In this sermon, the speaker shares about their experience running a children's home and the blessings they received from God. They also talk about their 60th birthday celebration and the importance of family. The speaker emphasizes the need to pray for the salvation of children in China and the responsibility to bring souls to God. They highlight the privilege of living in freedom and being able to read the Bible and pray, which is not available to millions in countries like Russia and China. The sermon concludes with a powerful reminder of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross and the need to surrender ourselves completely to Him.

Please turn your cassette over at this point. They're going to fail as I nearly did, unless you do. I waited and I waited and then decided that perhaps I was wrong. Maybe God didn't want me to have a husband. Well, if he didn't want me to, then that was it. But he wouldn't leave me alone. He was a God of love. And he knew that I longed for fellowship and companionship. I had prayed for fellow workers. And so into the next year, I did. And I waited and I prayed in the same way for that fine girl, who of course, as you know, never came. I wonder if she should have come. Young men, young women, in the name of Jesus Christ, I challenge you, everyone. What are you doing for Jesus Christ? What are you doing for Jesus Christ? Not what you're doing for your career, or yourself, or even your mother and father, but for Jesus Christ. If you will bring into my storehouse your completed tithe, says God, then you can prove me and you see what I will do. But you haven't got your completed tithe in, so you haven't got any blessing. I do believe somebody should have come into that path of fellowship. Because you see, it was I who watched. The people who I couldn't get round to, die without Jesus Christ. Into that next year, when I realized that probably no one was coming, I'm afraid I just went lower and lower and lower. And tonight, friend, may I remind you that if you have a missionary, or if you know of that native worker, or if you don't, then find one. Now, you should be praying every day. They are in the forefront of the battle, and they need upholding and caring. If you will bring into my storehouse your completed tithe for what purpose? That my family may be upheld and kept. They're not asking for your money. They're asking for your upholding care and your love. And so one day, they walked up the city of Yontong, a grim, hard-hearted woman. Is this Clarice Edwards? Yes. She's not preaching about a God of love, because there isn't one. Love? You're talking about love? That's the God who picks you up and pulls you out and puts you down in the middle of China and proceeds to forget all about you. He doesn't care that you're so lonely that you ache or what happens to you or anything. He only, well, that's all it is to it. And, well, here we are. Lord, if you want a grumbly, crotchety old maid, well, here she is. I'll serve you, but you wait and see what you get. My heart was filled with my own self-pity, my own self-righteousness, my own pride, my own ideas. Myself. Friend, are you there? Are you there? I meet them every day in the London tube, on the buses, in the trains. The miserablest lot you could ever meet. They don't care about anybody but me and mine and now us and ours. Got the worst headache in the world, haven't you? Well, I'm telling you, you haven't. God does not demand. God does not push. God does not pull. He says, if you will bring. And when that tide goes in, it is in God's hands and He will do with you as He so desires in such a wonderful and loving way that you will find you are usable wherever He puts you. I walked up the city street and sitting on the side of the road was an ordinary mountain woman leaning against her knee was a very dirty, miserable-looking little child. I discovered she was there to sell it. I bought it. I didn't buy the child, as you now know, because I loved children, because I didn't. Or because I pitied it, because I didn't. Or because I wanted it, because I didn't. I wanted my own baby. And my house at that moment was filled with my own self-pity and my own ideas. I bought it because I truly believed that Jesus Christ asked me to. As I stood on that busy city street it was as if somebody brushed past me and a voice somewhere behind me was saying, Bite, bite me. I haven't any money. Oh yes you have. And I suddenly remembered that in my pocket there lay a few Chinese coppers. Do you mean to say that you want me to buy this with my own money? Because you see Gary, you can only buy a body, but I can save its soul. Do you know how I earned this money? Because this is my wages, you know. See that mountain? I climbed up that mountain almost on my hands and knees because it is too steep for an animal to climb up. When I got to the top of that mountain I called those village people together and I shouted myself hoarse. That's my job. And I came down here to receive my wages. Yes, that's the voice. I know. I know exactly how you feel. You see guys, one day I too climbed the mountain and I too perspired all over climbing it. When I got to the top of the mountain I didn't shout. In fact, I never even opened my mouth. I allowed those men to do exactly what they liked with me and they nailed me to a cross. Do you know what for? Because guys, I hadn't any money. In fact, I hadn't anything else to give. So I gave myself. My warm life's black. I was thirty-three and I woke. I was thirty-three. Friend, have you ever been to Calvary? Oh, not a place. Can you close your eyes and know that God through the power of His Holy Spirit will give you a vision of what Calvary cost the Son of the Living God? Blood and sweat and tears. Murder. Our most horrible death. And it was for you? I did. I'm never going to Jerusalem or Bethlehem. I don't need to. I know it all. All I know is He bought. And I just realized that all I