didn't know how we were going to find him i didn't expect it to be difficult because he lived in what used to be a very small town in the jungle and everybody knows everybody else but when we got to the outskirts of that town i was floored to find that it is a metropolis now nothing like the tiny little town that it had been when i left in 1963 how was i ever going to find him i got out of the car we were with steve saint nate saint's son and his wife and two children i was the only one who spoke both spanish and quechua so i got out of the car took about three steps down the street toward a little restaurant that had an english sign on it and i thought well you might be able to find somebody here who knows bonanzio but before i'd taken the third step or so a young boy came walking up the sidewalk and he said buenos dias which most of you know means good morning and i spoke to him he looked to me like an indian so i said buenos dias which means are you a speaker of quechua and he said yes i said do you know venancio tapwi yes can you lead us to his home yes is god in charge all my anxieties were fruitless and of course disobedient we need to believe that god does know what he's doing now what are the enemies of serenity i don't think i gave you point one which was the source of christ's peace perhaps i did but number two is enemies of serenity first and foremost would be my reluctance to do what god wants me to do and that is going to destroy my serenity peace with god means obedience to god and it has to be a quiet con faithful continuous daily looking up to the lord amy carmichael spoke often of simply lifting her eyes to the lord can you imagine being the mother of 700 children now she did have wonderful helpers older women actually they were young indian women who took care of these babies and each woman would be in charge of about eight babies and they lived in little bungalows separately there was a mother and then the eight babies and amy carmichael of course was amma which is the hind the indian title of respect for an older woman but she had far more than she could possibly do humanly speaking and yet the lord was always there because she had no agenda of her own except the will of god and that's the test isn't it lord is always asking us do you want to do my will i'll show you i'll help you and it will lead to joy or would you rather choose your own will which is going to lead ultimately to chaos and misery make up your mind that you will do what he says as betty scott stam expressed in her prayer work out thy whole will in my life at any cost now and forever now i may want to do something on a given day and leave behind things which god has been speaking to me about which i ought to do but this other thing comes up which is so much more interesting and of course i'll do that when i get back we do that don't we we postpone things that ought not to be postponed and we give things priority that not ought not to be given priority and we refuse the opportunities that the lord is giving us to give up our right to ourselves take up the cross and follow and just a couple of years ago my husband and i were in england and i had the opportunity to invite two of my british colleagues with whom i had worked in the jungle to have afternoon tea with me and believe it or not these english ladies had never had a real afternoon tea in a hotel of course they'd had lots of afternoon teas so we took them to a very fancy hotel it was just such a pleasure to hear them oohing and awing over the beauty of this place and as we were talking i found out that gene had a great trial in her life she had to take care of her grandmother who was a very crotchety old lady and jean's attitude was this necessity is is an obstacle to my obedience to god i cannot do the things that i think i'm supposed to be doing for god because i have to take care of my grandmother let's remember there is only one power in earth or heaven or hell that can prevent you from doing the will of god only one now stop and think what have i been excusing myself for because of this or this or this so i couldn't do what god wanted me to do that one person that can be an obstacle who can actually prevent you from doing the will of god is yourself it is your own stubborn willful self that can stop you as it did in the garden of eden god had created two creatures perfect man perfect woman and a perfect place and a perfect god and a perfect plan but he put in the garden one tree that they were not to touch because he did not design human beings to bear the burden of the knowledge of good and evil we were not meant to bear that but satan came along and persuaded eve that god was trying to cheat her of the one thing in the whole world that she wanted more than anything else that one thing she had to have and you parents know that you have to say no quite often to your little children if that child wants a second ice cream cone and it isn't very long until supper time a wise father or a wise mother is going to say no and the child is going to say you never let me have anything which is really pretty much our attitude to god quite often isn't it and it certainly was in eve's case god was trying to cheat her and she was convinced that she had a better plan for her own happiness and so she succeeded in persuading her husband who wimped out that they should do that now what was adam's god-given responsibility a divine assignment he was supposed to be the head he was supposed to be the initiator eve was supposed to be the responder the roles got reversed adam took the at the attitude well if that's what the little lady wants then that's what the little lady's going to have and what man wants to get into the ring with a screaming woman so by all means let her have it and that's what's happened with this feminist movement i don't blame the men for not wanting to oppose the feminist movement and i don't blame them humanly speaking because why should they bother