You Can Trust God with Hunter Beless
Amy Carmichael has had a profound impact on Hunter’s own life. So much so that it led her to write the book Amy Carmichael: The Brown-Eyed Girl Who Learned to Pray. In this episode, Hunter shares how Amy’s story helped her to trust God even when she didn’t understand what God was doing in her life. Amy’s life and story help us to remember we can trust God because of who he is and how he has proven himself faithful throughout all of redemptive history. Amy Carmichael: The Brown-Eyed Girl Who Learned to Pray by Hunter Beless is part of The Good Book Company‘s Do Great Things For God series.
NOTES & QUOTES
Amy Carmichael was a missionary in late 1800s & early 1900s in India, who ended up doing ministry with women and children who were rescued from prostitution in Hindu temples.
Amy’s dad passed away tragically when she was an older teen.
She kept an “ask and receive” notebook where she kept all her prayers and the ways the Lord answered them. She committed to sharing her life for the sake of the gospel as an overseas missionary. She had planned to go to China, but was turned down for health reasons. India was not always her original plan.
She left for Japan in 1893 and had a vibrant ministry in Japan with a coworker. “Prayer was the driving force of her ministry” -Hunter
During this time of ministry, she began to suffer from what we now know as neuralgia, and yet still felt called to her work. She ended up in Sri Lanka for a long rest to be with missionary friends. Through these bumps in the road, she still felt like the Lord was guiding her path.
She went home to be with a friend who she called, “the dear old man,” Robert Wilson, who was like a father to her. He suffered from a stroke which brought Amy back to England. With his help and blessing, she joined the church in England to work with the Zenana Missionary Society in India.
She left Britain at 27 years old and never returned. “Even then, she did not know she would be working with children.”
She began to learn the language of the Tamil alphabet and found the fact that God had given words to a donkey particularly comforting as she was trying to learn this difficult language. She longed to become one with the people of India. She traded her English frocks for an Indian dress.
She learned the local language in 1898 and moved to Dohnavur, a Christian villiage and established the Dohnavur Fellowship, an organization that is still going today. The first little girl who the Lord brought to Amy was named Preena and Amy became a mother to her.
By 1904, Amy had 17 children, and they called her “Amma,” which means “mother.”
Another example of prayer answered from her ask and receive journal was the baptism of 7 Dohnavur girls. She said “Prayer is the core of our day. Without it, the day would collapse. But how can you pray with one whom you have a grudge against or someone who you have been criticizing to someone else?” Love was at the center of everything she practiced.
1 Corinthians 13 was Dohnavur’s model passage—to remember what love is.
Amy was resolved. She withdrew from the missionary society she joined because it was affiliated with the society that no longer affirmed the inspiration of Scripture. She continued to hold fast to Scripture and to prayer. There’s nothing we could do that would be more valuable.
At the end of her life, she ended up falling into a pit in a medical dispensary and dislocated her ankle, broke her leg, and never regained full physical mobility. She was bed-ridden for the last couple decades of her life, but it was during this time she wrote many of the 13 books she published. She wrote as a sick person to a sick person, reminded them of the hope they have in the gospel.
She died and was buried in the garden in Dohnavur.
“The Lord goes before us in the desires he places in our hearts.” -Hunter
Through a series of minor catastrophes, Amy ends up in India and even there had a debilitating fall. She probably questioned the Lord, but here are—an entire century later being encouraged by her writings.
“We can be encouraged, not just by her story but by our God who is sovereignly reigning over the events of this universe.” -Hunter
Isaiah 46:9–11 “remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.”
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