Latest / Traveler’s Tales / Christians You Should Know: Amy Carmichael

Transcript

Christians You Should Know: Amy Carmichael · Traveler’s Tales

• 0:12
  Some of the greatest things God does in life begin
• 0:16
  with something that seems like a disappointment. For Amy
• 0:19
  Carmichael, it was the color of her eyes. As a
• 0:24
  little girl in Ireland, Amy desperately wanted blue eyes.
• 0:28
  She prayed that God would change her brown eyes to blue,
• 0:31
  and she believed He could do it. She went to sleep expecting a
• 0:35
  miracle. But the next morning, when she looked in the mirror, her eyes
• 0:39
  were still brown. Oh, the disappointment!
• 0:43
  Why wouldn't God answer such a simple prayer?
• 0:47
  Well, years later, on the other side of the world,
• 0:51
  Amy would understand why.
• 0:54
  This is Greg Dowdy, and you're listening to Traveler's Tales produced
• 0:58
  by Enjoying the Journey. History is filled
• 1:01
  with people whose lives remind us that God sees farther
• 1:06
  than we can see. What looks like a disappointment
• 1:10
  in one chapter may actually turn out to be God's preparation
• 1:14
  for another, and few lives illustrate that
• 1:18
  truth more beautifully the life of Amy Carmichael.
• 1:22
  Amy Carmichael was born December 16,
• 1:24
  1867, in Millisle, Northern Ireland.
• 1:28
  She came to Christ as a teenager, and as she grew in
• 1:32
  her walk with God, so did her desire to give her life completely
• 1:36
  to him. Then, on January 13,
• 1:40
  1892, 2 simple words of Scripture
• 1:44
  pressed themselves upon her heart. Go ye.
• 1:48
  Those words became very personal to Amy, and she
• 1:52
  believed God was calling her to leave the familiar behind and
• 1:56
  carry the gospel to those who had never heard. Her first
• 2:00
  missionary assignment took her to Japan, but poor health
• 2:05
  eventually forced her to leave. And once again, God's direction
• 2:09
  did not seem to follow the path she might have expected.
• 2:13
  Then, in November of 1895, Amy arrived
• 2:17
  in South India, and she would never return home.
• 2:21
  For the next 55 years, India would be her home,
• 2:25
  its people would become her people, and its children would become
• 2:28
  the great burden of her heart.
• 2:31
  Eventually, Amy settled in Dhanavur, where she encountered
• 2:36
  a heartbreaking reality. Young children, especially girls,
• 2:39
  were being given over to Hindu temples where some were faced
• 2:44
  with exploitation and abuse associated with the temple system.
• 2:49
  Amy could not look the other way. The love of Christ
• 2:52
  compelled her to act. So she began rescuing
• 2:56
  and caring for children who otherwise had little hope
• 3:00
  of escape. What began with a few girls eventually
• 3:03
  grew into the Donaver Fellowship, a community
• 3:07
  devoted to protecting, nurturing, educating and pointing
• 3:10
  these children to Christ. And this is where those
• 3:14
  brown eyes become especially interesting.
• 3:18
  As Amy worked among the people of India, she sometimes would
• 3:21
  darken her skin with coffee and dress in Indian clothing so
• 3:26
  she could move less conspicuously through areas where she was seeking to help
• 3:30
  children. Her brown eyes helped her blend in more
• 3:34
  naturally. The eyes she had once asked God to change
• 3:38
  were the very eyes God knew she would need.
• 3:42
  What a wonderful reminder that unanswered prayer is not
• 3:46
  the evidence of an uncaring God.
• 3:50
  Sometimes we are asking God to change something that he intends to
• 3:54
  use. Sometimes we're disappointed because we can only
• 3:58
  see today while God can already see tomorrow.
• 4:02
  Amy would later write, it is a safe thing to trust
• 4:06
  Him to fulfill the desires which He creates. And that
• 4:11
  trust would be tested repeatedly. Missionary life was not
• 4:15
  easy. There were disappointments, opposition, sickness,
• 4:19
  heartbreak. Amy discovered that following God's
• 4:22
  will does not mean avoiding difficulty.
• 4:25
