Amy Wilson Carmichael was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for 55 years without furlough.
“I am the Lord, that is My Name, and My Glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to graven images.”
But the men He made to glorify Him take His Glory from Him, give it to another; that, the sin of it, the shame, calls with a low, deep under-call through all the other calls. God’s Glory is being given to another. Do we love Him enough to care? Or do we measure our private cost, if these distant souls are to be won, and, finding it considerable, cease to think or care? “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see”—”They took Jesus and led Him away. And He, bearing His cross, went forth into a place called the place of a skull . . . where they crucified Him.” . . . “Herein is love.” . . . “God so loved the world.” . . . Have we petrified past feeling? Can we stand and measure now? “I know that only the Spirit, Who counted every drop that fell from the torn brow of Christ as dearer than all the jeweled gates of Paradise, can lift the Church out of her appreciation of the world, the world as it appeals to her own selfish lusts, into an appreciation of the world as it appeals to the heart of God.” O Spirit, come and lift us into this love, inspire us by this love. Let us look at the vision of the Glory of our God with eyes that have looked at His love!
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Sovereign Lord, what I most desired you have denied, yet I praise you! On what account, I know not, yet I praise you. You have done it; that silences me. Your will makes it indisputable, and renders it my indispensable duty to your wise determinations. Hitherto I have had no complaint on the conduct of providence; nor shall I complain until all the mazes are explained. Do, then, all your counsel, though all my counsels should come to nothing. Can a person expect favors from God–who will not wait for God’s way and time?
But what does it matter how the affairs of a present world go, if the interests of the next world are secured? The weather-vane is whirled about with every blast, but the iron spire is still at rest, because it cannot be displaced. So, what does it matter though the outward man decays–if the inner man grows? What does it matter though the temporal condition be perplexed–if the conscience is possessed of spiritual peace? I praise you that you interpose your providence, even in disappointing my dearest plans; and do not give me up to the blind desires of my own heart, and to wander at random in counsels of mine own. I can resolve the present case into nothing but your will; yet I rejoice more to resign your will, and to be submissive to your disposal, than to have my will in every point performed. This is the only way in my private capacity that I can glorify you.
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Introduction
Why me? Why now? What is God doing? Suffering is a tool God uses to get our attention and to accomplish His purposes in our lives. It is designed to build our trust in the Almighty, but suffering requires the right response if it is to be successful in accomplishing God’s purposes. Suffering forces us to turn from trust in our own resources to living by faith in God’s resources.
Suffering is not in itself virtuous, nor is it a sign of holiness. It is also not a means of gaining points with God, or of subduing the flesh (as in asceticism). When it is possible, suffering is to be avoided. Christ avoided suffering unless it meant acting in disobedience to the Father’s will.
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But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)
Sin is not only a crime, for which we were condemned to die and which Christ purchased for us the pardon of, but it is a disease, which tends directly to the death of our souls and which Christ provided for the cure of.
By His stripes (that is, the sufferings He underwent) He purchased for us the Spirit and grace of God to mortify our corruptions, which are the distempers of our souls, and to put our souls in a good state of health, that they may be fit to serve God and prepared to enjoy Him.
And by the doctrine of Christ’s cross, and the powerful arguments it furnished us with against, sin, the dominion of sin is broken in us and we are fortified against that which feeds the disease.
INTRODUCTION
“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough”[II Corinthians 11:3-4 ESV].
With the same fear that Paul had for the Corinthian church, I issue this paper. Oh, that believers’ eyes will be opened and that they will not fall prey for the deceit of Satan and follow after another Jesus. This paper is in response to teachings propagated by many Word of Faith Movement teachers. A man may be excused if the error he teaches is simply out of pure ignorance however, when they are reproved and continue unrepentant with their teachings, such should be addressed publicly of their error in order to savage the people of God from blasphemy. Many other things may be overlooked or simply be taken as matters of opinions but we cannot do that when it comes to the Person of Jesus. When the image of the true Jesus is distorted we’re dealing with heresies. The doctrine concerning Christ is not something left to our freedom of interpretation seeing that the Bible provides clear teaching of who He is.
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AJ and Ruth Gibson were missionaries in Monterrey, Mexico for 5 years. They are now working on the front lines of Christian missions through the pioneer church planting ministry of 'To Every Tribe' and the 'Center for Pioneer Church Planting'.
At the heart of missionary reckless abandon lies the fundamental conviction that we as believers have been called to live as pilgrims and strangers on this earth (see, for example, Hebrews 11). Our citizenship is not here on this earth but in heaven. A willingness to face suffering and persecution for the cause of Christ and his kingdom is characteristic of those who affirm, with the old gospel song, “This world is not my home, I’m just passin’ through.” In 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Paul exemplifies this mindset:
This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
Drawing from Paul’s words, here’s how to be a pilgrim and stranger on earth:
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When interest in the churches begins to centre round the visual and the sensual it is commonly a sign of impending apostasy. By ‘sensual’ I mean that which appeals to the senses of man (sight, smell, hearing), as opposed to ‘spirit’, that is, the capacity that belongs to those born of the Spirit of God. Hence the antithesis, ‘sensual, having not the Spirit’ (Jude 19). ‘Sensual’ is also translated ‘natural’ or ‘worldly’; the meaning is the same. It does not take regeneration to give the sensual or the aesthetic a religious appeal to the natural man or woman.
In the Old Testament the people of God were in measure taught by their senses as God imposed the form of worship. As a check against any misuse of that means of teaching no additions to or subtractions from it were allowed. But with the finished work of Christ, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, a momentous change took place. The church was raised to the higher privilege of worship in ‘spirit and truth’ (John4:24). She belongs to the ‘Jerusalem which is above’ (Gal. 4:26).
In the words of John Owen, ‘the naked simplicity of gospel institutions’ was established in the place of ‘the old, glorious worship of the temple’; Levitical choirs, incense, vestments, etc. — all were gone. Yet not gone permanently; for as church and world gradually came together in the rise of the Papacy, worship that appealed to the senses was reintroduced. Presuming on Old Testament practice, what the gospel had ended in the apostolic age was restored, and the difference brought in by Pentecost disappeared.1 Instead there developed a form of worship in Roman Catholicism which made impressions on the senses at the natural level and which did not need the Holy Spirit.
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Sovereign Lord, what I most desired you have denied, yet I praise you! On what account, I know not, yet I praise you. You have done it; that silences me. Your will makes it indisputable, and renders it my indispensable duty to your wise determinations. Hitherto I have had no complaint on the conduct of providence; nor shall I complain until all the mazes are explained. Do, then, all your counsel, though all my counsels should come to nothing. Can a person expect favors from God–who will not wait for God’s way and time?
