Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Knowing Calvary Love


Amy Carmichael was an Irish missionary to India. She worked with the children of India for 56 years. The last 20 yrs of her life she spent confined to her room due to an illness, but it did not keep her from loving those children to Christ! 'Edges of His Ways' and 'Whispers of His Power' are two of my favorite devotion books by Amy. God uses her writings to speak to my heart so often.

My beautiful husband is in bondage to paranoia and fear. The technical term is Paranoid Personality Disorder. Although he does not have a really severe case of this it still robs him of the freedom to love freely and give freely. He lives in fear of people all the time. The simplest things are very hard for him to do. The Lord has been good to him and he has come along way since I first met him, but He has not seen fit to completely free my husband yet. There seems to be a wall my husband can't  get past. I think it is a submission issue.  A letting go process that seems to be a real difficult thing for him. After a time of great freedom and progress he seems to have slipped back into old patterns over the course of the last year or so and of course this affects my life considerably. I am ashamed to say that I have not dealt with this set back as well as I would have liked to. I have given in to despair. I have whined and cried to God and wasted so much time feeling sorry for myself. But lately he has been dealing with me thru Amy's writings again. This was the first quote of hers that got my attention:

'If the ultimate, the hardest, cannot be asked of me; if my fellows hesitate to ask it and turn to someone else, then I know nothing of Calvary love.'    
Amy Carmichael

Cuts to the bone!
He is slowly re-focusing my eyes away from my poor pitiful self and turning them once again to him. I thought I would share each day what I am learning (for the umpteenth time!) with you. I'm sure we all have that difficult person to love in our lives. Trust really is the root of it. Do we or do we not really trust our heavenly Father? That's what he keeps bringing me back to. So let me introduce you to Amy on this journey!

'Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God: Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.'  Psalm 147:7,8

Don't wish for anything that isn't. Whatever our clouds and rain may be, whatever form they take, let us see God's hand behind the seen. He waters the mountains, The clouds and the rain do not come of themselves. Whether it is rain or sunshine for us today, let us begin our song with thankgiving.

So this is where I have started, I am asking God to let me see his hand behind the seen. I have gotten my eyes off of it and have been wishing for something that is not. And when we, from the heart, repent of our self-centeredness and lack of trust he is so gracious to open our eyes once again to the truth. I am excited again, joy is creeping back into my heart. Its not that he is changing my husband, he is changing me. Oh How I Love Him!

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