The God of Abraham, Moses, and Nehemiah - When You Stand Empty Handed

"For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Romans x. 13 - 14)

The article had successfully moved her to compassion, but the verse at its conclusion added conviction. There were millions of people in China who had never heard of Jesus Christ and someone had to tell them! The question was who? 

Gladys was sure she could find someone; at the very least, she could try. Over the course of the next week she visited several of her friends to tell them of the plight of the Chinese. None of them were overly concerned. How can they be so calloused? Gladys wondered. The thought of so many souls perishing without any knowledge of their Savior was keeping her up at night. She could not allow herself to be easily deterred. Gladys moved on to the next recruit - her brother. She was certain that she could convince him to go.

“Not me!” He declared as soon as she had finished explaining the situation. “That’s an old maid’s job! Why don’t you go yourself?” Gladys’ eyebrows rose. It wasn’t the response she had anticipated. An old maid’s job is it! Still his point rang true. Why don’t I go myself? Why am I trying to delegate my convictions to someone else?

 The idea of going herself gave rise to a string of objections. How would I get the money to go to China? I don’t know anyone in China. I would be a young woman alone in a country that I don't know anything about! That wasn’t quite true, she did know one thing about the place - she knew that they needed God there. Maybe that was enough. Gladys stopped her recruiting attempts and began to pray about going to China. She asked questions, trying to figure out how a person went about such a thing. She was soon told that she must volunteer herself to a missionary society and this she did.    

Three months in to her training at the China Inland Mission Society, Gladys was asked to attend a meeting. The purpose was to inform her that the missionary committee had decided not to send her to China. They considered too old, at twenty eight, and believed she had far too little education to be able to learn such a difficult language as Chinese. Gladys left the meeting in silence, her hopes greatly disappointed. The president of the society followed her out.

“What will you do now, Miss Aylward?”

“I don’t know, but I know God doesn’t want me to go back to being a maid, He wants me to do something for Him.”

“Well, in the meantime, would you consider helping some of our retired missionaries? They are living in Bristol and are in need of a housekeeper.” 

He must not have heard me! She thought. She had just said that she was not going back to work as a maid and here he was offering her just such a position!

God resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble. The verse came into her thoughts as a gentle but firm reproach. Was she sure that it was God who did not want her to go back to work as a maid? He had laid China on her heart, that she knew, but this didn’t necessarily negate that. Here she was without any work, without any place to go, and intending to turn down an opportunity that had been laid at her feet. Perhaps I am just being proud.

“I will go. But first I want to thank everyone here for their kindness to me in the last few months. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to learn much,” she swallowed hard. She meant every word but never had she faced anything so difficult as saying them. “I did learn to pray though,” she added, “to really pray, as I never had before and for that I will always be grateful.”

Gladys went to Bristol and found Mr. and Mrs. Fisher to be sweet, God –fearing people. Never had she met anyone who relied on God so thoroughly as they did. He was their friend and they laid everything at His feet, be it a blessing or a need. 

They often told her stories from the mission field, stories of the things they had seen God do.

“God never lets you down. He sends you, guides you, and provides for you. Maybe He doesn’t answer your prayers as you want them answered, but He does answer them. Remember that no is as much an answer as yes.” Mr. Fisher told her.

“How am I to know if He wants me in China or here in Bristol?”

“Ask Him to show you and then wait and watch. He will give you an answer in His time.” Gladys nodded. It seemed as if all she could do was pray and wait yet the passion to go to China was growing inside of her all the time.

After working for the Fishers for a few months, Gladys went to work at a mission in Swansea. Every evening she made her way down to the worst parts of the town to minister to and plead with the girls who loitered in the streets and public houses. Every now and then she would succeed in rescuing one from the life of slavery they had fallen in to. Finally, she was doing God’s work but the longing to bring the gospel to China’s masses persisted. 

Gladys had a few different ideas as to how she could get there. One was to go with a family who was in need of a nanny. But this, along with all of her other plans was met with opposition. The people she confided her frustrations to told her to, “put the thought of China out of [her] head,” but it would not go. She believed that it was God who had placed China on her heart so she couldn’t understand why every attempt she made to get there ended in failure.

After one such disappointment, Gladys was on the train returning from London to Swansea. She took her bible out of her bag and flipped it open to the first few pages. If I am going to teach people about this book, I suppose I should get to know more about it. She started reading at the very first word and didn’t lift her eyes from the page until the train pulled into the station. Even then she closed it just long enough to get back to her room. She had come to the story of Abram.

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.” Here was a man who God had called to leave his country and his family to go to a place he did not know. How is my call to China any different from that? 

Over the course of the next few days, Gladys spent every spare moment reading her bible. It wasn’t long before she reached the life of Moses. He too had left all behind to follow God’s call. Gladys realized that the flight of Moses after he killed the Egyptian and his time in Midian were not random events in his life. God had used the first to take him out Egypt and the second to prepare him to lead His people when they would be in the wilderness. God had been directing Moses’ life in these things, though they looked like backward steps, as much as He was when He called out to him from the midst of the burning bush. 

Suddenly she saw it! The same was true in her own life, God had called her as he had Abraham, and He could use the apparent failures in her life as He had used those in Moses’. 

She couldn’t get herself to China but perhaps God still intended to take her there!

In an act of faith, Gladys moved to London and took on a job as a maid again. She would work to save the cost of a fare to China and leave the rest of the planning in God’s hands. On her third morning in London, Gladys’ reading brought her to the book of Nehemiah. As she began to read the story she found that she could easily sympathize with Nehemiah. She knew too well the grief he felt when he saw Jerusalem in great need yet could do nothing about it. Then she reached the second chapter.