but on the other hand there's been a lot of disobedience on the part of men because they don't want to confront screaming females so adam said sure fine and the roles were reversed they took what was not given and one of the great spiritual principles of my life is that there are some givens and there are some not givens and you can spend the rest of your life stewing and crying and wailing over the not givens that has not been given a child perhaps a husband perhaps a better job a higher income another nicer house a better place to live those are among the not givens now up until well as of the last 10 years all my grandchildren have been in california and we live in massachusetts i lived within walking distance of both sets of my grandparents when i was growing up never thought anything about it i thought of course everybody gets to be near their grandparents but it has been a real deprivation to me not to be around my grandchildren very much now you can be sure that invitations to california get very high priority but guess what they're all moving to south carolina and i just found out that the place where they're moving is only about two hours drive from atlanta so much closer to massachusetts than it was but the givens and the not givens is something we need to be very clear about when god gives you a task thank him for it and gene was unwilling to thank god that he had given her the privilege of taking care of her grandmother she had never seen it as a privilege it was only an obstacle to spiritual work that she wanted to do this is a great snare to make a dichotomy between spiritual work and secular work do you think god is more impressed with my standing in front of an audience of eager listening men and women more impressed with that than he is when i'm standing alone in my kitchen fixing lunch for lars i don't think god is impressed with either one all god wants is my humble obedience but there isn't a difference this is not spiritual work and the work in the kitchen secular work not for me because everything is meant to be an oblation do you know what an oblation is it's an offering my whole life is meant to be an offering the secret this of the search for serenity stop as soon as we do the will of god and so as we sat there in that lovely hotel in london i said to my friend gene has it crossed your mind that god has given you a privilege and he wants to bless you if you will give up all those other things that you think you're supposed to be doing and just concentrate on taking care of your dear grandmother it was a long pause her brow was knit as she tried to fathom how that could possibly be but i couldn't help but think of matthew 25 40 again in as much as you've done it for one of the least of these my brothers you've done it for me amy carmichael was a very effective evangelist for six or seven years when she first went to india she was a traveling evangelist going into this little hindu and muslim villages with the hope that she would be able to contact the women who were kept behind doors they were virtually never seen in public and god gave her great blessing and great success in those years it was during that time that she learned about the hideous underground traffic that was going on in which little boys and girls were being sold or given to the hindu temples for the purposes of prostitution infants were given to these temples for life no possibility of escape and amy carmichael was appalled when she learned about this and she began to pray that god would give her the privilege somehow someday of rescuing some of those children and so that's how the work of the donovair fellowship began but what a difference between her traveling evangelism and suddenly finding that her feet are tied because she has all these babies and her life was diapers and formulas did it make a difference to god was one secular and the other sacred no i don't think so i don't think so at all she received a very large gift one time money gift from a man in england with a very clear explanation of what he wanted it used for it wanted it was to be used for spiritual work well she wrote back to him and said right now what we need is more bungalows and she said in my experience human souls are more or less firmly attached to human bodies we need bungalows we can't leave them lying about in the open so i'm returning your gift she was right in guessing that the man would not consider bungalow's spiritual work she didn't hear from him again there's a story told of an old ancarus do you know what an anchorage is i didn't know until we went to england and we were told as we visited one of the old churches that very often back in the middle ages an anchorite who was a man or an ancaress who was a woman would dedicate the rest of their life to god and they would be walled up in a cell in this in the wall of the church there would be a long thin slit going into the church through which they could see the altar so they could participate in the services in the church but the only other opening was just a small opening in which the food was passed into them well this lovely old ankaras who had dedicated herself to prayer for this little town and we were told that every town that had an anchor right or an anchorage was considered very blessed the people loved the fact that here was one person who was always praying for everybody in that town and so the people used to come by her tiny little window she also had a little window out onto the street just a very small window and the people would come by and ask for her counsel and her prayers but then the main thoroughfare of that little village was changed to another location no longer did the people come by and ask for her prayers very often but the children of the neighborhood discovered this lady so she no longer had the great wonderful spiritual work of counsel and prayer but she discovered that the children needed their toys mended and so she became known as the lady