Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts Order Printed Copy
- Author: Les And Leslie Parrott
- Size: 1.87MB | 167 pages
- |
Others like saving your marriage before it starts Features >>
About the Book
"Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts" by Les and Leslie Parrott is a practical guide for couples who are preparing for marriage, or seeking to strengthen their existing relationship. The book covers important topics such as communication, conflict resolution, finances, and intimacy, offering insights and exercises to help couples build a strong foundation for a lasting and successful marriage.
Gladys Aylward
Gladys Aylward was born in London in 1904 (or a few years earlier). She worked for several years as a parlormaid, and then attended a revival meeting at which the preacher spoke of dedicating one's life to the service of God. Gladys responded to the message, and soon after became convinced that she was called to preach the Gospel in China. At the age of 26, she became a probationer at the China Inland Mission Center in London, but was failed to pass the examinations. She worked at other jobs and saved her money. Then she heard of a 73-year-old missionary, Mrs. Jeannie Lawson, who was looking for a younger woman to carry on her work. Gladys wrote to Mrs. Lawson and was accepted if she could get to China. She did not have enough money for the ship fare, but did have enough for the train fare, and so in October of 1930 she set out from London with her passport, her Bible, her tickets, and two pounds ninepence, to travel to China by the Trans-Siberian Railway, despite the fact that China and the Soviet Union were engaged in an undeclared war. She arrived in Vladivostok and sailed from there to Japan and from Japan to Tientsin, and thence by train, then bus, then mule, to the inland city of Yangchen, in the mountainous province of Shansi, a little south of Peking (Beijing). Most of the residents had seen no Europeans other than Mrs. Lawson and now Miss Aylward. They distrusted them as foreigners, and were not disposed to listen to them.
Yangchen was an overnight stop for mule caravans that carried coal, raw cotton, pots, and iron goods on six-week or three-month journeys. It occurred to the two women that their most effective way of preaching would be to set up an inn. The building in which they lived had once been an inn, and with a bit of repair work could be used as one again. They laid in a supply of food for mules and men, and when next a caravan came past, Gladys dashed out, grabbed the rein of the lead mule, and turned it into their courtyard. It went willingly, knowing by experience that turning into a courtyard meant food and water and rest for the night. The other mules followed, and the muleteers had no choice. They were given good food and warm beds at the standard price, and their mules were well cared for, and there was free entertainment in the evening--the inkeepers told stories about a man named Jesus. After the first few weeks, Gladys did not need to kidnap customers -- they turned in at the inn by preference. Some became Christians, and many of them (both Christians and non-Christians) remembered the stories, and retold them more or less accurately to other muleteers at other stops along the caravan trails. Gladys practiced her Chinese for hours each day, and was becoming fluent and comfortable with it. Then Mrs. Lawson suffered a severe fall, and died a few days later. Gladys Aylward was left to run the mission alone, with the aid of one Chinese Christian, Yang, the cook.
A few weeks after the death of Mrs. Lawson, Miss Aylward met the Mandarin of Yangchen. He arrived in a sedan chair, with an impressive escort, and told her that the government had decreed an end to the practice of footbinding. (Note: Among the upper and middle classes, it had for centuries been the custom that a woman's foot should be wrapped tightly in bandages from infancy, to prevent it from growing. Thus grown women had extremely tiny feet, on which they could walk only with slow, tottering steps, which were thought to be extremely graceful.) The government needed a foot-inspector, a woman (so that she could invade the women's quarters without scandal), with her own feet unbound (so that she could travel), who would patrol the district enforcing the decree. It was soon clear to them both that Gladys was the only possible candidate for the job, and she accepted, realizing that it would give her undreamed-of opportunities to spread the Gospel.
During her second year in Yangchen, Gladys was summoned by the Mandarin. A riot had broken out in the men's prison. She arrived and found that the convicts were rampaging in the prison courtyard, and several of them had been killed. The soldiers were afraid to intervene. The warden of the prison said to Gladys, "Go into the yard and stop the rioting." She said, "How can I do that?" The warden said, "You have been preaching that those who trust in Christ have nothing to fear." She walked into the courtyard and shouted: "Quiet! I cannot hear when everyone is shouting at once. Choose one or two spokesmen, and let me talk with them." The men quieted down and chose a spokesman. Gladys talked with him, and then came out and told the warden: "You have these men cooped up in crowded conditions with absolutely nothing to do. No wonder they are so edgy that a small dispute sets off a riot. You must give them work. Also, I am told that you do not supply food for them, so that they have only what their relatives send them. No wonder they fight over food. We will set up looms so that they can weave cloth and earn enough money to buy their own food." This was done. There was no money for sweeping reforms, but a few friends of the warden donated old looms, and a grindstone so that the men could work grinding grain. The people began to call Gladys Aylward "Ai-weh-deh," which means "Virtuous One." It was her name from then on.
