19. Transformed Lives
Transformed Lives
Behold how much was wrought in the life and work of one lady missionary. She had worked hard for many years in her district and none of the work there was bearing real fruit. She read the account of Mr. Hyde’s prayer-life and resolved to devote the best hours of her time to prayer and waiting on God in the study of his word and will. She would make prayer primary, and not secondary as she had been doing. She would begin to live a prayer-life in God’s strength. God had said to her: "Call upon Me, and I will show thee great and mighty things. You have not called upon me and therefore you do not see these things in your work." She writes: "I felt that at any cost I must know him and this prayer-life, and so at last the battle of my heart was ended and I had the victory." One thing she prayed for was that God would keep her hidden. She had to face being misunderstood and being dumb and not opening her mouth in self-defense if she was to be a follower of the Lamb. In less than a year she wrote a letter, and oh, what a change! New life everywhere—the wilder- ness being transformed into a garden. Fifteen were baptized at first and one hundred and twenty-five adults during the first half of the following year!
"The most of the year has been a battle to keep to my resolution, I have always lived so active a life, accustomed to steady work all day long, and my new life called for much of the best part of the day to be spent in prayer and Bible study. Can you not imagine what it was and what it is sometimes now? To hear others going around hard at work while I stayed quietly in my room, as it were inactive. Many a time I have longed to be out again in active work among the people in the rush of life, but God would not let me go. His hand held me with as real a grip as any human hand and I knew that I could not go. Only the other day I felt this again and God seemed to say to me, ’What fruit had ye in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?’ Yes, I knew I was ashamed of the years of almost prayerless missionary life.
"Every department of the work now is in a more prosperous condition than I have ever known it to be. The stress and the strain have gone out of my life. The joy of feeling that my life is evenly balanced, the life of communion on the one hand and the life of work on the other, brings con- stant rest and peaece. I could not go back to the old life, and God grant that it may always be impossible."
Another year passed, and she wrote again: "The spirit of earnest inquiry is increasing in the vil- lages and there is every promise of a greater movement in the future than we have ever yet had. Our Christians now number yix hundred in contrast with one sixth of that number two years ago [before she began the prayer-life and gave herself to it]. ’I believe we may expect soon to see great things in India. Praise for his hourly presence and fellowship!" The pastor of a congregation in Illinois writes, "We have lost a strong and noble brother, who has not only done the Lord’s work in the far-off land but has been an inspiration to us as well and the means of awakening at least one from this congregation to such an interest in the for-eign work that today she is in China." Who can measure John Hyde’s influence and power in In- dia, in England, and in America ?
"J. N. Hyde was like his father. When duty called, the call was imperative. He answered it not with skyrocket exploitation and great ado, but with unalterableness of purpose that meant this or death! It seems God meant this and death. In the last class letter he wrote to his seminary classmates he says: ’For three full years now God has given us decisions and baptisms every day when we have been out in our district—over a thousand the past two years.... never a day if we were right with God without souls.’’ ’They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever.’ Is there anything in this old world worth while except seeking and saving that which was lost?" (Herrick Johnson.)
Read of these experiences, as recorded by a missionary in India who wrote "An American Girl’s Struggle and Surrender."
"On the wall in my room in India hung a motto card. It is the picture of a stony hill with a little green grass here and there. On the top of the hill is a tree; most of the branches on one side have been entirely swept away by the wind and only a few scraggly limbs remain on the other side. On this card is printed: ’Endure when there is every external reason not to endure.’ And this verse: ’He endured . . . seeing him who is invisible.’
"A dear young friend seeing this card said to me; ’Memsahib, that motto card is to me your pho- tograph. God has been cutting from your life one branch after another and again and again has removed earthly supports.’ "
She and her husband were very happy in their going out to India and during the first year. But there were shadows over the pathway. The next year God gave and soon took to himself a dear little life. From the first her husband would ask God to fill him with the Spirit at any cost to him - self. At first she could not pray this prayer. After the babe was taken she would join her husband in this prayer, and as they would rise from their knees she would say, "But, oh, I am afraid of the cost." Then next her husband was taken with fever. How she pleaded and prayed and even commanded God. But he passed away. For months she was dazed and seemed oblivious to everything but her unutterable loss. It was a year of great darkness. But in the spring God sent a messenger (Mr. Reginald Studd, a man from whom John Hyde learned much) through whom God revealed what He desired to be to each of his children, their all in all, the chiefest among ten thousand, their heart-friend.
