Women the Quiet Achievers - Part 1 — Gladys Aylward

The Call to Prayer, Giving, and Going

I have prayed that tonight God will speak to each one of us in his own loving particular way and to give you an idea of why we are here in Australia is because that we believe living on the other side of the world that you're behind the times and you have failed God.

Friend, come down up to be humble enough to realise that you are not doing what God told you to do. This is the day when people fly around the world on business in jets. They rush around for pleasure in great cruisers.

They move heaven and earth for their sport but they do very little for Jesus Christ. The mission field as such is poor, miserable, penniless and in most cases carried on by a few old men. Friend, it sounds awfully hoary doesn't it?

Tonight this is the truth and I am bringing to you the verse that God used to challenge me and I pray that he will challenge you. God has not altered although the world has and tonight you have got to throw out some of the old ideas that a missionary or person who works for Christ has got to be some particular kind, some sanctimonious effort produced by some committee or fellowship or missionary society.

God can call who he likes, how he likes and when he likes, put them down and use them in the way he desires and friend tonight may God challenge you for prayer, to give and to go. The mission field as such is closer to you than it is to any other English-speaking nation and yet to you it is a way in the edge of nowhere.

While we have a strong, alive, virile church that although in numbers is much of course lower than yours, we are stronger than you. So dear friend you'll find that I come from China to challenge Australia for Christ.

Abraham's Call to Leave the Graveyard of Comfort

The boot is now on the other leg and the verse I'm going to bring to you is the first or the first few verses of the 12th chapter of Genesis. We find that this man Abram who belongs to a big family who are going on the journey, you can read all about them presently, we're only just referring to them and as they are traveling something happens.

The head of the family, the father of Abram died. We find that although the family should have moved after the burial or funeral of the old man, they didn't. Why we don't know, we only know that they didn't.

And then we find God coming into the picture and lifting up this man Abram, challenging him to the very depths of his soul and his heart so that he gets up and goes out to follow God. The first few verses of the 12th chapter of Genesis.

Now my bible is Chinese, this is as it comes back to you from Chinese. And Jehovah the God said to Abram the man, get thee out, out from your father's house, your father's relations and your father's country.

I will take you to the place of my choosing. I will make of you a great and mighty nation. I will pour my blessings upon you. I will make your name so that from one end of the earth to the other they shall know of it.

I will bless those that bless you, but I will also curse those that curse you. I will open the heaven and pour blessings upon you so that from one end of the earth to the other men shall know that I am Jehovah the almighty God.

And Abram did as God asked him, he got out. Friend tonight, Abram while sitting in a very comfortable a place where there wasn't very much to do, the graveyard. And tonight God is going to show you that you have sat rather a long time in your little homemade graveyard.

And the challenge is get thee out. Out where God intends to use you. Out where God intends to bless you and pour through you his blessing to someone else. I went to China as a girl in my 20s. I believe God asked me to.

We don't meet God going down the road and I'm not the kind that dream dreams or have visions. I only know that although I was born in a Christian home, my mother, my father, my Sunday school teacher, all the ministers who came and went in our church, not one of them ever spoke to me for a personal Jesus Christ.

And so I grew up on religion, having no idea that salvation was a personal something for a personal heart. I left my home, I went into London to work and earn my own living and for those first few years pleased myself.

I earned good money, I spent it on myself. I did what I liked, ate what I liked and wore what I liked. To me my life was my own. And then all of a sudden one evening I going along one of those main thoroughfares in London was drawn into a large church by a group of people who were outside the church door fishing.

Gladys Aylward's Personal Conversion and Call to China

I that night found Jesus Christ as my saviour in a church that I don't know anything about or have never been in it since that day. I believe now that all one had to do was to attract somebody to this gospel and so I went round and if an opportunity was given and I talked to people about salvation I bought tracts which I handed out to anybody who would receive them and to me that was all I had to do.

My duty was done until at the end of that year when I had known Christ as my saviour just over that one year he challenged my heart for China, a place I knew nothing about. I suppose if I had read the bible if I had attended church or prayer meetings he would have called me in one of those ways but I didn't go, neither did I read the bible.

I was reading one day the daily paper. I read an article on China that said that way over there were hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people who did not know where they were going to spend eternity.