could do was to hand myself body, soul and spirit over to Him. I bought the child. It was the first act of what was going to be the complete submission of myself to Him. I never dreamed that I was buying my first daughter, a little girl who was going to come into my life and mean so much. From her there came one by one the others, all in different ways, all under different circumstances, all so different in their temperaments and characteristics. But they came. And I praised God for them. He kept us. He fed us. He clothed us. We all lived in a pickled mess in the inn. But we were very happy. And by the time the war came I had 40 children. And so one day looking down and on this sort of all scrambling mess below, I said, Oh Lord, I don't think I can bear anymore. I believe 40 are a good round number for one woman and please don't send any more. But you know God doesn't always answer your prayer as you expect. That was the year the war began. And down being pushed in front of the ever advancing Japanese enemy came hundreds and thousands of lonely pathetic refugees. And when they had passed through our little place there were always a few children left behind. So the family grew and grew until there were over 80. 80 of us during those years ran around the mountains. He protected us. He kept us. He fed us. And then we made a final getaway, came over the Yellow River where he worked miracles for us to make a new life for ourselves in the province next door, Shenzhen. I watched the older ones go away to join the army, the navy or the air force. I watched the girls go away to join Red Cross units and to be put into hospitals for wounded soldiers. And for wounded refugees. And each time I broke my heart I praised God for them and handed them over to him. He'd given to me to love and to bring up. And I prayed and longed that they should go out to be the testimony and the witness which I longed to be in the place where they were going. I don't know what became of lots of them. War separates. War kills. War hurts. War breaks your heart. But we kept the smaller ones of us together as long as possible. And then, as you know, when the first enemy retreated, so a second, more wicked, more evil enemy swept in. And what we had not lost under the first enemy, we now lost under the second. The Japanese never took away our Bibles. The Communists did. The Japanese did not do what the Communists did. And we watched with aching, breaking hearts this evil, horrible thing take bit by bit everything we possessed. Then tonight I don't know you. I don't know your thoughts. I don't know that you love the Lord Jesus or that you know him as your savior. But I challenge you if you have any idea that Communism has a good point. It came from hell and if there's any good in the devil then there's good in Communism because that's its master. I hate it with every breath I breathe because it is my Lord's greatest enemy. It has killed, it has murdered, it has suppressed more love, more people than any other thought or religion has ever done since the world began. And all that amazes me is that you can sit and listen and swallow the bait that they're throwing out on you. Great Britain, I challenge you to give to God your completed tithe and get the blessings because if you don't, you know what's going to land in? Something that you least expect. Now don't say nobody's ever warned you and don't go around saying it cannot come here. That's what we said. I sat in a lovely little village on the side of the mountain and said, oh no, it couldn't come here. But I watched that village disappear bit by bit, bit by bit, man, woman and child. If you haven't got the blessing, why? Because you have not given to God. We met, the family and I, for the last time in a field outside the city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. I had decided it was time to go. I brought danger on everybody who looked on me or even spoke to me because although I held a Chinese passport and was Chinese in my thoughts, in my love, in my language, in my clothes and in everything but my face, I still had a foreign face. I came out. I would willingly have died for China but God didn't ask death. He asked that I live. I came to England and then I turned my face back. I knew that I could not go again to the place that had been my home in North China. It was closed. It was behind an iron curtain. And so I asked the Lord where he would have me go. I set off and I wandered around the east and into the far east. Had some of the most amazing experiences going into South Africa, Ceylon, Malaya and all around those fields looking into every face. There might be my son. I might find my daughter. I might find a lonely Chinese. I did. In every place. I found them there, not my sons and daughters in every place but Chinese who were lonely, who were refugees, who were longing for freedom. God gave us blessings but there was no witness in my heart for staying in any of these places until I arrived in Hong Kong. And here the whole place was absolutely chock-a-block full of refugees. They literally were there in their hundreds. Every place where you could put a bus there was one. Every shop doorway, all the pavements down the sides of the roads, even down the middle of the road there were families living. And I who knew what it felt like to be a refugee felt this is what God has sent me for. I will work among refugees. And so I took a little room and I sort of set my little house in it as it were and I prayed and expected that God would show me what to do. Well He did, because He does. I didn't know in those early days how to begin. I wandered among up and down the road, sitting beside those heart-breaking families, nursing some of their dirty babies. I wasn't really doing anything. I didn't know how to do it. And then a miracle happened. I met one day in the street one of my own daughters. I thought he was dead. He thought I was dead. And now, right