Battle Axe Series – Amy Carmichael

 One of God’s battle axes in late 19^th Century and early 20^th Century was Amy Carmichael. We are sure that many Christians have not experienced her ministry. There is so much to learn from this daughter of the Most High God. Amy was born on December 16, 1867 in Belfast, Ireland, to David and Catherine Carmichael, a devout couple of Scottish ancestry.

From the time she was a baby, her mother read her stories of Jesus, especially His power to turn water into wine, to forgive sins, and to answer prayers. At the tender age of three, Amy knelt by her bed and prayed her first earnest prayer: “Lord, please give me blue eyes like my mother and baby Norman”. She fell asleep in childlike faith, expecting the answer to come the very next morning!

“I can never tell you my bewilderment”, she wrote years later. “Without a shadow of doubt, I believed my eyes would be blue in the morning. The minute I woke up, I pushed a chair to the chest of drawers on which there was a looking glass and climbed up full of eager expectation and saw- mere brown eyes. God has not answered my prayer”, she cried in confusion. But then it was gently explained to her. He had answered her – with a loving firm no. When God says no, it is because He knows something we don’t know. We don’t need to get angry or sad; we need to trust Him. Trust Him and keep going.

Amy recovered from the hurt of that disappointment, of course. Years later, she smiled at God’s wisdom in giving her brown eyes as she walked through the villages of India, disguised in a native sari with her skin darkened by coffee grounds. Blue eyes would have been a hindrance to her ministry in the dusty streets of southern India.

As a teenager, Amy was sent to Harrogate, a Wesleyan Methodist boarding school in Yorkshire, England. In spite of her promise to her mother to “be good”, the feisty Amy soon earned a reputation of being a “wild Irish girl”, a leader among the girls, both for good and mischief.

It was during her time at Harrogate, when she was sixteen years old, that her life changed during a Children’s Special Service Mission. At the end of the worship service, the speaker, Edwin Arrowsmith, asked the girls to sing “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know” and then bow quietly before the Lord. “During those few quiet minutes”, Amy wrote, “in His great mercy, the Good Shepherd answered the prayers of my mother and father and drew me, even me, into His fold”. Amy received Christ as her Lord and Saviour that day.

On April 12, 1885, the family recorded a tragedy- the death of her father, aged forty-four. From that day, seventeen year old Amy passed into adulthood, becoming her mother’s confidante and a second mother to her siblings. God used those years to lay foundation for Amy’s future as a skilled and compassionate leader.

       In September 1886, Amy was invited to visit friends who lived in Scotland; she had little idea that God would use the visit to reveal the next spiritual guide-post in her Christian journey. She attended series of Christian meetings in the town with her friends where she encountered the power of the Holy Spirit. “Something happened that changed everything for me”, she wrote. “I had been longing for years to know how one could live a holy life, a life that would help others. I came to that meeting half hoping, half fearing. Would there be anything for me? Then the chairman rose for the last prayer, “O Lord, we know Thou art able to keep us from falling’. Those words found me. It was as if they were a light and they shone just for me”.

On the snowy night of January 13, 1892, Amy, then aged twenty-four, spent time in her room, reflecting on the lost and dying millions throughout the world. As clearly as if she heard her mother’s voice, the words “Go ye” rang out in her heart. Everything around her seemed to be repeating “Go ye”. The next day, she sent a letter to her mother, explaining that she has heard the Lord’s command to “Go ye”, and that she cannot stay. Her mother promptly replied that she knew that the Lord lend Amy to her all these years and that she willingly relinquishes her hold on her so that she can serve the Lord without distraction.

Her missionary call came through contacts with the Keswick movement. In 1892, she volunteered to the China Inland Mission but was refused on health grounds. However, in 1893, she sailed for Japan as the first Keswick missionary to join the Church Missionary Society (CMS) led by Barclay Buxton. After less than two years in Japan and Ceylon, she returned to England before the end of 1894. The next year, she volunteered to the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, and in November 1895, she arrived in South India, never to leave.