with the glue pot and the little children would come and pass their toys through that little window and she would mend their toys as an oblation to jesus christ lord i do this for you and all of us have what we might call secular work if we're thinking of it in those terms ordinary hum drum not very interesting not very exciting work which nobody's going to notice as long as we do it and we housewives know that that's certainly the case with housework isn't it nobody will notice as long as you do it but if you don't do it the whole world will notice you know that lovely hymn by annie johnson flint i believe he giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater he sendeth more strength when the labors increase to added affliction he addeth his mercy to multiplied trials his multiplied peace his grace has no limit his love has no measure his power has no boundary known unto men but out of his infinite riches in jesus he giveth and giveth and giveth again you can be serene you can have an ordered life if you follow him but the three the two previous conditions are giving up your right to yourself and taking up the cross and following one area which we need to think about is clutter now i know i quit preaching and gone to meddling you don't want to hear anything about what i think about clutter but i do believe that it increases stress it also may cause envy you may have the kind of clutter that somebody other people might wish they had and of course we all have our own definitions of clutter lars has one kind and i have another one he has an office which is in our home and he has made it perfectly clear that he does not expect me to do anything in that office at all no dusting no cleaning no messing around and i'm glad to be absolved of that responsibility but it isn't exactly the same way as i would like to see it and he's back there holding up three fingers letting me know that i'd better not say any more about that subject but one of the enemies among the enemies of serenity are clutter envy hurt which you are not willing to relinquish at the foot of the cross the refusal of the cross which can take so many different forms unwillingness to follow jesus christ because it will mean suffering will also mean unspeakable joy and how i thank god for the tough times and the fallings away and the stripping process various kinds of stripping have to go on throughout our lives don't they and i thank god for them and i pray that he will enable me always to fulfill those three conditions of discipleship every day and i don't think there's a day goes by that he doesn't give us the opportunity to do that before you go to bed tonight you will have an opportunity to give up your right to yourself you will have an opportunity to take up the cross in some probably very tiny unnoticeable form but god assigns that to us doesn't he will we do it gladly to take up that cross and then an unwillingness to follow into what we think may be a disastrous place unwillingness to obey when we walk with the lord in the light of his word what a glory he sheds on our way when we do his good will he abides with us still and with all who would trust and obey may god give us grace to do that god bless you bye which i hope will not offend you but for the sake of everybody who wants to get out of here and get home i do try to keep my answers brief i trust that you will not think that i've given you the back of my hand so i will just go through as many as i possibly can in the time we have you were cons were you concerned about appearances of evil when males came to stay at your home some of you don't know the story but after my second husband's death i took in two lodgers first i had taken in one lodger who was coming to help me take care of my husband but the day that my husband died was the day i mean the day that that man was to move in was the day that my husband died so here i was having made a commitment to a young man who was going to stay in my house and i realized that it didn't look too good to the public so i thought a simple solution is to get another seminary student so i had two older seminary students for two years in my house the first one married my daughter and the second one married me and when i told a friend of mine a little lady in her 70s in dallas texas about how i met husband number three she wanted to know how in the world did you ever get three husbands so i told her the story about lars and she said i believe i'm gonna rent my house out to three widowers i i did find the questions that were given to me and one of them was what has been the most difficult time in your life and how did you get through it elizabeth was married to jim elliot for about 27 months or something and addison leach he only doubled jim elliott's time so he was about four years uh she's now been stuck with the third one for about 20 years i would say that her most difficult time in her life have been the past 20 years but they say how did you get through it you're not through it yet every day there's a cross isn't there here's a question that i'm sure lots of people want to ask but they they don't but this does come once in a while how many years young are you and when did you ask jesus in your heart i will be 71 in december and i have no idea when i asked jesus into my heart i don't have any date that i can point to because i can't remember a time when i didn't love the lord jesus what do you think of home schooling does valerie still do it my dog my daughter homeschools i think home school ma'ams are the hope of this world uh yes valerie is still doing it she has homeschooled all of her children most of the way through right now she has one daughter in a boarding school in canada a wonderful christian boarding school she went there for the 12th grade and is now there in 13th grade in canada they have 13th grade and it is a fine christian boarding school there so she was home schooled up until she was 17. her son her oldest