Freedom in Thee - What God Gave Gladys Aylward

Gladys had wanted to be an actress since she was a little girl and though she had little in the way of money or education she was determined to make it work. Having to get a job as a maid did not change her plans in the least. She worked hard in the day and used her evenings to attend drama clubs and theatrical meetings. Though Gladys grew up in a Christian home and had been taught to attend church and read the bible regularly, she now found that she had little use for God and religion, and even less time for them. She had nothing against Christianity. She still believed in God but there were other demands on her time now. Church meetings, bible reading, and prayer couldn't be the priority if she was going to reach her goals!

Many of us have found ourselves in the same position as Gladys. We have demands on our time that can easily take priority over God. We may never say that we have little use for Him but our actions too often say it for us. It is easy to recognize when a person walks away from God completely, but when a person partially walks away from Him they sometimes don't even recognize it themselves.

"...Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." (Romans xii. 1)

Jesus presented Himself as a sacrifice and the punishment for the sins we had committed fell upon Him in our place. While He suffered and died we were made into the very children of God. We became spotless, blameless, with access to the Father's presence, and an inheritance preserved for us in heaven. Jesus gave Himself to us entirely. He gifted us the fullness of who He was and Paul tells us that it is our reasonable service to give ourselves back to Him.

This is not a new or profound concept to most of us, yet it is rarely applied. We esteem the idea of giving ourselves over to God, but do we practically do it?  Many of us live in a state of partial surrender instead of presenting our bodies as living sacrifices. Mistakenly we expect that we can both be a sacrifice and still hold on to our own expectations, pleasures, and goals. We are essentially saying, "God you can have my life but this is what it is going to look like..." We decide what job we are going to work, what country we will live in, how much money we need to make, or how many children we will have without ever asking if those are God's plans. Because we assume that certain decisions are ours to make.

One night when Gladys was walking home from a theatrical meeting, she noticed that the lights of a nearby church were still on. It was late for a meeting and her curiosity drew her inside. The part of the message that Gladys caught changed the course of her life. She did not become an actress; instead she spent her life as a missionary to China. For in that late night meeting Gladys realized that God had a claim upon her life. The lesson she learned was something like what Paul was trying to teach the Corinthians.

"Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies." ( 1 Corinthians vi. 19-20)

  Instead of continuing her education in drama, Gladys Aylward enrolled in the China Inland Mission Center. It was not an easy decision to make, but she was determined to follow God's plans instead of her own and He told her to go to China. Three months in to her time at the school, the committee decided that Gladys' qualifications were too slight,  she was too old - at 28, and her education too limited to warrant acceptance. "The Chinese language," they told her, "would be far too difficult for you to learn." Still Gladys pressed on, with that same determination, with which she had pursued acting. Only this time she was pursuing God's plan instead of her own and was depending on Him to make it happen. Gladys later paid her own way to China and went, not to fulfill her own dreams, but to further God's kingdom. She had offered herself to God as a living sacrifice and was prepared to accept the cost.

The word sacrifice indicates loss and usually the loss of life. When an Israelite brought an animal to be sacrificed to God that animal was lost to them. It was no longer counted among their flocks and no thought that they could make a profit from some part of it would have entered their mind. It was forfeited - given to God. God did not ask for partial sacrifices. The concept is no different when it comes to us. 

"For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew xvi. 25)

We cannot give our bodies and our lives as living sacrifices and still plan to use them how we please. Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."(Luke ix. 23) A cross is a device of execution; a way of dying. That is what Jesus told His followers to take up daily. Dead men don't have plans for how they will spend their lives, nor do they count on attaining pleasures. It cannot be that we fit God in around other things, it must be that we do all unto the glory of God - whether we eat, or drink, or study, or work. These things must be held loosely, so that we can relinquish them if God asks us to do something different. He asks us for a heart of continual surrender not just minutes, or even hours, spent in bible study, prayer, or witnessing. This may seem like a great resignation but it is simply our reasonable service to the God who saved us.

"And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’” (Luke xvii. 10)

Late in Gladys Aylward's life an author came to to her asking to get her stories. She told him that he must have been directed to the wrong person. She didn't think she had done any thing that was worthy of writing about. At his request however she began telling him of the 'simple' life she had lived with God. Her first job in China was to serve and preach the gospel to mule train drivers who came to stay at the missionary's inn. Later she worked for the Chinese Government as a "foot inspector" (to stop the tradition of binding, and so crippling, little girl's feet) and when she proved herself to be capable in this position, she was asked to stop a prison riot in which the inmates were murdering each other. This she succeeded in doing and then regularly went back to minister to the prisoners. When Japanese armies invaded China, Gladys saved the lives of a hundred children by traveling with them, over the mountains, to Siam. It is easy to see that this woman lived an incredible life, but that life was not for her own glory and was not even the life of her choosing.

"I have not done what I wanted to. I have not eaten what I wanted to, or worn what I would have chosen. I have not lived in a house that I would have ever looked at twice. I longed for a husband, babies, security, and love. God didn't give that. He left me alone for seventeen years with one book - a Chinese Bible. I don't know anything about your latest novels, pictures, theaters. I live in a rather out dated world. And I suppose you say, "well, it's awful miserable, isn't it?" Friends, I've been one of the happiest women that has ever stepped this earth. I have raised someone else's children, whom I have loved with a great love because Jesus Christ loved me, and who I am now receiving love back from. Lord, give us freedom. Freedom in Thee. That You might be able to pick us up and put us down. And use us when and where and how You like. That someone might know how much You love them." - Gladys Aylward

Living in obedience to God is our duty, but it is also the greatest privilege. When He asks us to give our plans up, this can be easy to forget. Yet His plans are exceedingly beyond any of ours!

"A Christian lady once expressed to a friend how impossible she found it to say, "Thy will be done," and how afraid she should be to do it. She was the mother of one, only little boy, who was the heir to a great fortune, and the idol of her heart. After she had stated her difficulties fully, her friend said, "Suppose your little Charley should come running to you tomorrow and say, 'Mother, I have made up my mind to let you have your own way with me from this time forward. I am always going to obey you and I want you to do just whatever you think best with me. I know you love me and I am going to trust myself to your love.' How would you feel towards him? Would you say to yourself, ' Ah, now I shall have a chance to make Charley miserable. I will take away all his pleasures and fill his life with every hard and disagreeable thing I can find. I will compel him to do just the things that are most difficult for him to do and will give him all sorts of impossible commands.'""Oh, no, no, no!" Exclaimed the indignant mother. "You know I would not. You know I would hug him to my heart and cover him with kisses and would hasten to fill his life with all that was sweetest and best." "And are you more tender and more loving than God?" Asked her friend. "Ah, no," was the reply "I see my mistake, and I will not be afraid of saying 'Thy will be done' to my Heavenly Father any more than I would want my Charley to be afraid of saying it to me."- Hannah Whitall Smith, The Christian Secret to a Happy Life

We need to submit ourselves fully to God's will, but remember that it is the good and perfect will of the one who loves us best. Even if He chooses to lead us on hard and difficult paths we can be sure that it is the best way and that He will walk it with us!

In Christ 

quiana