there, in the middle of all these great crowds of people, we met. And we joined up. This has been a most wonderful partnership, my son Michael and I. I praise God for him for all he has done, all he means to me and all I know he means to God. We opened right there in Kowloon what is now the Hope Mission. It was just then an empty shop. There was nothing in it. And for the first couple of months everybody who came in just either leaned against the wall or stood up, but they crowded in. God blessed us from the very moment that we stepped into the place. And I praise God for all he has done in that little place. We have the usual activities that go on. Every night there are these different groups and they come for their prayer meeting or their Bible study or their band practice. They're terribly in a hurry. Mostly they're young people who come out leaving all their families behind. They're lonely. But here they find fellowship. This is not only their spiritual home but they will tell you it's their home. So that although they don't actually sleep there they count it as their home. We now have in Hong Kong four rooftop schools. If you have seen on television those great high resettlement buildings and you know what happens you rent a rooftop and you put around it a fence or what I call chicken wire and you build a little lean-to in the middle and you open your school. The children live in the building believe they just come up to the rooftop. Every resettlement building holds one thousand families. We have four. The opportunity is wonderful. And if you see them your heart just sings with effect that they are not only learning to read and write and understand the things of the world but they are learning of Jesus Christ. We last year opened what we call a poor school which is for the children of beggars. These have no status, no name they can't take jobs because they have no pass and so they are beggars. Their children will be beggars unless something is done. Well they are not going to be beggars if we can help it and so with others of like mind these poor schools have been opened we have won. It was wonderful to go out there just a little while ago and have their dirty little hands put on you and a little dirty face looking up and saying Grandma, oh Grandma, are you my Grandma? Yes dear, I am your Grandma. Oh how wonderful to have a Grandma but isn't it wonderful to have a father? Oh yes, but he is up above you know and they in their simple way are proving the love of Jesus Christ. I did not remain in Hong Kong I, because I again believed that I should go one step further went to the island of Formosa. Now again I didn't know where I was going I only believed that that was what I should do and when I got on to the island I just didn't know again where to start but I arrived when the island was going through a wonderful time of shall I say not actually spiritual revivals but revivals of all kinds. All sorts of reforms were going on they were unifying the language land reform, schools were being built institutions opened so that things that never could and I do not think ever will happen on the mainland of China are really happening in Formosa and I just as it were went down into the middle of it and had a most wonderful time and while I was having this time of student retreats revival meetings, conferences, conventions which I had sort of come into because when I had come out of Shanxi into Shanxi and discovered that our mountain dialect would not be understood down there on the plains I had learned Northern Mandarin and oh how grateful I am to God for letting me learn it while I was still anyway younger than I am now and it was all ready to go into in Formosa where it is now the official language and imagine I arrived speaking the official language to me it was just overwhelmingly wonderful and then right in the midst of all this busyness God as it were put a full stop I went home one night to the little room that I was living in to discover that somebody had already been in it they had not stolen anything but they had left right there in the wash bowl which was on a little chair inside the room a newborn baby and I picked up the bowl with the baby in it and I said oh no Lord there is some mistake here now I do not want a newborn baby and you know that I have nothing to feed it on close it in or any time to look after it and also may I remind you that mothers are young I am well over 50 but there is no answer from heaven at all just as if God was there but as I was standing with the bowl with the baby in my hands it was just as if I could see myself all those years ago standing in the kitchen of my own home dear Lord Jesus I promise I will never again ask anyone to do something that I believe you are asking me the person God is able to do so I took the baby God worked more miracles for that baby in its first few days than he has worked for you and me in all our lives so it lived but before long there were other babies people got the idea that I loved babies and so every time I came home well I knew what was going to happen and now somebody told me that outside in a very lovely place from our city on the side of the mountain there was an old hotel I took it, rented it the Gladys Earwood Children's Home it has been filled up to last year with children of all kinds, all sorts and all conditions orphans of all sorts lonely, pathetic, lost, abandoned babies God blessed in a very wonderful and mighty way and then four years ago I came to a very important time in my life I had my 60th birthday very important in China and of course there were great celebrations and all the important people you see gave me honours and so forth but at the end of that week a nice family arrived now the family is rather large and they filled everywhere in fact they swamped the hotel and they were in everybody's house and so forth because you see the family have grown up and married and then they have got