son who's 20 was homeschooled up until ninth grade it was then that his father gave him permission to go to public school because he wanted to be on the swim team and now they have a 13 year old who has been homeschooled but he is now in a public school because he is also an athlete and christiana who is 15 is participating in a program that they have in public schools in california i don't know if they have it in other states but she goes one day a week she goes on wednesdays to public school and sits there for eight hours and gets learns things and gets assignments for the other four days so she does the other four days work at home which is really working quite nicely how can you break the habit of worry when it has been a pattern all your life i would suggest that simple gesture that i described get down on your knees and just say lord i confess the sin of worry here it is lord and i am going to hand it over to you and i am not going to retrieve it now when you say that of course the devil is going to be at your ear instantly and he's going to say do you think that worked you know you feel just as worried as you did when you got down on your knees i don't like to talk to satan i don't think i need to i just say well lord you heard what he said but lord you also know that i mean this i really want you to take over this area of my life so every single time you're tempted and to be tempted is not sin it's when you're tempted to worry that you have to immediately let that red light go on and say get down on your knees and give it to jesus just give it to jesus do you believe in letting god choose the size of the family now suppose i were to say i don't believe in letting god choose anything i mean what the way this is worded of course i believe in letting god choose what god wants to do but let's remember that the sovereignty of god is crowned in his having created creatures with a will to disobey but also we have a will to obey now the the winds and the tides do not have the privilege of disobeying they always do what god wants them to do and so do the robins and the hippopotamuses they do exactly what robbins and hippopotamuses were made to do but god has created us with the power to choose and of course we have to make choices all the time i had to make a choice as to whether i was coming to albany or not now if somebody said do you believe in letting god choose where you're supposed to go which invitations to say yes to i would have to say well of course i want god's choice but i'm the one that has to make the decision so this is a principle also that i find in the book of nehemiah he says when they were building the wall and they were having all kinds of opposition he said we prayed to our god and we set a watch now don't go out of here and say elizabeth elliott says that we could decide the the size of our family i am not saying that either i deplore the attitude of we're going to have two kids period case closed i don't think that's a christian attitude but neither do you know whether god wants you to have four kids or 10 or 20 or whatever so it's a matter of all the things i've been talking about today do you want to do the will of god do you want to trust him and if you're one of those couples that says we want all the children that god wants to give us i say god bless you and i'm not going to be one of these people coming up and saying well how many more are you going to have of course my daughter lives in california where she doesn't get asked are you catholic or careless she gets asked are you mormon or careless because she has eight children and what would you what would you say are the three most something things we can do there's no several words left out that we can do to influence our grandchildren for jesus i think the most important thing that i know of if you live far away so that you can't visit them and can't have them over for sunday dinner which is what i would love to be able to do write letters phone calls are fine if you want to spend your money and your time on phones but you have no record you have nothing if you have email you've got something and i have letters that go back more than 100 years in my family and it is wonderful to read about the godly heritage which is now mine and my mother the day the first day that i left for boarding school and i went to boarding school and i was in fort i was 14. from that day on she wrote a sunday letter every single sunday for the rest of her life and every wednesday when i was in boarding school and i think every wednesday when i was in college i got a letter i got a postcard from my mother so i got a letter and a postcard i only had one grandmother whoever wrote anything to us and her letters were very few and far between but now as a grandmother i feel very strongly that i have an obligation to write letters to my grandchildren so that's the most important thing that i would talk about gifts the kids are loaded with stuff i don't want to give them any more toys or anything they're just too loaded but once in a while i think of something that i can give them this same person asks on the same question on the same card where may i get a copy of if you can get it if is a book by amy carmichael it's a tiny little thin book it's a blockbuster i would recommend it to every single one of you if you go to your christian bookstore they're probably going to say amy carmichael's books are not in print that's not true they are in print your bookstore can order them from the christian literature crusade in pennsylvania christian literature crusade if by amy carmichael well here's another one asking how old i am i know it's a it's an awful shock if you've been listening to my voice as people tell me my voice sounds younger than i am and one little boy who was had been listening to gateway to joy he heard me he saw me and his mother brought me brought him to one of my meetings and pointed me out to him and he said is that elizabeth elliott