Christ possessed this man’s life. Christ was to him all that the dearest earthly friend could be, and infinitely more. Not only was his life centered in Christ,—Christ was his very life. He com- muned with him as with a friend, spending hours with him, his inmost being was made radiant with Christ’s abiding presence, and wherever he went "Christ was revealed." Soon after meeting this messenger of Christ she relates further, "In a written consecration I gave myself, my child [born shortly after her husband’s death], all I had and all I ever would have, to the Lord, to be his forever. It was an unconditional surrender and the Holy Spirit entered in his fulness and began to lead me into the love and joy and peace —a knowledge surpassing the love and joy and peace for which I had long been yearning. There came to my heart a deep quietness. The Word of God opened up to me in marvelous richness, becoming food for the soul.
"In the years that have followed I have again and again been brought to places where two ways opened; one the way of the ordinary Christian life, the other the way on which one seemed to see the bloodstained marks of the Saviour’s footsteps; and he called me to follow him—the slain Lamb. It has meant the way of the cross; but it has also meant fellowship with Christ."
She writes further about "the Messenger" whom God had sent to the Punjab who showed such a Christ-possessed life. She writes: "I do not remember that he ever talked about prayer; he prayed. Speaking sometimes four and five times a day, he would then spend half the night in prayer, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. He prayed."
She gives us modestly some glimpses of how wonderfully God worked through her. Sometimes it was among the Mohammedans, sometimes among the native Hindus, and sometimes among the foreign missionaries. She was associated with the Punjab Prayer Union and the Sialkot Convention.
She says, "There have been many failures, times when the self-life hindered God. I am more and more amazed that God has been able, notwithstanding my failures, to work in such won- drous ways, and has given me the joy of seeing him work.
"God offers," she continues, "to bring all who are willing into the secret place, within the vail, the place of sweetest refuge, where ’all is peace and quiet stillness.’"
Within the vail. Be this, beloved, thy portion, Within the secret of thy Lord to dwell, Beholding him, until thy face his glory, Thy life his love, thy lips his praise shall tell. Within the vail — for only as thou gazest Upon the matchless beauty of his face Canst thou become a living revelation Of his great heart of love, his untold grace. Within the vail — his fragrance poured upon thee; Without the vail, that fragrance shed abroad; Within the vail his hand shall tune the music, Which sounds on earth the praises of the Lord. When I was a boy there was a pond near my father’s house. I would stand on the shore of that pond and throw a stone out into the water and then watch the waves in ever widening circles move out from that center, till every part of the surface of the pond would be in motion. The waves would come to the shore at my very feet and every little channel and inlet would be moved by the ripples.
Sialkot started circles and waves of blessing that are even now beating in the secret recesses and inlets of many human hearts. And I am led to believe that every atom and molecule of water in that pond felt the impact of that stone. Only God and the recording angel can determine how much the whole body of Christ has been moved upon and benefited by the tremendous prayer force generated by the Holy Spirit in that prayer room at Sialkot.
Native pastors, teachers and evangelists have gone home from these conventions with new zeal for Jesus Christ and have influenced thousands of lives in their many fields of labor.
Foreign missionaries have had their lives deepened by visions of God. Letters and printed pages, like the aprons and handkerchiefs from Paul’s body, have been sent probably to every country on earth to bring healing to the faint-hearted, and direction and encouragement to those desiring to enter the prayer life. I am assured that tens of thousands have been born into the kingdom because of the soul travail at Sialkot. Myriads will one day rise up to thank God that two or three men in North India in the name of Jehovah said, "Let us have a convention at Sialkot!"