“The Cross”

“These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee” (John 17:1).

People have all kinds of notions about the Cross. When we refer to the Cross, we refer to that great, perfect, peerless sacrifice of Jesus made for you and me to cancel all our sins. There is no parallel to this propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. The greatest hater of Jesus, when he comes to the Cross, is broken by the love of the Saviour.

If you have not gone to the Cross, and unloaded all your garbage, all your hidden sin, you will continue to be a garbage truck. I am sad to see that many men and women are just garbage collectors. Their mouths spew garbage. Their eyes spew garbage. Their thoughts spew garbage. When they sit at their dinner table, they talk evil about somebody. There should be love at the table, not evil talk about somebody. Some people think that without that pickle of slander, they can’t eat. When you talk like that, you are poisoning yourself, your children and your family. Oh, how sad it makes me! So many people who ought to know better default here! They know so much religion in their heads. They warm the church pews with their presence by merely sitting there. But never does it get into their hearts.

No man can do you harm, only your evil heart and your evil thoughts—they will do you in. You are your greatest enemy. Your negative thoughts and negative mind are your worst enemies.

My dear readers, what a deliverance we get at the Cross! The slavish mind is gone! The slavery is gone! I often say: “I am not afraid of anybody. I am only afraid of Joshua Daniel.” That which cometh out of a man, that defiles a man, not that which comes from outside. What is coming out of you?

There are too many people who are killers in their homes. Their words are sharper than daggers and spears. They are grave-diggers of their own children. But at the Cross of Jesus, there is a transformation for you and me. And you will find that there is something to glory in. So St. Paul says: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14). At the Cross, Jesus crucified my old nature and released a flow of positivity. At the Cross my old nature dies and the risen nature comes into me. Yes, the Cross is our only refuge from our old nature and from our wicked heart. What a refuge I have found in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus!

Here the Lord Jesus says: “Father, glorify thy name. This is the hour of glory.” There are hours of testing for everybody. There are hours of stress for everybody. That is a part of life. But we never call it the hour of glory. We suffer from those hours. We never think of calling them our “glory hours”.

When Mr. Moody was dying, his family was around him. He touched the lives of millions of people. When he was dying, and his heart was failing, the doctor tried to revive him. When the doctor tried to revive his heart once again, he said to the doctor, “Doctor, is it wise to do that?” And as death drew close, he said, “This is my Coronation Day.” Yes, all of us hate death from visiting us or our loved ones. But who will call it his “Coronation Day”? Because of the Cross, because of the resurrection, our dying hour becomes our coronation hour!

Whatever your doctrine may tell you, whatever some of these fanatics may tell you, you can never disprove the resurrection of Jesus. No power could keep Jesus within the grave. I knelt in that open grave. There was nothing there. But oh, how my heart was thrilled! I made my little children kneel in that open grave. Within that grave, into which we entered by a narrow opening, oh, how my heart was full of praise! My dear people, you have to experience this power within your heart.

When the disciples saw the risen Saviour, and ate with Him, they became revolutionized. From being fearful they became emboldened men. They became men full of power. All of you can enjoy this power. It is the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a purifying power. It burns out all the sin and dross. When fear is banished, and your sin is cancelled, being made free from sin, you become servants of righteousness.

My father, being a mathematics teacher, used to describe it this way, saying, “Jesus will wipe out your denominator.” When you say one, what do you mean? One by one makes one. Alright, if you remove that which is below, what happens to one? It becomes infinity. Infinity! What power should come out of your life because the Cross of Jesus and the resurrection power of Jesus wipe away the denominator in your life!

My dear readers, you must realize that when this miracle does not take place in your life, instead of being the solver of your problems, you become the creator of problems. Why? You are not at peace with yourself. So wherever you go, you will create problems. But you can only go to the Cross and say: “Lord Jesus, I want this horrible denominator to be taken away.” The resurrection power of Jesus will touch and transform your life and you will become a blessing instead of being a problem and a curse. May the Lord help you.

—Joshua Daniel

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”

"Jesus saith unto him, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’” (John 14:6). There is no other way in the world. The world cannot change the Word of God. He gave His life to speak the truth. He says that He is the Way and the truth. If you miss the truth you miss life. Once a family went to a new city. A member of the family, a young man, wanted to buy clothes. He said, "Show me a shop where people will speak the truth and sell me good clothes." You know how dishonest some shops are. Some years back I was leaving the city and needed to buy cloth for a coat. I went to Moore Market. They treated me respectfully and sold me what they said was good cloth. But my tailor said that it was shop-soiled. It would not stand even one wash. The tailor was right. That coat did not stand a single wash.