poor little kid you always seem on top have you ever felt at rock bottom yes i'm not i'm not saying yes i'm always on top but i am saying yes to i have felt as though i was at rock bottom i know you have written so much about your life in your books but i would love to see you write your autobiography well thank you very much i'm not going to so don't hold your breath having just read a chance to die i believe amy carmichael's sacrificial life and in in india comparable to mother teresa's though i don't believe she has received comparable recognition the amma in your biography would not have wanted that recognition that is true she was offered a one of those what do they call them in britain some kind of a reward award by the queen of england queen victoria because of her work in south india and she wrote a very polite letter saying it troubles me to be honored in a way that my savior was not honored would you excuse me so she did not receive whatever that was my husband pastors i know that the church is the lords and that i shouldn't worry about things i just have such a burden for people that are falling by the wayside not coming to church faithfully and starting to slide away how can i keep satan from continually burdening me with worry and about them and what i should do to help them well i think i've given you the only answer i know to give about worry it is forbidden let's keep that in mind and the lord does know what he's doing so we don't bear the whole weight of the world on our shoulders and yet we are meant to intercede in the book a chance to die what is the substance that was given as a punishment to amy carmichael by her parents i don't know it was just a pink powder of some sort it was a medicine and i it was only given for certain kinds of infractions so i i don't know but she in the book she does tell about her having received pink powder and being put to bed as i recall how did you meet mars now you know the answer to that could you discuss submission of a wife to her husband a little further on a practical daily level how does this really play out i would say that on a practical daily level it it doesn't happen there aren't that many reasons why i have to submit to my husband it's only when you disagree that submission becomes a matter for concern obviously if lars and i are totally at one on a decision about something i don't have to submit to him he's already done what i think we ought to do and very likely and don't get me wrong i'm not saying lars has submitted to me it's something that we perhaps have not discussed at all and lars raises the question if i do not object i'm not not having to submit you understand that if i have a reservation about it then in our kind of marriage which i hope is what the kind you have where you can talk peaceably i might make one or two tiny suggestions and bring up something that he might not have thought about as an angle that needs to be considered he might say well you're right i didn't think about that so then that takes care of that on the other hand if he says well thank you very much but i still think that this is the route that we must take then i submit on a practical daily level are there times when the wife can be the final decision maker without violating her husband's headship well certainly when it comes to what you're going to have for dinner i don't think that any man expects to be in charge of most of the things that he would think of as women's work it's when there's something that affects the whole family or if your husband is thinking about getting another job or he wants you to stop working or he wants you to start working those are very tough decisions especially the last one when a woman has been permitted to stay home and has taken care of her children and her husband finally says well you know we can't make it on one salary you're gonna have to go to work we're gonna have to put the kids in daycare i get an awful lot of letters like that that's a painful time when you must submit i ask these questions on behalf of my christian daughter who is newlywed how do you separate being surrendered and giving up my rights i don't they come to the same thing but she goes oh i see that there looked like a period after the word writes giving up my rights from being a parent who doesn't give in to all their wants and wishes you do not surrender to your children you've got to teach your children to surrender to you so i don't think there should be any confusion about that god has assigned us authority over our children and when we spank a child it's a good thing to simply change take the child on your lap after you've given him a spanking and say honey i spanked you because i love you and of course the child doesn't believe that but when he becomes a father he will believe that but you could also say and i ha i must spank you because god tells me that i must punish you if you disobey so the child realizes that he's up against two major forces and he has just received the posterior application of superior force it is too late to start expecting a 12 year old to obey a command the first time if they have not been brought up this way or is it too late i would say go home this afternoon gather your children around you say children your mother has learned something that'll be a shock to them [Music] and just make it perfectly clear in a calm friendly voice we are going to start over i want to ask you forgiveness that i have been allowing you to get away with things that you have no business getting away with and from now on i'm going to speak once and i am going to expect you to obey me and it's amazing what a difference it makes when children are perfectly clear about the expectations now that's the flaw in so many parents method of raising their children they have not made the expectations crystal clear and my parents always did that so from today on they're going to be crystal clear you're going to tell your children i am going to