As I continue to think about Gospel living and loving others, I find great encouragement from Amy Carmichael: “Let nothing be said about anyone unless it passes through the three sieves: Is it true? kind? necessary?” (p. 58). These are three questions worth asking before I speak, write or think about someone, or to them.

Just two weeks into my 2016 reading plan and I’m already reaping the benefit of reading less and thinking more. The slower pace gives me space to tie my reading together and apply it. Though beneficial, I can’t say it’s entirely fun. In fact, this extended pondering has led to conviction and brokeness.

The Lord has been using Amy Carmichael: Beauty For Ashes to reveal my pride and self-centeredness. He’s also been showing me how often I focus on the trivial. For Amy, trying to rescue and minister to as many children as possible in India, “[t]hree things mattered: the verbal inspiration of Scripture, the power of God to deal with His enemy, and loyalty to one another.” (p. 88) These were her requirements for those who would partner in ministry with her. She stood firm upon the Word and solid doctrine, but those were the only issues that divided her from others in ministry. When she parted ways with some co-laborers who did not believe in the total inerrancy of Scripture, she did so privately and remained quiet about it.

Of course, Amy Carmichael didn’t have the technology of today. No world-wide audience at her fingertips. (Her books were published only because her mother championed them in Amy’s native England.) No up-to-the second news feeds. She wasn’t concerned with site hits or the number of people who liked her latest pithy tweet.  She was too busy working long, hard days for the sake of the Gospel and the broken children she had rescued from temple slavery and prostitution.

Amy Carmichael had an effective Biblical ministry, which Paul Tripp defines well:

…truly effective ministry of the Word must confront our self-focus and self-absorption at its roots, opening us up to the vastness of a God-defined, God-centered world. Unless this happens, we will use the promises, principles, and commands of the Word to serve the thing we really love: ourselves. This may be why many people read and hear God’s Word regularly while their lives remain unchanged. Only when the rain of the Word penetrates the roots of the problem does lasting change occur.

(Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, p. 24-25)

His words unwrap my sin and lay it bare before my blinded eyes. I have wielded the Word of God has a sword against the wrong enemy: the people around me.

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