Soon after, she saw a woman begging by the road, accompanied by a child covered with sores and obviously suffering severe malnutrition. She satisfied herself that the woman was not the child's mother, but had kidnapped the child and was using it as an aid to her begging. She bought the child for ninepence--a girl about five years old. A year later, "Ninepence" came in with an abandoned boy in tow, saying, "I will eat less, so that he can have something." Thus Ai-weh-deh acquired a second orphan, "Less." And so her family began to grow.... She was a regular and welcome visitor at the palace of the Mandarin, who found her religion ridiculous, but her conversation stimulating. In 1936, she officially became a Chinese citizen. She lived frugally and dressed like the people around her (as did the missionaries who arrived a few years after in in the neighboring town of Tsechow, David and Jean Davis and their young son Murray, of Wales), and this was a major factor in making her preaching effective.
Then the war came. In the spring of 1938, Japanese planes bombed the city of Yangcheng, killing many and causing the survivors to flee into the mountains. Five days later, the Japanese Army occupied Yangcheng, then left, then came again, then left. The Mandarin gathered the survivors and told them to retreat into the mountains for the duration. He also announced that he was impressed by the life of Ai-weh-deh and wished to make her faith his own. There remained the question of the convicts at the jail. The traditional policy favored beheading them all lest they escape. The Mandarin asked Ai-weh-deh for advice, and a plan was made for relatives and friends of the convicts to post a bond guaranteeing their good behavior. Every man was eventually released on bond. As the war continued Gladys often found herself behind Japanese lines, and often passed on information, when she had it, to the armies of China, her adopted country. She met and became friends with "General Ley," a Roman Catholic priest from Europe who had teken up arms when the Japanese invaded, and now headed a guerilla force. Finally he sent her a message. The Japanese are coming in full force. We are retreating. Come with us." Angry, she scrawled a Chinese note, Chi Tao Tu Pu Twai, "Christians never retreat!" He sent back a copy of a Japanese handbill offering $100 each for the capture, dead or alive, of (1) the Mandarin, (2) a prominent merchant, and (3) Ai-weh-deh. She determined to flee to the government orphanage at Sian, bringing with her the children she had accumulated, about 100 in number. (An additional 100 had gone ahead earlier with a colleague.) With the children in tow, she walked for twelve days. Some nights they found shelter with friendly hosts. Some nights they spent unprotected on the mountainsides. On the twelfth day, they arrived at the Yellow River, with no way to cross it. All boat traffic had stopped, and all civilian boats had been seized to keep them out of the hands of the Japanese. The children wanted to know, "Why don't we cross?" She said, "There are no boats." They said, "God can do anything. Ask Him to get us across." They all knelt and prayed. Then they sang. A Chinese officer with a patrol heard the singing and rode up. He heard their story and said, "I think I can get you a boat." They crossed, and after a few more difficulties Ai-weh-deh delivered her charges into competent hands at Sian, and then promptly collapsed with typhus fever and sank into delirium for several days.
As her health gradually improved, she started a Christian church in Sian, and worked elsewhere, including a settlement for lepers in Szechuan, near the borders of Tibet. Her health was permanently impaired by injuries received during the war, and in 1947 she returned to England for a badly needed operation. She remained in England, preaching there.
In 1957, Alan Burgess wrote a book about her, The Small Woman. It was condensed in The Reader's Digest, and made into a movie called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman. When Newsweek magazine reviewed the movie, and summarized the plot, a reader, supposing the story to be fiction, wrote in to say, "In order for a movie to be good, the story should be believable!" Miss Gladys Aylward, the Small Woman, Ai-weh-deh, died 3 January 1970.