When you want to choose your life-partner, you seek a family where truth is spoken. ... Jesus says, "I am the truth. Believe me. I will lead you into eternal life, into perfect life, health and peace." He will lead you into eternal life. Why trust others? Jesus says, "Is there anything in My life which is shady? Did you see Me on the cross? Did you see Me when pierced by nails? Was there any deceit in Me? Did you not see love and only love in Me? Then believe Me. I am the way, the truth and the life." Dear people, do not be deceived! Young man! When you commence your youth, look at Him and be blessed. As a young man, I did not want to yield my life to any vain thing. I believed this verse. "I am the way, the truth and the life." Many school-mates and college-mates wanted to drag me into the world. "Is it God’s way?" I would question, "The way of One who spoke no lie?" He sealed His words with His blood. Those who followed Him became world-changers and world powers. Kingdoms were shaken by them.

Today Jesus says, "I am the way". Why do Christians fail? They don’t believe Him. Some believed Him for the advantages they would get. Follow Him and believe Him and you will find your whole life turned into gold. Your very touch will be a healing touch and your little home will be a little heaven. If you follow His truth, you will marvel at your own children. "What! Is this not my boy? What a wonder it is to see he has become a power!" He speaks the truth.

What is the truth that can bring you to the place of eternal life where there will be no disappointment or defeat for you? There is no defeat in Jesus. When Jesus says, "I am the way,” let us believe it. In Him you will find all that you want to find. It is not gold or silver. What is the use of gold and silver? I know a woman with plenty of gold and grand clothes. As she was dying she wanted to set her eyes once more on them. With one longing look at them she breathed her last. She had a beautiful daughter; the mother never taught her the truth of Jesus. That daughter suffered much in her life—all for want of the truth. I have seen families where truth was inculcated. When children said, "We want you to live longer," they prayed and saw that life was extended. In Christ there is no failure. He is the truth and there is "life" in Him. If you choose the truth you find you have chosen life also. Whoever comes within the influence of your life will become a changed man. He may be a thief but He will be changed. I have seen [that] thieves who are changed are able to heal snake-bites and sick people. When wicked people came to them they were changed.

Isaiah 56:10: God is speaking about the leaders of the world. They do not ever bark. They will not wake up a sleeping family at the approach of thieves. When there is danger they do not sound the warning. They love slumber. They are greedy dogs. Leaders in nations are like that. They are greedy dogs. They do not know what is harmful. It becomes a leadership into sin, lies and impurity. When I was a boy when I crossed the boundary of our Christian colony, I used to hear people using bad words. All kinds of wicked things happened there. I saw temples and they were full of nude images. Alas! What chance is there for those Hindu boys and girls? I tried to teach them but I thought I was doing a vain thing because they would go and worship those idols afterwards.

Isaiah 58:9: God says this: "If you call me I will say, ‘Here am I’." What a responsive God! What a sense of responsibility He has! "My child is calling. Here am I" (v. 11). You will be a watered garden and build the ruined places. It is God’s Word. It must happen in your life. Girl or boy! Your prayers will never be in vain. Wherever you go you will set things right since God Almighty is with you. "I will pray for this sick man and that miserable family," you will say. If we are all united and look at the Cross, a new power and a new hope will come into us. It will no longer be you but the truth. He will bless you and use you.

—N. Daniel

“Reality Check”

“‘Surely I come quickly.’ Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen” (Revelation 22:20-21).

“Building on the foundation of Jesus Christ”

Staking eternity on Jesus

Amy Carmichael had often felt the love of the Lord Jesus as a child, but she only gave herself to Him when a teenage pupil in Harrogate.

After hearing a Christian address, the speaker told the pupils to sing, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” and then to be quiet. “During those quiet few minutes,” Amy would recall, “in His great mercy the Good Shepherd answered the prayers of my mother and father and many other loving ones, and drew me, even me, into His fold.”

Working for eternity

Amy first met the living Lord on the streets of Belfast. She was just a teenage girl then and the meeting with her Saviour was sudden, startling, and unexpected. This encounter was life-changing:

“It was a dull Sunday morning,” she recalled, “in Belfast. My brothers and sisters and I were returning with our mother from church. We met a poor, pathetic old woman who was carrying a heavy bundle. … [M]oved by sudden pity, my brothers and I turned with her, relieved her of the bundle, took her by her arms as though they had been handles, and helped her along. This meant facing all the respectable people who were, like ourselves, on their way home. It was a horrid moment. … But just as we passed a fountain ... this mighty phrase was suddenly flashed as it were through the grey drizzle:

‘“Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble—every person's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be declared by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide—’
“If any man’s work abide: I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. The fountain, the muddy street, the people with their politely surprised faces, all this I saw, but saw nothing else. The blinding flash had come and gone; the ordinary was all about us. We went on. I said nothing to anyone, but I knew that something had happened that had changed life’s values. Nothing could ever matter again but the things that were eternal.”

That afternoon, Amy shut herself in her room. She talked to God and settled once and for all the pattern of her future life.

Being kept from falling

Amy’s “good works” entailed teaching and praying with youngsters and mill girls in Belfast and encouraging the reading of the Bible. Yet if these works were to be fruitful for eternity, Amy needed to know God more intimately and to rest more securely upon the everlasting Arms.

