Category: God

“Because man seeks the highest seat, He (Christ) took the lowest.
Because man wishes to be as the gods, He became man, even a babe.
Because man desires costly dwellings, He had not where to lay His head and began His life in a manger. . .
Because man strives for wealth, He became poor…
Because man chooses men of renown to rule and govern nations, He chose humble fishermen from Galilee to be His disciples.”

—Lillian Harvey.

There is no doubt about it. Christ’s example is truly an inspiring one and yet so counter culture that a book which speaks of nothing else but humility–how can it have much of an appeal today? Well, as it turned out, my pessimism was proved unfounded. Royal Insignia, while not a national best seller, has had a surprising response both in this country and abroad. Pastors have testified that it has transformed their churches by changing the perspective of their entire staff. Evangelists have promoted it as one of the best books on the subject while person after person has written that this book brought them nearer the Lord they professed to serve.

Why, I ask myself, has the book had such an impact? In the first place, there is in most of us, an unquenchable thirst to be more godlike and an intuitive response to the call to be clothed in Christ’s humility. Perhaps our motives are flawed. Perhaps we cling to the words “he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” and so we are willing for the humbling if it leads us to glory. Perhaps this is why our hand reaches for a book on humility. Perhaps…perhaps…. And yet, let’s face it, the standard our Lord sets before us is so frighteningly high that, if taken seriously, deals a continual deathblow to our innate pride as we attempt to follow in His footsteps. The cost is great and embracing that cost slowly refines and transforms our motives. The glory we begin to desire is to know Him better, love Him more dearly, follow Him more nearly, and we can only do this by letting Him deal continued deathblows to our pride and arrogance.

Then, secondly, Royal Insignia, while presenting Christ’s example to us in its opening pages, goes on to call upon witness after witness to testify that humility is indeed the “royal insignia” of every true follower of Christ. They relate frankly and honestly how God began and continued the humbling process in their own lives and the impact this had on their Christianity. Preachers and evangelists whose successes are heralded in book after book on the shelves of Christian bookstores, reveal glimpses into the hidden recesses of their beings and confess that they were as subject to pride as we are and yet embraced “the way down as the way up” and beckon us to do the same. They cause humility to come alive to us, and by clothing it in their own humanity, make it more attainable than it has ever been before.

In the book, Handicaps, Volume One, the sixth book in the Call Back Series, we read of a young missionary named Fay Goddard, who had gone to the Philippines, learned the language and customs of the people she had come to serve, when devastating polio suddenly “laid bands upon her limbs and she was compelled to be confined to a wheelchair. Back at the Overseas Missionary headquarters in Philadelphia, she found herself “stuffing envelopes, licking stamps, and trying to be busy at whatever others could scrape up for her to do. I was at a dead end, on a shelf,” she tells us. What had been the purpose of all her language study, she asked herself? And her slow but steady entrance into the hearts of the people she had come to love? Had that too been a waste?

It was at that point that she and God had a very frank conversation. She had previously prayed, “Do whatever You want with me, Lord, whatever it takes to accomplish what you want me to do.” But stuffing envelopes and licking stamps–was this God’s perfect way?

“Remember Job?” the Lord interjected. Of course she remembered Job! Opening her Bible, Fay read once more Satan’s charge that Job was not serving God for nothing. ”Well, Satan could say the same about you,” the Lord challenged.” These words might have seemed harsh, but Fay knew them to be only too true. Living in her little grass-roofed house “on a plateau on the edge of a deep valley and within view of the blue-gray mountains” was where she wanted to stay for the rest of her life.

“Now I am asking you to do something you don’t want to do,” God told her. I want you to show Satan that you love me enough to do even this for Me. And I want you to do it with joy.” (Handicaps, p. 14). Fay took the challenge and within days found herself the editor of East Asia’s Millions where suddenly, all the pieces seemed to fit together. Her previous life-experience now came into play. She had all the challenge she needed in a job for which she proved a perfect fit.

‘Lonely! lonely! lonely!
In the heart of the mighty hills
And I sigh for the dear, home faces
And fancy a thousand ills.

‘A dog! A friend! A loved one!
Or anything that has life;
But I wait alone for the answer
And alone I face the strife.

‘The work, the care, the struggle,
I greet with a thankful heart;
But to be alone in the mountain—
That is the hardest part.

‘Lonely! Lonely! Lonely!
In the light of the waning moon;
Dear God in Heaven have mercy
And send a friend to me soon!’”
—Used by permission of K.M.H.A. (Loneliness, p.p. 15-16.)

Emma Booth, daughter of William and Catherine, founders of the Salvation Army, also experienced loneliness as she worked for Christ, not in the mountains, but in the heart of busy London. And then she thought of Christ and was comforted. “I was thinking last night,” she writes, “it was not the thorn or the spear which made Calvary hardest to bear. It must have been the keen sense of loneliness that made the cup the bitterest. And yet, we know He was not alone.”

Loneliness was the first book to be completed after her husband’s death. Often, sitting at her typewriter, the tears would roll down her cheeks and splash onto the keyboard as she wrote about those who went through great periods of loneliness, for she herself, was sharing in their experiences. Her partner of forty-five years was no longer there by her side and her personal loneliness was intense. This is why this book and its successor, Frustration, carry with them a particular blessing to the reader. Every word written came from the heart.

This book covers many aspects of loneliness–bereavement, through which Lillian was then passing, being just one of them. Listen to the words of Clara Simpson, a poetess, whose husband died as a result of a terrible accident:

“Oh, has He planned it right when darkness falls,

And all one’s world which looked so fair and bright

Has faded out of sight, and sorrow reigns?

He’s planned it right.”

“God is able to use you,” Clara writes, “according to His power and not according to your weakness.” And so, in the midst of her grief, she penned poems that have comforted and inspired many. Read the following, then be encouraged that while, at times, the words “God and suffering” may seem an enigma to you in your sorrow, He does know your grief and He does care:

“Oh Father, do You know when hearts are aching:

When summer days have fled and north winds blow,

Skies heavy, gray, and oh so dark and lonely?

‘My child, I know.’

“Oh Father, do You care when days are empty,

Empty of all that made this world so fair—

When blessings once so precious, now have faded?

‘My child, I care.’

“Oh Father, must we trust when ties are broken,

When loves of earth once strong and deep have gone,

And strange, unwelcome things beset our pathway?

My child, trust on.’

‘Father, I will believe; oh, keep me faithful

Through life’s long day till setting of the sun;

And may I hear when dawns the eternal morning,

‘My child, well done.’”

–Used by permission—Joyful News, Cliff College

(Loneliness, page70)