No one had been to tell them about Jesus Christ and I although I couldn't have explained very much about salvation knew I was saved. I knew nothing of church, I'd never heard of a mission or a missionary and I knew very little about the bible but I really believed that everybody ought to know that Christ son of God had died on Calvary that they might be saved and here were a people who didn't know and so I now formed a little plan that I would do my little piece.

I would go and lay this need before someone and I would go off and tell the Chinese about Christ. Well I did all I could, I didn't impress anybody or get anyone pushed off and so by the end of that second year I was in the same place as when I had begun and I decided I would now ask one more person.

If that person refused I would throw the whole idea to the winds, decide I was wrong and forget it. The person I went to ask was my own brother. I caught him in the kitchen of our own home and proceeded to tell him the same as I had told others, to appeal and plead with him as I pleaded with others during that past year.

Well he thought this was the biggest joke he'd ever heard and he threw back his head and he just laughed and laughed and laughed and then finally he made to run from the kitchen and standing in the doorway he suddenly turned this and flung back this.

If you really believe somebody ought to be going why don't you go yourself? Bang went the kitchen door and he was outside. Friends my call to China, if you really believe somebody ought to be going go and push someone else.

But God didn't say that. Abraham get thee out, come to a place of my choosing that I pouring my blessing through you will use you. Friends God never works second hand, that's what the world will tell you he does but he doesn't.

God is a very loving and personal God and he calls those he wants to use in a very loving and personal way and tonight if he challenges you it will be a personal call. I have not come to call you for the mission field, I've only come to challenge your heart with the open doors that lie on my mission field and tell you what God did for me in the hope that you will believe he could do the same for you.

I have never asked anybody from that day to this to do anything that I believe God asked me to do and although it's got me into very tight corners and embarrassing places sometimes I'm still going to keep my word to God.

I went out to draw up my little savings, proceed to sell my clothes and everything I possessed to buy for myself a third class ticket on the Trans-Siberian Railway and go to China. There's no man in here, I never told anybody.

The business was God's and mine, he asked I answered and the God Jehovah said to Abraham the man and Abraham did as God asked. See dear friends, it's just as easy as that and we make it so complicated and we get all confused we get tied up in committees and all sorts of ideas and people's organising and grand names and we never go to where God intended we should.

We continue to sit in our own little graveyard while the heathen die without us and the devil walks and takes what he likes in the places where you and I as God's witnesses should have already been or be going.

I wandered through Europe, Poland, Russia, across to Japan and back into the north of China. For those of you who are afraid to go out at dark, I had never been more than a few miles from my own home and I was just over 20.

God's a great God young friend, he'll protect you if he wants you setting off for him. I got to China and here I joined an old lady. We didn't know each other, we'd never seen each other, neither did we know anything about each other.

We had both heard at different times under entirely different circumstances from different people of one particular place right in the heart of China that had had no witness for Jesus Christ and we both believed that that was where God wanted us to go, that's where we met.

Gina Lawson was 74, I was 25 and so we did not walk the same, talk the same, think the same, want to do the same or want to eat the same. We were opposite. How could we be the same? Age and youth don't want to do the same.

She had already lived her life and was coming to the end, I was only at the beginning but I know that God put us together and for that purpose of his glory we formed our little plan, we took a courtyard in this small city hidden in the southern Shanxi mountains.

We were going to have the first mission station in that area of China and so for days we cleaned, we organised, we prayed and we waited but not one single person even looked inside our door let alone attempted to come in.

So we came down lower and lower and lower before God. What does one do? How do you start off? We didn't know and then one day we discovered that God had put us in a very important place in that area of China because over those great southern Shanxi mountains there went on a little mountain track that ran from the border of Hunan by the Yellow River up to the border of Hebei, men with animal trains and these men with their strings of camels, mules or donkeys, day after day taking one month or more from one end of that route to the other had got to find somewhere both of themselves and their animals to eat and sleep each night and so in sheltered parts of the mountainside or down in the valley where there was water there were what looked like little villages.

They were not villages they were just groups of courtyards which were in to cater for these men and their animals. Right in the centre of that animal route exactly halfway from one end to the other was the one and only city, the city of Yanchang where God had put two women, Juni Lawson and Glenny Ting.

Every single man going or coming for whatever purpose had got to spend at least one night in that city simply because it was a long day's journey in either direction before you came to any other habitable place.

