About the Book
"The Lady, Her Lover, Her Lord" by T. D. Jakes is a Christian self-help book that explores the relationship between a woman, her partner, and God. It discusses how women can strengthen their faith, self-worth, and relationships by prioritizing their connection with God. Jakes emphasizes the importance of spiritual growth and communication in romantic relationships to achieve true fulfillment and happiness.
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.
Mastery Clothed in Humility: The Extraordinary Life of John Ryland
John Ryland (1753–1825) published his first book at age 12 — an accomplishment not nearly as impressive as the fact that he had learned to read Hebrew by age 4, had translated the entire Greek New Testament at 8, and was proficient in Latin and French by 11. By any account, his life was astonishingly productive. Ryland pastored two of the most prominent Baptist churches in England, served as a college president and professor, mobilized Dissenting Christians to the cause of abolition with MP William Wilberforce (1759–1833), and founded two missions societies (the Baptist Missionary Society and the interdenominational London Missionary Society) — all before his fortieth birthday. Between his missions advocacy, his passion for theological training, his love for the exposition of Scripture, his zeal for church planting and strengthening, and the invitations from students he shaped at Bristol Academy, Ryland preached no fewer than 8,691 sermons in 286 different locations. Perhaps of greatest consequence, long after his death, Ryland’s family spoke of his unimpeachable integrity and his tender and attentive presence as a husband and father. Yet despite his industrious and tireless efforts, Ryland never ascended to the star status of others in his orbit — George Whitefield (1714–1770), John Wesley (1703–1791) and his brother Charles (1707–1788), Andrew Fuller (1754–1815), or William Carey (1761–1834). In all likelihood, you’ve never heard of him. Ryland, most likely, would have had it so. Auspicious Beginnings It didn’t start out that way, however. Intellectually gifted and curious by nature, Ryland was decidedly on the path to celebrity from his youth. His father, J.C. (1723–1792), an eccentric but personable man, made use of his wide network of prominent friends to fan his son’s talents to public flame. As a child, Ryland’s home was host to Whitefield, John Wesley, inimitable theologian John Gill (1697–1771), and all manner of prominent pastors and thinkers. The elder Ryland, himself an author of seventeen books and numerous articles, was eager to see John ascend to a status and usefulness he himself was never quite able to achieve. So, in 1767, J.C.’s ambition to get his preteen son’s work into print came to fruition. The book, a collection of poems, was the first of five volumes to be published over as many years. The poetry itself is lackluster, but Ryland’s remarkable intellect and profound grasp of the Scriptures shine through. Given John’s talents and formation, though, perhaps it is no surprise that an inordinate pride lurked not far from the surface as well. Spared by Amazing Grace Mercifully, Ryland was spared cataclysm through the kindness of a forthright friend nearly thirty years his senior — a former slave-ship captain turned Anglican pastor named John Newton (1725–1807). Many years before, the young sailor’s detestable ways and arrogant mockery of Christianity had been dramatically upended. Left behind by his ship and crew in West Africa, Newton was himself enslaved and spent three years in bondage, sickness, and poverty. As Newton later recounted, this profound humiliation ultimately delivered him from his arrogance and softened the ground for his conversion. “In all likelihood, you’ve never heard of John Ryland. He, most likely, would have had it so.” Perhaps it was the stark deliverance from a life of high-handed sin that forged Newton’s deep suspicion of pride. Perhaps it was the rescue from slavery or deliverance from near-shipwreck on the open sea. Whatever the cause, Newton was seized by the profound grace of redemption in Christ and struck by the humility that permeated Jesus’s mission and ministry. He marveled over the profound self-humbling of Jesus — that the One worthy of all glory “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). On account of this, humility became the predominate characteristic of his life, and Newton sought every opportunity to cultivate it in the life of fellow Christians. “Above all things,” Newton wrote, “we should pray for humility. It may be called both the guard of all other graces, and the soil in which they grow” (The Works of John Newton, 694). Humility and love, he argued, “are the highest attainments in the school of Christ, and the brightest evidences that he is indeed our Master” (62). Gracious Rebuke In April of 1771, Newton grew concerned about Ryland after several of the teenager’s essays were published in The Gospel Magazine, along with a glowing commendation from the magazine’s editors. Newton wrote that, contrary to appearance, the editors had harmed John by fueling the temptation of pride. “I love you as well and wish you success,” Newton wrote, “but durst not have addressed you in their words, if I had thought ever so highly of your [work].” “As a real friend,” he continued, “I shall mix my approbation with a gentle censure of some things that I wish had been otherwise.” Newton assured his young friend that, with humility, he would have “considerable usefulness” for gospel ministry, and he took direct aim at what threatened to wreck it before it began. You say, “I have aimed to displease the Arminians.” I had rather you had aimed to be useful to them, than to displease them. There are many Arminians who are so only for want of clearer light. . . . Now, these should not be displeased