Lord, I Am Willing

Lord, I am willing

To receive what You give;

To lack what You withhold;

To relinquish what You take;

To suffer what You inflict;

To be what You require.

~unknown

I found that powerful prayer (poem) in a book a friend gave me for my birthday. Its words remind me of this insightful statement (attributed to Amy Carmichael) that Elisabeth Elliot often shared on her Gateway to Joy radio program: In acceptance lieth peace.

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Pray for the Children!

Several years ago, while listening to Elisabeth Elliot's radio program, Gateway to Joy, I heard her quote one of Amy Carmichael's poems. I loved the poem, found it on the Internet, and learned that it was included in the book, Toward Jerusalem, which is a collection of poems by Amy. But the poem Elisabeth quoted is one of my favorites.

The poem is actually a prayer Amy was praying for the children under her care at the Dohnavur Fellowship (a refuge for underprivileged children) in South India when Amy was a Protestant missionary there from 1895 until her death in 1951. It's one of the sweetest prayers I've heard for children. 

Copyright restrictions prevent me from sharing the entire poem, but I can share a summary of her thoughts. She asked God to protect them from the powers of evil, which can pull them down--like whirlpools and/or quicksand do. She asked God to guide children through life's troubled waters and to cheer them in the midst of life's battles. 

There's more, much more, and Amy expressed the deep desire of her heart far better than I can summarize. I encourage you to buy the book and/or click here to read the poem (it's the third one) and then offer her words as your prayer on behalf of all children.

God's Inexorable Love

As always when I read books by Elisabeth Elliot, I learn so much about what it means to be a Christian and how to live like one. Currently, I'm reading her book, God's Guidance: A Slow and Certain Light, published by Revel in 1997.

While writing about the importance of obeying God, she summarizes how God's chosen people (the Israelites) failed to trust Him and how they disobeyed Him time and time again. Even so, "In countless ways he bore with them, corrected them, punished them, goaded them, and brought them to the promised land. His love for them was inexorable" (p.45).

Note: I had to look up the pronunciation and definition of the word “inexorable,” whereupon I discovered that in’ eks(uh)r(uh)b(uh)l is an adjective that means “impossible to stop or prevent.” Synonyms are: relentless, unstoppable, inescapable, inevitable, unavoidable, irrevocable, unalterable...

That brought tears to my eyes, since I know His love for me (and for you, Dear Reader) is inexorable. As I reflected on that mind-boggling truth, I recalled the passage of Scripture our minister read and explained the Sunday morning many years ago when I re-committed my life to Christ.

In that passage, the Apostle Paul is praying that the Christians at Ephesus (and you and I) would know (experience; be fully convinced of) the great love God through Christ has for us. In a portion of that powerful prayer, we find these words: "may [you] have the strength to comprehend...what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:18-19, ESV).

Believing He loves us far more than we can imagine (or hope!) and responding gladly to that love makes ALL the difference. Because He loves us completely and constantly, we want to serve Him, to obey Him, to please Him... That's a far cry from keeping His commandments because we have to!

The Gift of "Daily Bread"

Elisabeth Elliot begins her book,  God’s Guidance: A Slow and Certain Light, with a phrase-by-phrase discussion of the words included in what is called The Lord’s Prayer or The Model Prayer, which is found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.

Our Father, who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done on earth

as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil,

For thine is the kingdom,

And the power, and the glory forever.

Amen.

In the section dealing with Give us this day our daily bread, Elisabeth points out that God not only created us to need what He gives, but He also wants us to recognize our need for His provisions by asking for them.  She says “bread” includes not only food to sustain our bodies but also, in a broader sense, all the things we need Him to supply, guidance being one of them.

Throughout the chapter dealing with the Lord’s Prayer, which He gave to His disciples as a model for them (and us!) to use, Elisabeth uses word pictures to clarify the principles in the prayer and help us to remember them. For example, in the Give us this day our daily bread section, she says she likes to picture, at the beginning of each new day,  the Lord presenting her with a platter containing all the things He knows is best for her for that day.

Since He always answers our  prayer for “daily bread,” we should gladly and gratefully receive whatever He provides. (See p. 25.) 

Suffering and Sufficiency

In her excellent book, A Lamp Unto My Feet: The Bible’s Light for Your Daily Walk, author Elisabeth Elliot writes about a question someone asked her shortly after her husband Jim had been murdered by a native tribe in the jungles of Ecuador. The person asked a two-part question: (1) Was Elisabeth’s walk with the Lord close enough so that His love and presence were sufficient at all times—or (2) had she been overwhelmed by grief and sorrow as she dealt with the tragic loss of her beloved Jim.

Elisabeth gave a very wise—and truthful—reply. “My answer is yes to both questions. It is not an either-or matter” (Kindle location 498).

Elisabeth then recalls that the Apostle Paul had asked the Lord three times to remove his “thorn in the flesh.” God declined to do so, saying, “My grace is sufficient for you…” (2 Corinthians 12:9) or, as the J. B. Phillips Translation renders it, “My grace is enough for you: for where there is weakness, my power is shown the more completely.”

Likewise, when the time for Jesus’s crucifixion was imminent, He prayed, “Abba, Father, everything is possible for You. Please take this cup of suffering away from Me. Yet, I want Your will, not mine, to be done” (Mark 14:36). God did not spare His Own Beloved Son from an agonizing death on the cross, since Christ’s sufferings would result in a greater good.

In neither case, Elisabeth says, did God say no because those who cried out to Him were not close enough to Him. She concludes her answer to the question in the first paragraph above with these words: “There was human suffering and divine sufficiency. This is the story of our lives.”

Dear Reader, you and I can rest assured that God’s grace will always be sufficient for whatever we must go through. That has been His message, His promise, to believers throughout the centuries. We find this promise even in the Old Testament, which was written thousands of years ago. For example, God says through the prophet Isaiah, “When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2).

Does God promise to spare us from suffering? No! But…He does promise to be with us when we go through whatever suffering He allows. And we can draw strength and comfort from that promise and from the knowledge that He is our God and that He loves us and will always sustain us and provide for us.