How Did Evil Begin
Why is there a Satan? Why does a being exist whose name means accuser â a âdevil,â which means slanderer, a âdeceiver of the whole worldâ (Revelation 12:9), a âruler of this worldâ (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), a âgod of this ageâ (2 Corinthians 4:4 NKJV), a âprince of the power of the airâ (Ephesians 2:2), a âBeelzebul, the prince of demonsâ (Matthew 12:24)? Where does he come from? How did it come about that he ever sinned? The letters of Jude and 2 Peter give us clues. Jude 6 says, âThe angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.â And 2 Peter 2:4 says, âGod did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.â It appears, then, that some of Godâs holy angels (we may assume, in principle, that Satan is included, whether these verses refer to his original rebellion or a later one) âsinned,â or as Jude says, âdid not stay within their own position of authority.â In other words, the sin was a kind of insurrection, a desire for more power and more authority than they were appointed by God to have. So Satan and the other fallen angels originate as created holy angels who rebel against God, reject him as their all-satisfying King, and set out on a course of self-exaltation and presumed self-determination. They do not want to be subordinate. They do not want to be sent by God to serve others (Hebrews 1:14). They want to have final authority over themselves. And they want to exalt themselves above God. Most Popular Answer But these thoughts about the origin of Satan do not answer the question we began with: Why is there a Satan? They simply push the question back to the very beginning. Why did any holy angel sin? Here is the most popular answer of our modern era: All of Godâs creatures were created âfree moral agents.â If God had made them otherwise they would have been mere machines with no will of their own. . . . To be a âfree moral agentâ implies that one has the power of âchoice.â . . . As long as Satan chose the âWill of Godâ there was no âEvilâ in the Universe, but the moment he chose to follow his own Will, then he fell, and by persuading others to follow him he introduced âEvilâ into the Universe. (Clarence Larkin, The Spirit World, 12â14) There are at least two problems with this presumed answer: (1) it does not answer the question and (2) it assumes that God cannot exert sufficient influence on a morally responsible being so as to keep that being safe in the worship of God â to keep him from sinning. âFree Willâ Philosophy First, it does not answer the question, Why did any holy angel sin? To say that a perfect angel sinned because he had the power to do so is no answer. Why would a perfectly holy angel in Godâs infinitely beautiful presence suddenly be inclined to hate God? âFree willâ â that is, ultimate self-determination â is not an answer. It explains nothing. âFree willâ is a name put on a mystery. But it is not the biblical name. Because the Bible never teaches that there is such a thing as ultimate human, or ultimate demonic, self-determination. That is a philosophical notion forced onto the Bible, not taught by the Bible. In fact, that philosophical notion was one of Satanâs first designs for humanity â to persuade Adam and Eve that they could be ultimately self-determining, and that this would be good for them (Genesis 3:4â5). Both of those ideas were false. They could not become ultimately self-determining, and it was deadly for them to try. The human race has been ruined by these notions ever since. Slandering Godâs Saving Power Second, Larkinâs appeal to angelic self-determination assumes that God cannot exert sufficient influence on a morally responsible being so as to keep that being safe in the worship of God forever. Larkinâs deadly mistake is to assume that if God exerted such influence, the angels âwould have been mere machines with no will of their own.â This too is a philosophical assumption forced on the Bible, not taught by the Bible. In fact, the Bible pervasively teaches the opposite â that God can and does exert sufficient influence on morally responsible beings (his children!) to keep them safe in the worship of God forever. When the Bible says, for example, that God will âcause [us] to walk in [his] statutesâ (Ezekiel 36:27), and that he is âworking in us that which is pleasing in his sightâ (Hebrews 13:21), and that he âworks in [us], both to will and to work for his good pleasureâ (Philippians 2:13), and that the work he began in us he âwill bring . . . to completion at the day of Jesus Christâ (Philippians 1:6), and that he âwill sustain [us] to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christâ (1 Corinthians 1:8), and that âthose whom he justified he also glorifiedâ (Romans 8:30) â when God says all this, he means for us to stop talking nonsense about such glorious influence turning us into machines. It doesnât. It is life-giving grace. It is effective. It keeps us safe forever. And to call it machine-making is slanderous. If God did not exert sovereign influence over our wayward hearts, we would all fall away. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love. Hereâs my heart, oh, take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above. âIf God did not exert sovereign influence over our wayward hearts, we would all fall away.â Godâs âsealingâ (Ephesians 1:13) â his decisive, keeping influence â does not turn us into machines. It keeps us safe in the worship of God forever. No one who is justified will fail to be glorified (Romans 8:30). Heaven will never see an insurrection among the saints. Not because we are better than the angels, but because the blood of Jesus secured the new covenant for Godâs elect, where God says, âI will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from meâ (Jeremiah 32:40). He bought this pledge for his children by his blood. They will not commit treason. Let us praise such sovereign, merciful, keeping influence. God save us from slandering his saving power. It is false when Larkin assumes that God could not have kept his holy angels from sinning â safe in the worship of God. It is false to assume that such sovereign influence would make angels, or humans, into robots. It doesnât. Redemptionâs Stage What then is the answer to the question, Why did any holy angel sin? The answer is that God had a wise and gracious purpose. That is why it happened. Some of Godâs holy angels sinned because their fall would set in motion a history of redemption that would fulfill the infinitely wise purposes of God in creation. All the âunsearchable . . . judgmentsâ and all the âinscrutable . . . waysâ of God flow from the depths of his wisdom (Romans 11:33). âO Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them allâ (Psalm 104:24). He is âthe only wise Godâ (Romans 16:27). All that happens from eternity to eternity happens according to the wisdom of the one âwho works all things according to the counsel of his willâ (Ephesians 1:11). And we know it was a gracious purpose because Godâs plan before the creation of the world was to show grace to unworthy sinners. Sin came into being as part of a plan to show grace to sinners. â[God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages beganâ (2 Timothy 1:9). The plan before creation was that Christ would be the Lamb slain for sinners â sinners whose names were âwritten before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slainâ (Revelation 13:8). Christ slain for sinners was the plan before any human sinned. Two Unassailable Truths But notice what question I am not answering here. I am not answering the question, How did the first sin happen in the heart of a holy angel? The why question I have answered by saying the first sin happened as part of Godâs wisdom and purposes and planning. But that assumes God was able to see to it that the first sin happened without himself being a sinner, and without making the first sinning angel into a machine. I do not know the answer to the question of how God did this. This, to me, is one of the great mysteries of biblical teaching that I cannot explain â how God governs the will of sinful beings, yet, in doing so, does not sin, and does not take away their responsibility. I see that it is true, because the Bible teaches it, but how God does this remains a mystery. Recall that above I said that âfree willâ â ultimate self-determination â is the name some people put on this mystery. Then I added that this is not the biblical name. Because the Bible never teaches that there is such a thing as ultimate self-determination, except in God. The Bible doesnât give the mystery a name. Rather it teaches two truths again and again: God governs the hearts and minds of all sinful beings without himself sinning, and they are truly and justly accountable for all their sins. Sovereign over Satan Since we are not told explicitly how things transpired in the fall of Satan, it is illuminating to study how God relates to Satanâs will now. Is God helpless when a satanic will chooses to do evil? Can God restrain that will? Or would that only turn the will into a machine? The biblical answer is that God has the right and power to restrain Satan anytime he pleases. Consider these examples. 1. Though Satan is called âthe ruler of this worldâ (John 12:31), Daniel 4:17 says, âThe Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.â Satanâs world rule is subordinate to Godâs. 2. Though unclean spirits are everywhere doing deceptive and murderous things, Jesus Christ has all authority over them. âHe commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey himâ (Mark 1:27). 3. Satan is a roaring lion, prowling and seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). Peter explains that the jaws of this lion are, in fact, the sufferings of persecution: âResist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the worldâ (1 Peter 5:9). But this suffering, Peter says, does not happen apart from Godâs sovereign will: âIt is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be Godâs willâ (1 Peter 3:17). 4. Satan is a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). But God decides, finally, who lives and who dies and when: âIf the Lord wills, we will live and do this or thatâ (James 4:15). 5. When Satan aims to destroy Job and prove that God is not his treasure, he must get permission from God before he attacks his possessions (Job 1:12) or his body (Job 2:6). 6. Satan is the great tempter. He wants us to sin. Luke tells us that Satan was behind Peterâs three denials. âSatan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheatâ (Luke 22:31). But Jesus is sovereign over this tempterâs work, and its outcome. He says to Peter, âI have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothersâ (Luke 22:32). Not âif you turn,â but âwhen you turn.â Christ rules over all of Satanâs designs. Satan aims to fail Peter. Jesus aims to fit him for leadership. 7. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan âhas blinded the minds of the unbelievers.â But two verses later, God removes that blindness. âGod, who said, âLet light shine out of darkness,â has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christâ (2 Corinthians 4:6). So now back to the question about the origin of Satanâs sinfulness. Is God helpless before the will of his own angels? Is there a power outside himself that limits his rule over their choices and plans? My conclusion is that, from cover to cover, the Bible presents God as governing Satan and his demons. He has the right and power to restrain them any time he pleases. Guarding the Mystery The sum of the matter, then, about where a sinful Satan came from is this: He was a holy angel who mysteriously came to prefer self-exaltation over God-exaltation. He fell into the delusion that ultimate self-determination was possible for a finite creature, and that it was preferable to submitting to God. This fall was part of Godâs all-wise plan. It did not take him off guard. How God saw to it that this part of his plan came to pass, without himself sinning and without turning Satan into a machine, I do not know. âFrom cover to cover, the Bible presents God as governing Satan and his demons.â Trying to explain this mystery with so-called âfree willâ â that is, ultimate self-determination â is unbiblical and vacuous. It is unbiblical because the idea that any of Godâs creatures has ultimate self-determination is not taught anywhere in the Bible. And it is vacuous because it does not explain anything. Simply asserting that a holy angel had the âpower of choiceâ offers no explanation of why a perfectly holy being in Godâs infinitely beautiful presence would suddenly be inclined to hate God. We should probably take our cue from the reticence of the Bible to speak about Satanâs origin. He is there in the first pages of the Bible with no explanation. The mystery of his first sin remains just that. We surround it and guard it with biblical truth, lest unbiblical and vacuous explanations spread like a smog over the Scriptures and obscure the glory of Godâs saving purposes. Article by John Piper Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org