Well says Juni, you see darling where God's put us and so I suggest that you and I get down before him, throw a few of our ideas to the winds and see what he suggests and down on our knees on the mud floor we pleaded with God to show us how to appeal to these men and women who every single one knew nothing of Jesus Christ and was going to a lost eternity and we discovered now that here was a way and our ideas went to the wind and instead of having a mission station we opened the courtyard as a mule inn.

Every night down from the mountain sides came these men. They could go into our kitchen where they bought a bowl of food the same price as they could have bought anywhere else. We weren't there to make money.

They came out, they leaned against the wall, they sat on little stools or stoves around the courtyard and there in the middle of the yard sat Juni Lawson telling a story. I don't know the story. I one did not understand Chinese in those days.

Two, I wasn't even there. I'm out in the yard looking after the mule and I suppose you think well that's a foolish thing to do. You mean to tell us that you went all the way from Great Britain to China to look after some mules?

No I didn't but that's what I did when I got there. Of course we're very particular now. The graveyard's very comfortable isn't it? Dear friend I wouldn't get out. Oh no not if you want to do some hard work for God.

You see God does not promise that we eat what we like, that we wear what we choose or we live in the kind of place that we think is comfortable. Get thee out and put your hand in mine and come to the place of my choosing.

You see dear friend you don't even know where you go. So perhaps that's why you don't go or you don't even bother to find out what the kind of place is even like. May God challenge you tonight friend on your little soul of going round and round when God wants to give you a vision of the great outside filled with souls for whom he climbed Calvary Hill to die for and save.

Serving Women Through Foot-Binding Reform

I lived with Jeannie Lawson for one year in a mule inn and when she died at the end of that year I faced my most terrific problem. I was of course only still a young and single girl and I was in the middle of China alone.

I suppose it would have been very sensible to move. One I didn't know where to go nor did I know anybody. But two God didn't tell me. I couldn't understand for quite a long time why God had left me there.

Wasn't he love? And yet I couldn't go more than a few steps from my own front door. I couldn't go out and do any shopping. I couldn't be seen talking to a man. There were lots of things that I was just tied up in simply because I was a young and single woman alone.

And God did not leave one in embarrassing situations. He was love. Then all of a sudden I was to wake up and discover why he'd left me there. I found out that I, because I had come from the outside, was the only woman in that whole district with unbound feet.

And all over the north of China this custom of binding little girls feet had gone on for many years. The little girl when she was from two to four years old her feet were bound up. By the time she was from 12 to 14, ready to be married, her feet were finished.

They were the same size as my middle finger. This was never God's intention. I believe there had been people who tried to do something about stamping this custom out but they all failed. And now down in the capital of China there had come into power this land's first Christian leader Chiang Kai-shek.

He started to put on reforms. I don't know about the rest of China, I only know that he made a law. The binding of little girls feet is to cease against the law. And he saw that this law was carried out.

This meant that every headman of a particular district had now got to find someone whom he could employ and pay, and send round his particular district from the government to stamp this custom out. The Mandarin of Yantian had been looking for a long time for someone suitable to do this job in his particular area.

He had failed to find anyone in that there was no woman with unbound feet. And he said, well I can't send a bound foot woman to advocate big feet for women. And where do I go to find somebody suitable?

Now he tried everything, give him his trust, do, and he failed. Until all of a sudden one day, a traveller going in from the city on the other side of our mountains to discuss something quite different to this with him, was faced with a very worried, concerned looking man.

You've come from that city on the other side of the mountains, do you think you would help me? I'm just desperate to find someone to whom I can give this honourable and worthy position of the official of feet.

You mean, man, you haven't found anybody yet? No. And I just don't know what to do. I've tried everything. Oh, said the traveller, I think I've got an idea. And I think your troubles are at an end, because when I was coming down this very street on my way to keep my appointment with you, I saw coming out of an inn down by the city gate, what I truly believe was a woman.

But believe it or not, Shen Zhang, he'd had the biggest feet that I've ever seen on any woman around here. And the Mandarin, of course, so shaken, wondered whether this possibly could be true. For far very long he's standing in my yard to see if it's true.

Discovered it was. And of course he said, well, then you are the person. He was positive this job was mine. I was positive it wasn't. I hadn't gone to China to get mixed up with governments and feet. No.