In September 1886, eighteen-year-old Amy was invited to Scotland where she attended a Christian convention. “I had been longing for months, perhaps years, to know how one could live a holy life, and a life that would help others. I came to that meeting half hoping, half fearing. Would there be anything for me? ... My soul was in a fog. Then the chairman rose for the last prayer. Perhaps the previous address had been about Peter walking on the water, and perhaps it had closed with the words of Jude 24, for the one who prayed began like this: ‘O Lord, we know Thou art able to keep us from falling.’ Those words found me. It was as if they were alight, and they shone for me.”

Building with gold, silver, precious stones

The work for the mill girls grew until a hall was needed to seat 500 for Christian meetings. It would cost £500 to put up an iron hall but Amy decided to ask her Heavenly Father only for money for His work. He provided through the generosity of a Christian lady. Printed by hand in large letters and hung in a long strip at the front, these words could be clearly read during the Dedication Service of the hall: “That in all things He [Christ] may have the preeminence.”

The power of God was present in the mission that opened the work of “The Welcome”, the name of that new hall. Yet then in one meeting, there was nothing, no power. Why had the Power left? Amy later recounted this troubling experience: “Lord, is it I? And then, as I prayed that prayer, I remembered something, a rollicking hour when we reached home after the meeting and, as usual, it was my fault. There was nothing wrong in the fun, but it was not the time for it. I have never forgotten the shock of that discovery. Grieve not the Spirit—that was the word then. In His mercy He forgave; and the work went on again.”

When Amy needed financial supplies, she looked to the Lord alone. And when workers were required for the work of “The Welcome”, only the Lord’s people could be permitted to help, those who were one with Amy in her desire for the salvation of the mill girls. “It is the word of 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 again,” she would write. “Do we want to build in substance that will abide the test of fire? Then let us see to it that the builders are those whose hearts are set on building in gold, silver, precious stones.”

Many years later, after Amy had been told by God, “Go ye,” and gone—gone to Japan, where she heard Him say, “None of them that trust in Me shall be desolate,” gone to China, returned to England, and then gone to India in 1895—the principle still held. Amy wanted God’s house, His work, to be built with His means and people.

Of stars and jewels

One day in India, while sitting under a wide-spreading tree, Amy became conscious of the “unfolding sense of a Presence”, a “Listener.” It seemed to her that Jesus Christ was looking for someone to listen with Him, to listen to the voice of one’s brother’s blood crying to Him from the ground. That day on the hillside influenced Amy's coming years and gave depth to them all.

Amy moved to Tinnevelly District in south India and began to itinerate with Indian women in a band formed in 1898, spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, a band dubbed the “Starry Cluster” by the Indians. They were ready to work without a salary: “A new love had been kindled in those hearts—they glowed. Thereafter it was never, ‘How much can I get?’ but always, ‘How much can I give? How much can I do without, that I may have more to give?’ … Can you imagine with what joy we worshipped the Lord together?” Some obeyed the Voice that spoke to them, their spirits “tender of the glory of God.”

Amy and her Christian co-workers were to help many Indian children live for Jesus Christ. In one village a young girl who had become a secret believer was given a Bible by a Christian lady. She lay down to sleep beside her mother one night and in the early morning was wakened (as it seemed) by the light touch of a hand, and a voice in her heart said, “Go!” She escaped for refuge to the house where Amy and another couple were staying and was given the name “Jewel of Victory”. Within six months another girl escaped, named “Jewel of Life” when she was baptised.

Later, Amy was used by Jesus to rescue girls from the Hindu temples (the first one reached her in 1901), and then boys in danger. Few missionaries or Indian Christians were in sympathy with her at first. Of this she wrote: “Sometimes it was as if I saw the Lord Jesus Christ kneeling alone. ... And the only thing that one who cared could do, was to go softly and kneel down beside Him, so that He would not be alone in His sorrow over the little children.”

By the time Amy died in Dohnavur in 1951 in her Room of Peace, of physical suffering, at an orphanage that had been established, she had become Amma (mother) to many children for His sake. “I wonder what your biggest temptation is. Is it to be suddenly angry?”, she wrote to one. “I used to feel something like a fire suddenly burning up in my heart. If you feel like that, ask the Lord Jesus to pour His cool, kind, gentle love into your heart instead. Never go on being angry with anyone; be Jesus’ little peacemaker.” “What can you give, you little lovers,” she noted on another occasion, “to the One who gives you everything, and, more than that, gave His life to make you good and happy? You can give Him a grateful heart. If anything has gone wrong, you can give Him what the Psalm calls a humble and contrite heart. You can refuse to cover wrong things as if they didn’t matter much; you can confess them, and like David accept the fruit of your doings … and humbly and lovingly begin again. You can give your Lord Jesus all you have to give. Then your word will be, ‘I give! I give! I give!’ and He will hear and He will be pleased with His little lovers.”

“If you hold fast to the resolve that in all things Christ as Lord shall have the pre-eminence,” Amy once noted, “… if you keep His will, His glory, and His pleasure high above everything …, and if you continue in His love, loving one another as He has loved you, then all will be well, eternally well.”

—See Frank L. Houghton, Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur


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