expect you to obey me the first time and if they're 12 years old you don't need to go through an hour of explaining what that means which you might have to do for your eight-month-old who's just learning to crawl if one husband has had a stroke and isn't able to handle the responsibility how can he be the head of the household he is still the head because he has been assigned by god this is a divine assignment he does not abdicate his head his headship but of course he cannot do all the things that he used to do but i would say if the man is still compos mentis so that you can talk with him then you would run by all the big decisions anything that comes up you would want to talk over with him but he may not be capable of talking at all what if your husband is real immature and isn't ready to handle being the head of the house my daughter's husband is 10 years younger and has a lot of growing up to do well that's a story that's quite common in fact my husband and i had dinner um night before last with a couple where the husband was 10 years younger and they had both been divorced before so there were various things that needed to be taken care of but i think it is by the husband's recognition of what a solemn holy responsibility he has been given according to ephesians 5 that he is not only the head in the sense of standing in the place of christ but he is also responsible to make his wife holy and i think that's a much tougher response much tougher assignment for men than anything that god has asked us women to do it's a whole lot easier to submit than it is for a husband to love his wife as christ loved the church and to make her holy but he will have to answer for that but this question of course deals with what may be impossibilities oh not no i was thinking of the man that had a stroke the one who's immature he's going to have a lot of learning to do what is the title and author of the book about mary it would be very hazardous for me to tell you because somebody would be saying well why is she recommending a book like that i just want to tell you that i learned from amy carmichael you can learn a great deal if you learn how to take the chaff throw away the chaff and take the wheat so i am i don't dare tell you the name of this book because i know that i'd get into big trouble and you would get into trouble and this church might get into trouble because i read all kinds of stuff and i have learned over the years to take the wheat and it's amazing how many odd places one does find wheat in how many brothers and sisters does jesus have don't know as far as i know it says in the scriptures that it calls james the lord's brother but i'm told that the ancient languages the word brother was also the same as the word cousin elizabeth my question for you is how do you really know when god is speaking to you i have been a christian for 15 years the only way i know is a feeling many friends say they actually hear god i i never get any feelings and i've certainly never heard any audible voices and i've never seen any handwriting on the wall and i've never seen any stars of bethlehem or pillars of fire i just believe that god is always speaking to me sometimes i'm listening and sometimes i'm not but when i'm asking him specifically for guidance usually i expect that he is going to speak to me first of all through his word secondly through people godly people and thirdly through circumstances i have a book on the subject of the guidance of god that's it's called god's guidance what has been the first scripture that has helped you through your hardest times the hardest time that i experienced up to that point was when jim died of course having waited for him for five and a half years and then having him die only 27 months later and many people from all over the world wrote to us five widows at that time and among the many scriptures that were sent to me one shown with a great light and it was this one second corinthians 4 17 and 18 our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all so we fix our eyes on what is seen but on not on what is seen but on what is unseen for what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal and the lord was reminding me right then and there that i must constantly keep my eyes on christ not on myself not on my sorrows not on the loss of my husband not on my poor fatherless daughter but on christ and that that has been a watchword for me ever since i am a missionary i also would like to be a mother any advice well i think you better get married no that's too facetious i'm sure it must be a married lady who would like to be a mother i would certainly pray that the lord will give you a child and i would hope that your husband wants a child as much as you do so my advice is i see that probably what she's talking about is how can is it possible to be both a missionary and a mother well yes of course thousands and thousands of missionaries have been mothers sometimes young parents who are planning to be missionaries will come to me and say is it fair for me to take for us to take our children into darkest africa or into some dangerous place like the jungles of ecuador to me that's that's not even a question if god is calling me as he did to go to the alca indians then god wants my children there and god is responsible to take care of them obedience is my job results are god's job remember that what can one do when her husband doesn't believe the husband should be the head of the household give him ephesians 5. there isn't any question about it not your idea that he should be the head of the house don't let him think that this is some notion of yours just point to the scripture we have no other authority on that what are you hearing from the lord today all kinds of things i'm just saying thank you lord for bringing us here show us what you want us to do next how can we pray for you please pray anytime god brings my name to mine that god will make me a doer and not merely