  Sometimes obedience takes us directly into it.
• 4:30
  Yet she learned to look beyond the difficulty to see the
• 4:34
  faithfulness of God. She wrote, there is always
• 4:38
  something to be happy about if we look for it. 2 men look
• 4:41
  through prison bars. The one saw mud, the other
• 4:45
  stars. The prison bars may be the same,
• 4:48
  yet the difference is where you look.
• 4:52
  And perhaps that is a word someone needs today.
• 4:55
  You may not be able to change the circumstances surrounding you, but you
• 4:59
  can choose where you fix your eyes. You can stare
• 5:02
  at the mud, or you can look toward the stars. You can focus
• 5:06
  only on what has gone wrong, or you can look for the evidence that
• 5:10
  God is still at work. In 1931,
• 5:14
  Amy suffered a serious fall that left her mostly
• 5:18
  confined for the remaining years of her life. And for
• 5:22
  a woman who had spent decades actively serving others, it must have
• 5:25
  felt as though her usefulness had suddenly been taken away.
• 5:30
  But God was not finished with her. When Amy
• 5:33
  could no longer go as she once had, she wrote.
• 5:38
  From her years of physical weakness came books,
• 5:41
  devotional writings, letters, and poetry, and all of that would travel
• 5:45
  far beyond India. She eventually wrote dozens of books,
• 5:48
  including the beloved devotional work If. Her body
• 5:52
  had been limited, but her influence had not.
• 5:56
  There is another lesson from Amy Carmichael's life that deserves
• 5:59
  our attention. She understood that serving God is
• 6:03
  not simply about doing more; it is about doing
• 6:07
  what God has given us to do. She wrote,
• 6:11
  no master is responsible for uncommanded work.
• 6:16
  Amy understood the danger of becoming so busy doing
• 6:19
  things for God that we fail to wait upon God.
• 6:24
  Not every opportunity is an assignment. Not every burden
• 6:28
  is yours to carry. Not everything that can
• 6:31
  be done is what God has called you to do. We need wisdom
• 6:35
  to say yes when God says go, and we need the humility to
• 6:40
  say no when he has given that work to someone else.
• 6:43
  Amy Carmichael never married. She never had biological
• 6:47
  children of her own. She spent 55
• 6:50
  years far from the land of her birth. She endured pain,
• 6:55
  disappointment, opposition, and eventually years of
• 6:58
  physical limitation. Yet when she died in Dhanavur,
• 7:03
  India, on January 18th,
• 7:05
  1951, she left behind far more
• 7:09
  than buildings or books. She left behind
• 7:13
  lives that had been changed because one woman was willing to
• 7:16
  say yes to God. And perhaps that is the great challenge
• 7:21
  of Amy Carmichael's story. You do not have to understand
• 7:24
  everything God is doing in order to trust him. You don't
• 7:29
  have to see the end of the road before taking the next step.
• 7:33
  You do not have to have the life that you planned in order to have
• 7:36
  a life greatly used by God. That disappointment you don't
• 7:40
  understand, trust him with it. That door
• 7:44
  of opportunity that closed, trust him with
• 7:49
  it. That limitation you wish God would remove,
• 7:53
  trust him with it. That assignment he has placed
• 7:57
  before you, obey him in it.
• 8:01
  The little girl who once wondered why God would not give her blue eyes eventually
• 8:05
  discovered that her father had seen all the way to India.
• 8:09
  And the God who saw Amy's tomorrow sees yours
• 8:14
  as well. So don't spend your life wishing God had written
• 8:18
  your story differently. Instead, give him the
• 8:22
  pen. Trust his wisdom. Follow his leading.
• 8:26
  Do the work he has given you to do, and then leave
• 8:30
  the results with him. Thank you
• 8:35
  for joining us today. On Traveler's Tales.
• 8:37
  Keep exploring the people, places, and stories that help
• 8:41
  bring biblical truth to life by visiting our website
• 8:45
  at etj.bible, all designed to
• 8:48
  help you follow God's Word and find Christ's joy.