by our endeavoring to declare truth in the terms most offensive to them which we can find, but rather we should seek out the softest and most winning way of encountering their prejudices. . . . You will perhaps say, “An humble Arminian! Surely that is impossible.” I believe that it is not more impossible to find a humble Arminian than a proud and self-sufficient Calvinist. The doctrines of grace are humbling, that is in their power and experience, but a man may hold them all in notion, and be very proud. He certainly is so, if he thinks his assenting to them is a proof to his humility and despises others as proud and ignorant in comparison with himself. (John Newton’s Letters to John Ryland, 15) “Extraordinarily gifted people often collapse under the weight of unchecked hubris. Pride is the fault in our stars.” Two centuries before someone aptly coined the term “cage-stage Calvinist,” such men existed in the world — and young Ryland was one. Newton identifies the unique species of pride that too frequently blinds heirs of the Reformed faith. The gracious nature of God’s unshakable call in election, the irresistible reality of Spirit-transformed affections, the efficacy of Christ’s atoning work to justify all whom he calls, the constancy of God’s preserving grace in the life of faith, should result in profound humility. Yet, as Newton saw in Ryland, sometimes those who see truth most clearly are the most susceptible to blinding pride. Freed from Celebrity Selfish ambition has a way of disordering that which ought to make us humble (James 3:16). But seeing all that we have and all that we are in Christ frees us from clamoring for significance in the eyes of others. When we see the joy to be found in magnifying Christ, we can say with the apostle, “I must decrease” (John 3:30). “I hope your soul prospers,” Newton wrote Ryland, “that is, I hope you are less and less in your own eyes and that your heart is more and more impressed with a sense of the glory and grace of our Lord. . . . Your comfort and success eminently depend upon your being humble, and if the Lord loves you and has sent you, he will find ways and means to humble you” (Letters, 16). Newton’s letter — gracious, yet direct — had profound impact. Renewed in his identity in Christ, Ryland was freed from the need for celebrity. He immediately softened the tone of his essays and sent them for reprinting. It would be the last thing he published for eight years — despite the fact that his pastoral ministry during this period was substantial (he preached 217 times in 1776 alone). Ryland was so concerned that his youthful arrogance not be imitated by others that, near the end of his life, he even asked his family to destroy anything he had written (but held back from publication) before the age of 30. Even when he returned to print in 1780, it was a single sermon issued at the request of fellow pastors in his region addressing — fittingly — God’s gracious purposes in overcoming human pride. Clothed with Humility Apart from his conversion, Ryland’s early lesson in humility was the most significant turning point in his life. Writing to his dear friend and fellow minister, John Sutcliff, Ryland confessed, “You complain of self and pride; I join you in the complaint.” He had learned by experience what he youthfully penned in one of his earlier essays: T’ exalt the great Creator, and abase the haughtiness of man’s polluted race. His gentle and humble ministry would become a striking contrast to the outspoken and unrestrained character of his father’s (and many others of his era). Robert Hall, Ryland’s successor at Broadmead Baptist Church, noted that Ryland’s “disposition to conceal his attainments was nearly as strong as that of some men to display them.” “His mental opulence,” Hall continued, “was much greater than his modesty would permit him to reveal” (Works of Robert Hall, 5:404). Despite Ryland’s impressive administrative, prophetic, literary, and theological mastery, “his religion appeared in its fruits; in gentleness, humility, and benevolence; in a steady, conscientious performance of every duty; and a careful abstinence from every appearance of evil.” Humility was “the most remarkable feature of his character,” Hall wrote, “and he might most truly be said, in the language of Scripture, to be clothed with it” (Works of Robert Hall, 5:392). State of Christian Celebrity History is replete with the stories of gifted men and women whose meteoric ascent to celebrity was followed by an equally dramatic humiliation. In nearly every instance, extraordinarily gifted people collapse under the weight of their own unchecked hubris. Pride is the fault in our stars. “Celebrity is ordinary — anybody can be famous. A lifetime of humble faithfulness is truly extraordinary.” As much as we might hope it weren’t the case, this is just as true in Reformed evangelicalism. One need not look far to see many of our stars’ long fall back to earth. The history of American evangelicalism and the powerful influence of popular culture have cultivated a troubling comfort with Christian celebrity. Additionally, contemporary theological education (and much discipleship) tends to emphasize knowledge acquisition over character formation. Thus, it should not be surprising that we tend to cultivate leaders with big heads and hollow chests. That’s why Ryland’s story is so timely. Newton’s gentle correction helped Ryland check selfish ambition and cultivate gospel-centered humility. Ryland experienced the freedom of not needing to be known — a freedom that fueled a remarkably productive and faithful life. There is nothing essentially wrong with celebrity. Perhaps, in some cases, it may be unavoidable. But celebrity is ordinary — anybody can be famous. A lifetime of humble faithfulness, like the life of John Ryland, is truly extraordinary. Article by Ryan Griffith