a talker and a writer it's a dangerous thing to be talking and writing dishing out a lot of stuff if i myself in the secret places where nobody's looking i'm not being faithful please pray for that pray also for the decisions that we have to make about which invitations to accept that's an extremely difficult thing it is probably the most difficult thing that i have to do i get far more invitations than we can accept of course and pray that the lord will teach me daily to honor my husband i'm trying i'm learning i do honor him but not as much as i would like to he's smiling at me daniel 2 12 says and many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake will awake these to everlasting life but to others dot dot dot then jesus said to the thief this day you shall be with me in paradise can you explain when we die are we instantly with him no i can't explain that's all the no means it's a mystery and i don't think i need to know i think god has given us perfect clarity and all the things that we need to know and we leave the mysteries with him how do i encourage my homeschooled children who are being treated harshly by other children in our church just try not try your best not to in any way feed self-pity in your children because they feel sorry for themselves i'm sure when they come home from church and say well so-and-so said so-and-so and they did this or they didn't do that you just have to be cheerful smiling confident this is what god has given us to do god has not given that to all the parents in the church we love them and we can be quiet and smile sweetly when people say things like that that hurt us scripture says hope deferred maketh the heart sick how you keep a rejoicing heart and a trusting heart when years of prayer for children's lives seems to result in more waiting and longing i have a hard time keeping in balance fervent prayer and quiet waiting i'm sure we all have that kind of difficulty my prayer can be very fervent it can also be very brief i pray for quite a long list of people all of my family members i get i pray for every day and a few other people as well well certainly i don't spend much time on them but i'm earnest about it i'm fervent but i don't think god needs a whole lot of words i just commit them once again into the hands of the lord right now i have a niece who's going through horrible horrible suffering i don't know what to say to god that i haven't already said to him about it but each day i pray for her very briefly and the rest of it much more is quiet waiting my daughter is a junior in college age 20 she has changed her major twice and still is unhappy with her current major she wants god's will for her life but can't find it she is now depressed and under a doctor's care she loves god but has become confused and does not know what direction to take i pray for her constantly a word from you would be helpful if she's a junior in college and 20 years old she's not alone by any means a friend of ours max barnett who has been working for more than 30 years with baptist students in texas is it oklahoma oklahoma he said there's not one student in a hundred that knows what they want to do when they get out of college now that was not the case in my generation of course very far from it but it's not unusual but my advice my advice in this case would simply be to tell her stick with the major you're in just believe that this is the given for now and do it faithfully and you have no idea what god may have in store for you this may look like something that has nothing to do with what you think god's will is going to turn out to be but god has wonderful ways of transform transforming things which we think of are disastrous how do you make more time for yourself when you've given it to others i don't try to make more time for myself people ask my daughter that and she says my time with my for myself is my time with the lord she doesn't have any other time for herself and lars and i have found over the years that the work we're doing escalates constantly the mail escalates we do not have an office we don't have a staff we don't have a whole lot of people back there receiving the mail and answering the phone and all that we do have a man who lives in our house who answers the phone when he's there which is only in the evening in the mornings and evenings but as for making time for myself i just believe that god can take care of that most of my time i would say is given to other people in one form or another preparing radio programs in order to broadcast writing my newsletter for those that would like to get the newsletter answering my mail preparing the talks and normal housework can you believe that i do dust and i clean toilets and i watch the best bathtub and all of those things too but lars and i have not felt that we had any great necessity to find time for ourselves how can i know what i want to do for a career when i'm older i feel as if god is telling me two different things at once i i can only guess that this is written by a young person who wants to know what careers she or he will have when she gets to the point of choosing one god is not likely to tell you very much in advance he doesn't give us very many previews of coming attractions he knows how to [Music] bring about the situations now in which he is going to be molding us for whatever he has in mind later believe me i never imagined that i would be writing books and that was something that was dropped in my lap i fully expected to be a jungle missionary for the rest of my life i had no other agenda when jim was killed the job of writing a book was literally dropped in my lap and that's a very long story that i can't tell you but once you write a book then people think you can talk and so i got to be asked to speak well then if you speak then somebody decides you need to go on the radio and then somebody decides you need to be on the internet and then somebody wants to come to your house as they