children and so they go on and on you see and there they all were and on this night after all the grandchildren had paid their honours and everything are just the family my sons and my daughters and my eldest son gave a speech he is an officer in our Chinese Air Force and a very very fine Christian in that force and now our honourable mother has got to the honourable age of 60 and so we the family have decided that it is time that she had a rest she has spent all her life and looking after such as us who were just little bundles of nothing that she picked up on the side of the road and has loved and cared for and then of course you know the usual all sorts of things that would go on and so now we have decided and we have got a little house and we have even sent outside and bought a bed we don't have beds in Formosa as you know and so we are expecting that our mother will now take her rest and sleep every night and all night on the honourable bed well I thought this was a very wonderful idea and I went and took up my residence in the little house quite small but it is very nice and I slept very comfortably on the honourable bed for one whole month at the end of that month one of those very boys had been doing accounts of the orphanage with me on his way out very late at night to go back to the orphanage up the hill his foot kicked against what he thought was a bundle of rubbish just outside my door he picked it up he was on his way up the street to put it in to the bin which is there for the purpose when he thought he felt it move he was very annoyed that somebody would tie up a little dog or a cat and leave it on our doorstep he brought it back but when it was opened it was neither cat or dog but a baby I believe the dirtiest baby we have ever had the sickest baby I have ever had anyway it just breathed I decided that to wash it would kill it so I took it to the kitchen I rubbed it all over with cooking oil wrapped it in a towel and took it to bed with me decided that in the night I would feel beside me a little cold lump all I would have to do would be put it out onto the floor and well, it would have died I would have done my best anyway but I slept all night and in the morning it was still alive it lived all that week lived into the next week into the third week and now I woke up well, wasn't it going to die? why didn't it die? I didn't know because it didn't seem to move much it didn't cry or anything it just didn't die and so I just got hold of two boys from the orphanage and I said, now listen you go straight down to the police because everybody but the people who should know know about the baby the neighbours had all been in the family had all been in even some important people from the government had been in but the police didn't know and they ought to know and so I said, well go and report it to the police and on the way back you better drop into the registry place and just register it you can think up a name on your way it's going to die anyway so why, why, what name you give it? imagine my amazement when they came back with the paper with the name of the baby on it to find they had christened it or shall I say registered it as Ai Chi Guang now Ai Chi Guang literally means the first of a new A-World family well Ai Chi Guang was just a bundle in a bed for nearly one year didn't do anything just was there just breathing, whether he knew anything understood anything we didn't know there was no voice there was no nothing of what we would call sense at all and I nearly broke my heart and it turned to Christmas and our babies were so lovely and we were going to have such a wonderful Christmas and I stood looking at them and they were all gurgling at the Christmas tree and the little silver paper things we'd saved to hang on, you know and then I went home to my little house to Chi Guang who maybe would never know a Christmas tree would never know that Jesus had ever come or that he'd ever die and I just picked him up and I said oh Lord I do not believe that this is your will surely you can't just expect a little breath to go on in a body like this please will you answer my prayer I will never ask you for anything again if you don't want me to but would you take him back to heaven or would you heal him and God healed him here tonight is Ai Chi Guang he's been naughty he's even taken his clothes off in the book and to you who have anything to do with him or seen him you know very well that when God heals he really heals because here he is there are no spots on him let me tell you we have been here just over four months and he's learned enough English to carry on quite comfortably without me and get lots of things that I don't know anything about we come back to the beginning if you will bring into my storehouse your completed tie that my family may be sustained then you can prove me and you see what I'll do I'll open windows of heaven for you I'll pour out blessing and friend he has we have in this new family 26 and then to climax the whole thing just two years ago God sent to me my fellow worker and my heart was filled with a tremendous joy and I thought of all the lonely years in Shanxi when I had longed and pleaded first for the husband and then for the fellow worker and they had neither of them came and I felt this is worth waiting for here was somebody who was going to sit in in a most wonderful way and I praise God for keeping me waiting and then sending to me dear Kathleen who although she had never nursed a baby knew nothing about orphanages and didn't know anything about the mission field but who certainly loves the Lord and has fitted in in a way which to me has been literally amazing I've left her there with those babies and my heart is absolutely at peace about them and her and all that is connected with the work that doesn't belong to me but to God and so tonight friend as we have thought of all these various things that I in a very simple way have tried to