Why, before long I was going to become, so I hoped, a proper missionary. And I was going to go round and preach the gospel. Oh no, stay out of this business as long as possible. And so I, making my excuses, tried to tell this man no.

And then all of a sudden, something was to happen that was to alter me, the whole set up of the city in due time, and the lives of hundreds of women. I heard, as it were, a little voice, way in the distance somewhere.

It sounded exactly like my brother. I don't believe I heard this in my ears. Simply because my brother was still away in the middle of England, and I was in the middle of China. But I know I heard it in my heart.

The very words that my brother, only a few years before, had flung at me across our kitchen. If you really believe somebody ought to be going, why don't you go yourself? Did I really believe that this custom of foot binding should be done away with?

Well of course I did. Didn't I believe that my Jesus was love? And that he had made little boys' feet and little girls' feet the same, that they might walk freely? Well of course I did. Then why didn't I do something about it myself?

And so the no that had already been formed in my mouth was immediately turned into yes. Shandong, my God has just told me to accept this position. But I only do it on one condition, that you give me in writing that I do this job as I desire.

You see, I worship a living God, and I only go where he says, I only say what he tells me to, I only do as he desires. And if you're willing to accept me under those conditions, then all right. Oh yes, yes, I don't mind what God you worship, and I just don't mind how you do the job as long as you do it.

And if you come down first thing tomorrow morning, I'll give you the whole thing in writing. And I got it. Are we afraid? Are you compromising? Then prove it to somebody. Out of walking in circles, then prove it to someone else.

The moment we on the other side of the world don't think you'll say it, because you have no proof. And we want proof. We want your prayers, we want your sympathy, we want your understanding. But you're so busy in your little graveyard.

Keep on dear friend, it's nice dusting gravestones, isn't it? Oh yes, it's so nice, because there's no, there's no worrying it, you see. Oh friend, may you see yourself tonight as God sees you, and as some of us, and be willing to accept this challenge, not from me, but the great almighty Jehovah of hosts, the living God who says, get thee out, because I'm longing to bless you.

You're not getting any blessing, how can you? Graveyards don't get blessed, they're all dead anyway. What's going to bless in them? They don't know it. God isn't going to bless Christ down some dead valley.

He blesses souls. Dear friend, are you asleep? Then accept the challenge, and tonight put out your hand in faith, and take Jesus Christ at his word, and you will find that the minute you step up, the blessing will begin to fly, out into those hamlets on the mountainside, in and out those little villages.

The Gospel Spreads Through Ordinary Obedience

This is Gladys Aylewood, oh no, no, Gladys Aylewood, she's disappeared. Where's she gone? Oh, she's just around the corner somewhere. Who's this person? Oh, that's just her. Oh her, you mean that bossy one?

Yes. Oh, she just goes round and round and pokes her nose in everywhere. There's nothing escapes that woman. She comes in your village and just tells you where to get off and what to do, even how to wash the baby.

You mean, oh yes, but do you know, have you listened to the story she tells? Jesus is a God who loves everybody. Do you believe there's a God who loves everybody? Never heard of him. Well, she knows all about it.

She knows his name, she knows where he is, she says he talks to her. It's worth going to listen to, don't you think? Dear friends, they come, they listen, before long they believe. In the first place, the first Christians came into that area of China, through listening to the gospel in a mule wheel.

So now the first Christian groups came into being, through just her. You know that foot one? Oh, her. Friend, looking for a good name? Want to have your name in a missionary list? Get thee out! Are you expecting man to spoon feed you and lift you up and put you down somewhere?

Get thee out! Dear friend, this God is a God of great wonder. And yet we sit around waiting for some man or woman or committee or something, as they just lift us in and out. Isn't that it? Do you know anything about China?

Do you know the date? Oh no, you don't. Of course you don't. You aren't even concerned. Oh, you're busy in your graveyard. Friend, are you still going to be busy after tonight? I pray that God will pour his blessing upon you and we will receive some of that blessing.

The promise to Abraham was that the blessing should flow unto him and through him, so that from one end of the earth to the other men would know that this great God of Abraham was the almighty Jehovah of hosts, Father of Jesus Christ.