“But he did go!” She exclaimed. “He went in spite of everything!”

“Gladys Aylward, is the God of Nehemiah your God?” The question came from a familiar voice, one that was never quite audible yet she could hear it with perfect clarity.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then do as Nehemiah did, and go!”

“But I am not Nehemiah.”

“No, but assuredly, I am his God!” 

Gladys sat in silence thinking over what her Lord had just said. Here were the marching orders she had been waiting for and now they sounded almost too good to be true. As far as she knew, nothing of her circumstances had changed, but she now knew she was going to China simply because her God had said she was! The very next day Gladys went down to the shipping office to inquire what the fare to China would be.

“Come on, Miss, I haven’t time for jokes. What is it that you really came in for?”

“To ask the price of a train fare to China.” She repeated patiently.

“I never heard of such a thing!”

“Can’t you find out for me?”

“Alright, if you come back in a day or so I’ll tell you what it’ll come to.” He agreed shaking his head. 

They next day Gladys returned to the shipping office and was told that a single fare on the Trans – Siberian Railroad would cost her forty-seven pounds. Most people made the trip by boat, she was told, but this came to a significantly higher cost. There was one other problem, the whole of Manchuria was a war zone and the railroad could give her no guarantee that she would even be able to get through it.

“There’s no point in trying. It’s far too much of a risk.” The clerk said decidedly.

“Well, seeing as I’m the one who would be taking the risk, won’t you let me save for that fare?” The clerk muttered his disapproval but took the three pounds that she held out to him. He may have thought she was crazy but he wasn’t going to turn down her money.

In addition to working as a maid, Gladys took on extra work in the evenings and on her day off. Every shilling was set aside and every time she managed to save a pound she ran it down to the shipping office to be put down on her account. About this time Gladys was told of an elderly, widowed missionary who had just recently returned to China. At seventy-three years old, Jeannie Lawson had purchased an inn and intended to offer mule train drivers a place to eat, sleep, rest their animals, and hear about Jesus Christ. She needed a young woman to help her with the work. 

The information was told to Gladys as a prayer request by a woman who knew nothing of her aspirations of getting to China. Gladys inquired about the position and procured an address for Mrs. Lawson. She wrote to Jeannie asking if she might come to China to help. Jeannie wrote a reply back that said, yes, if she could pay her own fare to get there! By Gladys’ calculations it would take her almost three more years to save the rest of the fare but she continued on anyways. It seemed like an impossible task but she had simply to believe in the God of the impossible. 

Within a few months Gladys had saved the entire sum! She stood on the platform of the train station, bag in hand, and wondered at how she had gotten there. No matter how hard she had tried, all her efforts had come to nothing yet still He had done it! He had intended to do it all along! In His own way, in His perfect timing, He had caused her to now be standing right where she had been trying to get all along. Mr. Fisher had been right when he had said that God doesn’t answer your prayers as you want them answered, but he was right also in saying that He does answer them.

Gladys recalled how many times she had thought she knew how God was going to take her to China and how often she had been disappointed. Being sent by a mission’s society, or going as a nanny, had been perfectly sensible options but she hadn't realized that God had a greater plan in mind. It was not just about getting there, it was about demonstrating His glory in every step of the way. She thought of Moses. From an earthly perspective he would have been in a better position to have asked for the freedom of the Israelites while he was exalted in Egypt as ‘the son of Pharaoh's daughter’. Instead, God had waited until Moses was no more than an exiled prince, a shepherd living in the wilderness of Midian. These things were not a mistake. God did not plan the freedom of Israel to come as a result of Moses' power. Rather it was meant to demonstrate the power of one who was greater than Moses had ever been. In order to show His own strength God allowed Moses' strength and position to fall away. He had done the same with all of Gladys' plans. 

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us." (2 Corinthians iv. 7)

Gladys' strategy involved getting to China, but God intended to do so much more. He had a plan in which all the apparent failures had purpose. Though the China Inland Mission Society had not sent Gladys as she had hoped they would, they taught her to pray as she would need to pray in China. When she went to work for the Fishers it had seemed like a step backward but God knew that in their house she would see faith that challenged her own and come to know how blessed a friendship with Him could be. It was a plan that could have been brought about by God alone. In which no opportunity was wasted, no lesson that she needed to learn was overlooked, and all worked together to prepare her for the mission field and to showcase His wisdom and faithfulness. 

“If God leads you to walk a way that you know, it will not benefit you as much as if He would lead you to take the way that you do not know. This forces you to have hundreds and thousands of conversations with Him, resulting in a journey that is an everlasting memorial between you and Him. Your Leader will lead you to take an untrodden way, to go down a path you never dreamed of. He is afraid of nothing, and He wishes you to be afraid of nothing also. He is with you. In desperate situations it is His joy to see His children grasping His hands.” –Watchman Nee

God had shown Gladys where she was to go, so surely she could get there. Right? She had thought so at first but that assumption turned out to be wrong. When the missionary committee had said that Gladys didn't have what it would take to go to China, they were right. However, they overlooked the fact that God did. In Gladys' weakness His strength could be perfectly shown and in what looked like failure He was planning success!

 In truth, none of us have what is needed to accomplish His plans, even though sometimes we may think we can figure it out, but it is when our hands are empty and our efforts fail to bring success that we find an even greater opportunity to look to Him. Every other expectation we hold is prone to failure, but when we expect God to prove Himself perfectly faithful we will not be disappointed. The impossible situation is no more than an opportunity to have faith in the God of the impossible. So let's not be afraid to have empty hands, for it is in such a position that we can best hold on to our God! 

"When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer." - Casper ten Boom

In Christ 

quiana