Is your heart troubled by some way that you have failed the Lord? Amy Carmichael shows us the truth about how the Lord looks upon our failings:
John 13.38: Jesus answered him, . . . The cock shall not crow until you have denied Me three times.
John 14.1: Let not your heart be troubled.
“After speaking of Peter’s fall, which He foresaw, our dear Lord immediately says, Let not your heart be troubled. He saw across that day of grief to the restoration that would follow. His eyes were not fixed on the sad interruption to fellowship and joy, but on the hour when Peter would be back in love again, never again to grieve his Lord like that. And so to the surprised and surely greatly troubled little company He said, Let not your heart be troubled.
“Most of us have things which would naturally greatly trouble us. Let us face these things as our Lord Jesus did in John 13.38 and then go straight on into chapter 14.1.”
A day or two ago one who was with me prayed like this, “Lord, help me to welcome interruptions, especially when the interruption seems less important than the work I am trying to do.” That prayer has often been mine. I expect many of you have felt the need of the loving grace of the Lord to help you to welcome interruptions, especially when they do not seem to matter nearly so much as what we are doing at the moment. Thinking of this, I found myself this early morning in Lk. 9.11. The people followed our Lord Jesus (He had wanted to be alone with His disciples just then), and He welcomed them.
It is so easy to be too preoccupied to be welcoming. May the love of our Lord Jesus, for whose sake and in whose service we are here, so overflow from us that it will…
Some thoughts from Amy Carmichael that have inspired me time and again:
Ps 18.30: As for God, His way is perfect.
God is love, so we may change the word and say, As for Love, His way is perfect. This has been helping me.
One of the ways of Love is to prepare us beforehand for any hard thing that He knows is near. Perhaps this word will be His loving preparation to some heart for a disappointment, or for some trial of faith, or some secret sorrow between the Father and His child. As for Love, His way is perfect. (Edges of His Ways, p. 131)
If we take this word seriously, it will be life-changing.
A friend and I were talking just the other day about how wonderful the “old” short songs are, especially for memorizing Scripture. They may be old, but they are ever new. I find myself singing them frequently, especially when I’m out for a walk. As Amy Carmichael so wisely says: “The reason why singing is such a splendid shield against the fiery darts of the devil is that it greatly helps us to forget him, and he cannot endure being forgotten. He likes us to be occupied with him, what he is doing (our temptations), with his victories (our falls), with anything but our glorious Lord. So sing. Never be afraid of singing too much. We are much more likely to sing too little.” Here’s a sampling of those I love.
Jeremiah 18.4,6 And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Can I not do with you as this potter has done? says the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter hand, so are you in My hand.
When a piece of steel has been subjected to such stress that it has lost its power to recover its elasticity, it is said to be distorted. But it can be made right again. It is put in the furnace, and so it recovers what it had lost.
Perhaps we have given way under the great stress of temptation and becoming “distorted.” Perhaps we have lost hope of ever recovering. “I am like this now; I shall be like this.”
Are we willing to be put into any furnace of God’s choosing if only we may be made fit for His use? We cannot choose our furnace. Sometimes it is the furnace of affliction of Isaiah 48.10.
But always there is hope. Can I not do with you as this potter? asks the Lord. We are in His hand, and no one can snatch us from His grasp. Our dear Lord says, My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand (John 10.29).
Today being the feast of the Passion of St. John the Baptist, I cannot help but return to something about which I have posted before, and that is: the blessing of not being offended by however and whatever God is doing. In Luke 7, we read about John being in prison. He sends word to Jesus wondering, “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” A puzzling thing for John, of all people, to ask. However, considering his situation at the time, not surprising. He’s in prison. Jesus has not come to visit him (as far as we know). So, as for many of us, it would be perfectly understandable to start dealing with doubts about Jesus.
I find Jesus’ answer even more astounding than John’s question. Jesus instructs John’s disciples to go to him and recite a list of the many wonders that Jesus has done. And then He concludes with that mysterious phrase: “And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.” Amy Carmichael was the one who unlocked this mystery for me. She refers to this verse many times in her writings. I’ll let her speak for herself . . . any may each of you respond to the grace of becoming one of the “unoffended.” She writes from the perspective of John’s thinking as he is listening to the report of his disciples:
St. John the Baptist in Prison receives Christ’s answer, (Matthew 11: 2-6) Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627 – 1678)
Before they got to the end of the mighty things they were to tell him, his heart must have kindled with new hope: My Lord can do all that, He is doing all that, He is omnipotent. He is my loving Lord, and He is very near. I shall soon be free–He who is opening the prison doors of death will open my prison door. Can you not all but hear him say it, or at least feel him think it, as he listens to the story of ‘what things’ these men of his ‘have seen and heard’? And then, instead of a promise, a quick help, ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at Me,’ and that was all. But it was enough. John accepted the unexplained. And a light shone in the cell, and in that light he lived till his prison door opened, and he stepped across its threshold into the Land of Light.
To many of you this is a familiar word, but to me it came afresh as I read these two verses one after the other last night [Luke 7.22,23], and it spoke to me as I thought of the many who are being trusted not to be offended in Him.
Let us pray for each other to each be able to accept the unexplained and not be offended in Him.
“Sir Robert Ball, the astronomer, began when he was old to write the story of his life. He made this rule for himself: ‘Try to give everything narrated a kind twist.'”
How would our lives look to us if we practiced doing that?
She goes on to say:
“Isn’t that such a beautiful rule? Let us ask the Spirit of God to search us about this matter of giving a ‘kind twist’ to what others say and do.”
Mt 17.17 Then Jesus answered and said, . . . “Bring him here to me.”
Have you a ‘him’ about whom you are anxious? Bring him to Me. Have you a ‘her’? Bring her to Me. We can even turn the pronoun to ‘it’–this crushing burden of the state of the world, the grief and misery that overwhelms us if we think at all–Bring it to Me. We can turn the word to ‘all’–the problems of our work with its cares and its questions, and more personal cares and anxieties too–Bring all to Me.
And there are joys, too. Don’t let us bring only griefs and anxieties, but also thanks and praises.
Recently I was sent a picture of ajug into which water was being poured. The idea was that love, or whatever we need, is poured into us like that. I don’t think of it so at all. I think of the love of God as a great river, pouring through our ravine in flood time. Nothing can keep this love from opuring through us, except of course our own blocking of the river.
Do you sometimes feel that you have got to the end of your love for someone who refuses and repulses you? Such a thought is folly, for one cannot come to the end of what one has not got. We have no store of love at all. We are not jugs, we are riverbeds.
If there be hindrance, sweep it all away;
O Love Eternal, pour through me I pray.
1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.
Let us take time today to consider the love of God.
Some of us are tempted to fear about ourselves. What about tomorrow? Shall we be able to go on? Perfect love casts out fear. Love God and there will be no room for fear, for to love is to trust and if we trust we do not fear.
Some of us are tempted to fear the future. There again perfect love casts out fear. He who has led will lead. It quickens love and encourages faith to think of all that God has done. He has not brought us so far, to leave us now.
So let us open all our windows and our doors to the great love of God. Love is like light. It will flood our rooms if only we open to it. Let us take time today to open more fully than ever before to the blessed love of God.
Witnesses to Hope 