I was terribly happy. Who wouldn't be? Wasn't I doing what I believed God had sent me to do? Well, I wasn't a missionary and I wasn't eating what I liked and doing exactly as I pleased. But men and women were finding Christ and to me this was a wonderful and great joy.

Obedience Versus Personal Fulfillment

And then all of a sudden there came into my life what comes into every one of our lives. That's something which I find now on coming out to meet groups such as you. So many of us fail. The challenge for ourselves, for our hearts, for our soul, for this that is us, the person that is me.

Friend, we get caught in these graveyards, don't we? And we get entangled in what man has said we ought to be doing. We walk in a certain way because that's the proper thing to do. And we wear a certain kind of clothes because that's the fashion.

And we do things, well of course we all have to, do you? Is that what God said? And Jehovah God said, get thee out and follow me. Dear friend, we are not flocks of sheep. We are men and women whom God has given brains.

We very seldom use them. We just go by someone else and follow the crowd. And this is where I believe we fail God. Gladys Aylward went into China as a girl, just over 20. She awoke one day, she was a woman over 30.

And she wanted what every other woman wants, a home, security, a husband, faith. My heart longed to love and I myself longed to be loved. We do. God created us for such purpose. And dear friend, it is not wrong to love.

Neither is it wrong to want to love. But it's wrong when we choose our own way of doing it. And the world has set us a certain rule and we're all running up it. And getting nowhere. I believe that the solution to my heart's questioning, the problems that I was facing in the work, in that I as a single woman found it almost impossible to talk to groups of men, in that I was alone.

To the emotions that were sweeping over me as a woman would be sold if God gave to me a husband. And I did the only thing I knew, I put the matter before God. Dear Lord Jesus, as you saved me, called me, challenged me, equipped me, drew me out, put me down in the middle of China, poured your blessing upon me, opened my ears that I might hear, opened my mouth that I might talk, gave me a job that I might be free.

You know how lonely I am. This great wide earth there is just a young man who won't know anything about Gladys Elwood. But will you challenge him? Will you equip him and call him and do for him what you did for me?

And one day I will find him climbing these mountains and here we will meet. We'll join up together and we will climb mountains for you. We will have the first Christian home in this whole area for you.

And it'll be just wonderful. All your glory will sweep from one end of this great district to the other and we'll be so happy. And then one day these people will see the first white baby in this whole area.

And Gladys Elwood dreamed her dream and prayed her prayer but no one came. Do you know why no one came? Would you happen to know? Dear friend, I challenge you. Do you believe God answers prayer? Those of you who are Christians will say yes.

I will say yes. Then the challenge is even greater. It means that God challenged someone but the someone didn't exist. Isn't that true? Tonight dear friend this is not a call to that part of China which it is even for me who belong there impossible to go.

But I dare in the name of Christ and this great almighty Jehovah of hosts, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Father of Jesus Christ, dare to challenge every man right here. Are you where God told you to be?

Are you doing what God told you to do? You needn't answer me. It's not my concern. Get thee out and I will give you a vision of what I saw on Calvary and what I now see from my lofty heaven. Armies of men marching with hearts filled with hate.

Men in their hundreds, women in their thousands, bowing down to heathen idols. Thousands behind iron curtains, lonely and oppressed. While you go free, dusting your little gravestones. Oh men, may God challenge you.

The Challenge to Women in the Mission Field

Dare I remind you that there are no bowls, no footballs, no comics, wirelesses or televisions or stupid novels in heaven. So would you like starting getting used to the thing down here if you're going there?

Neither are there any of these things on the mission field. Perhaps that's why you didn't come. No one came. So glad you say we didn't give in. No we don't. We just altered. I altered my prayer. Lord Jesus, I needn't really have a husband.

It's not all that particular but you wouldn't leave me alone. After all you sent the disciples out two by two you know. And you are loud. And I do desperately need someone. Look at this great district and there's only me.

What about those fine girls? What about those nurses? Oh they're so wonderful. They're so equipped. They're so efficient. Why they're way way ahead of me. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have one of these?

And so I again prayed the prayer and dreamed the dream that one day over the mountainside there would come that fine fellow worker. Oh she wouldn't mind what she ate. She wouldn't mind how many mountains she climbs.