While still learning the difficult Tamil language, Amy commenced itinerant evangelism with a band of Indian Christian women, guided by the CMS missionary Thomas Walker. She soon found herself responsible for the Indian women converts. In 1901, she, the Walkers, and their Indian colleagues settled in Dohnavur.

During her village itineration, she became increasingly aware of the fact that many Indian children were dedicated to the gods by their parents or guardians. The children became temple property, and lived in moral and spiritual danger. It became her mission to rescue and raise these children, and so the Dohnavur Fellowship came into being.

Known at Dohnavur as Amma (Mother), Amy was the leader, and the work became well known through her writing. Workers volunteered and financial support was received, though money was never solicited. In 1931, she had a serious fall, and this, coupled with arthritis, kept her an invalid for the rest of her life. She continued to write, and identified leaders, missionary and Indian, to take her place. The Dohnavur Fellowship still continues today.

Amy was a prolific writer, with 40 published books to her credit. In her personal devotions, she relied on Scripture and poetry. She wrote many of her own poems and songs. Many of her books have stories of Dohnavur children, interspersed with scripture verses and photographs of the children or nature. Amy’s lengthy ministry at Dohnavur was sustained through her strong reliance upon scripture and prayer. Her early dedication to holiness practices and her roots in the Keswick tradition helped to guide her strong will and determination in her mission to the children of southern India.

Amy Carmichael understood the power of prayer. “Prayer”, she said, “is, after all, work – the most strenuous work in all the world. And prayer did “soar on high” from her room during the last two decades of her life. “Perhaps prayer often needs to be followed by a little pause”, Amy wrote in If, “that we may have time to open our hearts to that for which we have prayed. We often rush from prayer to prayer without waiting for the word within, which says, “I have heard you, My child”.

          In early January, 1951, Amy fell into a coma. In the last years of her life, she hadn’t been able to welcome the children into her room. Now, by the hundreds, they all filed silently through the room to see their precious Amma as she slept. In the early morning of January 18, 1951, Amy slipped away in her sleep to dwell in the house of her Lord forever. She had completed her race.

Her famous quote, “You can give without loving. But you can’t love without giving” epitomizes her selfless service to humanity. Amy dedicated her life to loving the unloved children of southern India. To the children and workers of Dohnavur, she was always “Amma” (Tamail word for mother), for she loved them with a mother’s unconditional love, transforming thousands of Indian lives in more than fifty-five years of service.

What can we learn from this great Ambassador of Christ? A long-time friend of Amy once wrote, “Amy Carmichael was God’s chosen instrument and the glory is His alone, but she was an instrument amazingly fitted for His purposes and ready for His hand”. How are we making ourselves ready for use by the Lord? In 2 Peter 1:5-9, we are told to be more diligent to confirm our calling by adding virtue to our faith, knowledge to virtue, self-control to knowledge, patient endurance or longsuffering to our self-control, godliness to longsuffering, brotherly kindness to godliness and love to our brotherly kindness. Some of us with faulty Christian foundation believe that following Christ is a bed of roses. It is the same Christ who said, “In the world you will have tribulation (trouble). But take heart, because I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

         The most important lesson we can learn from Amy is to be totally yielded to the Lord. We cannot be lords of our lives and still call Him ‘Lord’. That is why He asked in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord’, and not do what I tell you”. It is the same Jesus who commanded His followers to make disciples of all nations (Mathew 28:19; Mark 16:15).

Amy heard the command and gave her life to the children of southern India. What are we of this generation doing with the Great Commission? Are we listening to Jesus or the voice of satan speaking through some church leaders who claim that the ‘crusades have ended’, hence we should not preach Christ to unbelievers? Are we called to listen to mere men or the voice of God’s Spirit urging us to take the light of the gospel to the unreached people across the world? Remember that there is only one Judge- Jesus Christ (Acts 17:31). He will not delegate this function to your Pastor, Pope, General Overseer, etc.

Culled from God’s Generals by Roberts Liardon (2014), Whitaker House & School of Theology, https://www.bu.edu.