did three or four days ago and do a television interview i mean it's just constant things which i feel as i have nothing to do with but i belong to jesus he is my lord he's my savior he is the one who engineers all things for his glory so whoever this person is be assured that do the next thing today do what god wants you to do before you go to bed tonight in his time he will show you how can you be submissive to a husband who will treat you like a doormat i give you philippians 2 where it says he became a servant he who was god by nature took upon himself the nature of a servant and was made in the likeness of sinful men he became nothing it also says in that same passage the greek word actually means he annihilated himself so nothing is less than a door mat and i have no comforting words for people who are angry because they're being treated like a doormat jesus was insulted he was reviled he was rejected he was captured and slapped and blindfolded and whipped and nailed to a cross and he's asking you and me will you follow me so thank god if somebody's treating you like a doormat say lord i offer it up to you thank you i love your wisdom i understand that jesus said we should show our love through our obedience he never said to worship him on sunday why don't we worship on the sabbath i'm not a seventh-day adventist he observed the sabbath and said he would not do away with one jot or tittle of the law it was because the ancient church thought that his resurrection was sufficient reason to consider that the first day of the week how do you deal with bitterness against a christian husband who has not supported his family financially for seven years he has tried but made no money and the wife is forced to work and raise the children how do you deal with bitterness in general a very good question how do you deal with bitterness in general because most of us have experienced it in one form or another and it is a demonic thing it is satan's mastercard if he can persuade us to be bitter we will ruin our own lives and ruin the lives of other people now surely this is an extremely difficult situation one thing i might suggest would be that you quit working that the wife quit working now maybe you'll say well my husband is forcing me to work but if he's saying i can't get a job but you can what he probably means is i can't get as good a job as you have so you go ahead and work but maybe you could talk to him about just staying home or maybe you could just quit work i don't know whether you can do that but when women tell me that they have to make all the decisions because their husbands don't make them then i hear from the husbands that the reason they don't make them is because the wives have already made them and i hear from women in the church we have to do all these things that we don't think women in the church ought to be doing because the men aren't doing them well my advice there is quit doing them oh yeah but the church will fall apart fine let the church fall apart and then maybe the men will wake up and realize it is their responsibility and it is the husband's responsibility to be the provider there isn't any question about that scripture says that if any man does not provide for his own he is worse than an infidel what advice would you give to a woman entering the ministry to be a pastor's wife well i asked my daughter that question years ago i've never been a pastor's wife but she said tell the people to give and give and give and don't expect to be thanked now that was back in her early days and i know that she has been thanked many times since then but she is a giver and her people the people in her church have told me what a blessing she has been in her humility and her willingness to be there for them so just ask the lord to make you the most godly woman that he can make you when the husband is not saved and expects something of me being a christian woman that goes against god's word where is the line between your commands your god's commands and your husbands it's impossible to draw a line there but let me recommend to you elizabeth rice hanford's book me obey him it is a wonderful book and it deals with these hard questions elizabeth rice hanford she lives in greenville she was my debate colleague in college we were in the same class together and she has written a wonderful book on the subject of submission i would strongly suggest that you get that because it's much more involved than mine than i can give the last question is so long i left it for the last do we still have another minute or two i don't want to keep everybody too long i haven't read this yet but it's both sides of this card my husband had 50 percent mental capacity during an injury due to an injury in june during that time he couldn't work and the day before the accident had put in his resignation to at work so we had no income he didn't want me to work i struggled over that for days and weeks but came to the conclusion that if god could speak through nebuchadnezzar he could speak through my husband my parents started giving us interest free loans and insurance every two weeks or something i'm not sure if it says insurance or what it says this went on for four months my dad not saved throws this in my face every time i talk with him he says we'll never pay him back and he's decreasing the amount of loan by a hundred dollars every two weeks i feel very uncomfortable with the situation my husband is getting minimum wage from his new business now but it doesn't pay the bills for family i don't think i'll read all the rest of it all i can i'm sure i wouldn't be able to answer all the questions but the bible does say my god shall supply all your need remember we have wills to do his will he has created us capable of making decisions and acting all i can say is ask god to show you what to do pray with and for your husband about it thank you

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Published: Tue Oct 13 2020