No we would sing choruses together. Go in and out those villages together for Jesus Christ. But she didn't come. No one came. So tonight in the same way as I have dared to challenge you who are men, I challenge us who are women.

Are we doing what God told us to do? Did you choose for yourself? Don't grumble if it didn't work out as you as you thought it was going to. You should have asked God. Are you going to spend the rest of your life dusting chair or gravestone or living for Christ?

Friend may God give you a vision of yourself going round and round and round. And although I truly believe that God does not want us to leave our responsibility that to you who have got to cook dinners and sweet floors you will still have to do it.

But would you do it for God? Would you do it with a vision of the outside that through it someone else is blessed or saved? Dear friend God did not give you an eye light and health and peace and joy and salvation to enjoy it all to ourselves.

Oh no remember he died on Calvary for all those other people too. Are you doing anything about it? Do you know what they're doing in Indonesia tonight? Do you know what they're doing in Russia tonight?

Do you? Then you should. You belong to God. They're part of this family. I know there's something wrong with you but there is nothing wrong with God. Nobody can. And so Gladys Edward just went lower and lower in despondency and disappointment.

Oh God he wasn't the God of love. Oh no. No he was just the God who just caught all of you and in a spirit of enthusiasm you followed him and out you went and then he stuck you in the middle of China and just proceeded to forget all about you.

Didn't even give you a companion. No that was that so well. Well all right then that's it. Dear friend that's how we get. It is lonely you know. It is frustrating. It is disappointing. Have you been disappointed?

Have you been frustrated? Well then would you like to think how much more frustrating it has been for some of us outside of anything we know? Are you doing anything about it? Do you know what they're doing in Indonesia tonight?

Do you? Then you should. They're part of this family. I know there's something wrong with you but there is nothing wrong with God. Nobody can. And so Gladys Edward just went lower and lower in despondency and disappointment.

Oh God he wasn't the God of love. Oh no. No he was just the God who just caught all of you and in a spirit of enthusiasm you followed him and out you went and then he stuck you in the middle of China and just proceeded to forget all about you.

Didn't even give you a comparison. No that was that so well. Well all right then that's it. And dear friend that's how we get. It is lonely you know. It is frustrating. It is disappointing. Have you been disappointed?

Have you been frustrated? Well then would you like to think how much more frustrating it has been for some of us outside of anything we know? Hardly understanding what anybody says? Being unable in many ways to convey our meaning through a foreign language to people whom we really love?

Friend if you've grumbled may God forgive your grumble and teach you how to pray. Do you possess a missionary? You sent a missionary from your church? Prayed for her today? No you sent her a Christmas card at Christmas didn't you?

Is that all? Is that all? And Jehovah the God said get thee out. Oh that tonight God this great loving God will speak to us and touch us. We have failed him haven't we? And we failed those that we promised to stand by because we didn't stand by.

Calvary, Compassion, and the First Child

I one day walked up the main street of our little city. I wasn't thinking of anybody but myself. My own right. Then all of a sudden sitting on the side of the road I noticed an ordinary mountain woman.

Kneeling against her knee was a very dirty sick looking little child. I forgot what I was going to ask the woman. My mind focused on the child. Talked to her and learned she was there to sell the child.

I bought it. I paid for it all the money I then had in my pocket. Nine pennies. They're very cheap on our side of the world dear friend. These wonderful souls whom Christ died. Nine pennies. I never dreamed I was buying my first fellow worker.

My first daughter who was going to bring into my life the most amazing joy. Who was going to fill my heart with something that I have never never ceased to praise God for. I didn't buy her because I loved children.

At that time I did not love children. I did not buy her that day because I loved China. Because that day I did not love China. I bought her because Christ asked. The moment that I learned from the woman she was there to sell the child.

To the actual moment when I took my money from my pocket to bargain and buy the child. Which could have only taken from four at the most five minutes. I didn't see a vision. I'm not that kind. I didn't dream a dream.

I'm standing on a busy city street. The heart of China. I saw nothing with my eye. But in my soul I know. Friend have you ever been to Calvary? You needn't spend money and rush to the Holy Land. Sitting in this building tonight with the eyes of your soul you can see Calvary.

Do you know anything about how they knocked the nails in his feet and his head? Have you ever felt how they pressed that crown of thorns on his breath? Friend have you been to Calvary? And Jehovah God said get thee out.