fit together to not just prove how wonderful God is but to prove what you can get for yourself if only you would give Him your completed task I wonder why people don't tonight would you let God speak to you would you allow Him to come right up close and in your ear challenge your heart because I truly believe that there are many of us here whom God wants to teach how to pray I also believe that there are many who should be doing at least something for Him maybe there are those who should be giving and there are certainly those who should be giving what you give I don't know nothing to do with me but it just isn't mine it's yourself if you will bring into my storehouse your completed task that my family may be sustained and safe then says the great over and above all one Jehovah who controls the house I will open the windows of heaven for you and you'll get so many blessings you can't use them up because I will just keep on pouring them out oh aren't we miserable tonight as we bow our heads in a word of prayer shall we ask God what He is going to ask of us would you be willing mothers if God asks you for your son or your daughter would you be willing young men young women if God asks you to go would you go or have you some reserve if you're in a particular place that you can't you have to go where He puts you that jar of pickles in your pantry is put there mother's hand wants it to be put and in the same way you in God's storehouse are in the hand of God to be put down in the place that He knows and only He knows you are going to be useful in God did not send me to Africa He knew I wouldn't be any good in Africa He didn't send me into the slums of London He knew I wouldn't be any good He sent me into the middle of China because He knew I'd sit in there and I believe that in this way He does so with each one of us if we are not in the way of His blessings then would you like to go home and see why and how you can get back and get those blessings friends you live in the miserablest place on earth Great Britain you're the biggest lot of grumblers there is and you've got nothing to grumble about may God challenge you do you realize how many hungry people there are in India tonight have you ever been hungry do you realize how many people still live in refugee camps have you ever lived in a refugee camp do you know how many people live under the arm hand of communism have you ever lived under the arm hand of communism have you ever lived through an earthquake like Turkey is right now do you know anything about a typhoon do you know anything about an enemy soldier standing in front of you and you're a woman do you of course you don't do you think you know anything no you don't know sorrow you don't know suffering may God bless your hearts and through those breaking hearts pour His love friends tonight there is one way to get into Russia shall I tell it to you prayer God sent Holy Spirit prayer there is one way to save a child in China tonight on your knees with believing Holy Spirit prayer may God teach it to you there is going to come a day friend when you stand before God's judgment throne and He's going to say what have you got must I go an empty handed just to meet my Savior's home you got anything He doesn't want your hat or your pie or your car or your land He wants you and the souls which you should be catching for Him if you were brave can you hear the sobbing of God leaning out of that wonderful glorious heaven oh if only they would give to me something to use that my family that is dying without me might know of my love God has given to you the privilege of living in freedom of being able to read this book when and where and how you like of praying anywhere how and when you like He hasn't given this privilege to millions no man in Russia tonight or China tonight can pray where and how he likes He lives under the hand of the devil as we pray would you let God deal with you as He had to deal with me friend I have not done what I wanted to I have not eaten what I wanted or worn what I would have chosen I have not lived in a house that I would have ever looked at twice I longed as I've told you for a husband and baby and security and love and He didn't give it He left me alone for 17 years with one book a Chinese Bible that's all I know and no other I don't know anything about your latest novels, pictures, theatres I live in a rather out of dated world and I suppose you say well it's awful miserable isn't it friend I've been one of the happiest women that have ever stepped inside I've had a great family of someone else's children who I've loved with a great love because Jesus Christ loved me and who I am now receiving love back from I have a wonderful family and they are now going into the places that I will never go to they are doing things that I can never do because that's what God promised the heavens opening and the blessings tumbling out shall we pray dear father accept what we are now going to give to thee something that is precious something that we've kept that we are now going to hand over our pride our jealousy our self centredness our prayerlessness our silly little empty nothing all the things we've got ourselves tied up in oh lord give us freedom freedom in thee that you might be able to pick us up and put us down and use us when and where and how you like that someone might know how much you love them we pray right now not only for ourselves but for those whom we should be upholding and keeping those lonely missionaries sick frazzled tired of the heat or the cold surrounded by hedonism superstition cruelty and sin oh god we get in yet we ask thee that you would teach us how to pray for the men in Russia the children in China people behind iron curtains behind war oh god give us visions make us to dream dreams that we may know something of Calgary what it cost and a lost soul that we may learn not only how to pray but how to do how to be how to go and how to give