Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God - Pt 5

Judith Nicholls writes ...

Some more thoughts

Biography is edifying in so far as it points us to God. But to what extent is it prescriptive? Should we try to replicate the experiences of others in our own lives? We live dependent on God’s Word. God does sometimes intervene with special guidance but my own experience, and I think that of these women, is that it is usually when a particularly difficult situation lies ahead. We do have an amazing God but we must beware of asking him to continually prove it.

This book is worth reading as an introduction to the lives of these five women. Noël Piper challenges readers to live lives that authenticate their profession of faith. It is a very easy read with “bite size” sections under helpful sub-headings and very well referenced. But I must confess to some reservations. I found Piper’s own voice intrusive in directing the thinking of the reader. I would have liked more facts and less romantic speculation on God’s dealing with the women. How did Lilias Trotter use her artistic talent to produce acceptable literacy material for Muslims?

Some of the longer biographies on which Piper bases her work are worth investigating Elizabeth Dodds’ Marriage to a Difficult Man is a much more “warts and all” account of the Edwards’ marriage. The Small Woman, written by a journalist Alan Burgess, about Gladys Aylward is sympathetic but interestingly it was written for a secular readership. No Graven Image by Elisabeth Elliot, not strictly speaking a biography, nevertheless gives a searingly honest insight into missionary service.

Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God - Pt 4

Judith Nicholls writes

Helen Roseveare – Faithful in Loss

I found Helen Roseveare’s biography the most compelling not least because Piper allows Helen to speak largely for herself. It is an account of a gifted, somewhat arrogant and insecure woman who over decades of medical missionary service in the Congo grew into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. Congolese Christians brought her to an awareness of her own pride and incipient racism: her rape and imprisonment at the hands of the Simba rebels taught her humility, forgiveness and insight into suffering. The question arises: Why does God allow His servants to suffer?

Helen’s story shows two things that we need to apprehend. First we often enter ministry with the intention of “doing something for the Lord,” but God’s intention is that He will do something in us. Secondly the imagining of danger and suffering is often worse than the reality where we do indeed find that God’s grace is sufficient.

Picture of Helen Roseveare from http://www.desiringgod.com/.

More Christian biographies

We hope you have been enjoying reading this collection of biographies of Christian women so far, and benefitted from Nicole's tips on reading Christian biography. John Piper has written an article, found here, to further encourage us in the reading of biography. In it he writes:

Good biography is history and guards us against chronological snobbery (as C. S. Lewis calls it). It is also theology—the most powerful kind—because it burst forth from the lives of people like us. It is also adventure and suspense, for which we have a natural hunger. It is psychology and personal experience, which deepen our understanding of human nature (especially ourselves). Good biographies of great Christians make for remarkably efficient reading.

There are many more great biographies, from the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, out there. So here is a list of more biographies of Christian women, taken largely from this post over at Ebenezer stories on the benefits of reading Christian biography. Let us know of any others that you have enjoyed reading:

A Chance to Die: The Biography of Amy Carmichael - by Elisabeth Elliot

My Heart in His Hands: Ann Judson of Burma - by Sharon L. James

A Passion for the Impossible: The Life of Lilias Trotter - by Miriam Huffman Rockness

Until the Day Breaks: The life and work of Lilias Trotter, Pioneer Missionary to Muslim North Africa - by Patricia St John

Though Lions Roar: The Story of Helen Roseveare, Missionary Doctor to the Congo - by Mary Beth Lagerborg

More Love to Thee: The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss edited - by George L. Prentiss

Elizabeth Prentiss 'More Love to Thee' - by Sharon James

The Charlotte Mason Story - by Essex Cholmondley

Good Seed - by Mariana Slocum and M.B. Steele

And the Word Came with Power: How God Met and Changed a People Forever - by Joanne Shetler

The Small Woman - by Alan Burgess (about Gladys Aylward)

Nothing Daunted: The Story of Isobel Kuhn - by Gloria Repp

And here is a useful list of biographies of Christian men, featuring excerpts from each book, compiled by Albert Mohler. John Piper is also writing a collection of biographies in a series called The Swans are Not Silent, which includes:

The Legacy of Sovereign Joy: God's Triumphant Grace in the Lives of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin

The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd

The Roots of Endurance Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce

Contending For Our All: Defending Truth and Treasuring Christ in the Lives of Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen

And finally, Don Carsons new book on the life of his father, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson, looks like a very good read.

Picture from: http://www.tufaviews.com

More on Lilias Trotter

If you are interested in finding out more about Lilias Trotter, here are a few links:

Discerning Reader reviews the book A Blossom in the Desert: Reflections of Faith in the Art and Writings of Lilias Trotter by Miriam Huffman Rockness.

John Piper writes a very interesting article on Lilias Trotter and the Language Nobody Knows, about her awareness of the relationship between words and reality and how it functions in communicating the gospel.

Finally, you can download the whole text of Lilias Trotter’s Parables of the Cross at Project Gutenberg (for free!).

Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God - Pt 2

Judith Nicholls writes ...

Two astonishing “old maids”- Lilias Trotter and Gladys Aylward

When Gladys Aylward challenged her brother about missionary service to China he replied:

Not me. That’s an old maid’s job. Why don’t you go yourself?

And she did. That patronising epithet becomes a badge of honour in the lives of Lilias Trotter and Gladys Aylward.

Lilias Trotter, born to privilege, was a protégée of the Victorian painter John Ruskin. She gave up a career in art first to work in the slums of London and later in Algiers. With her female colleagues she witnessed to Christ in the face of great discouragement in the Arab quarter making excursions into the desert to evangelise the Bedouin.

Gladys Aylward was an uneducated Cockney parlour maid. Convinced she was called to China, she set out in the 1930s on a hair raising journey across Europe and Russia to China where she worked as a servant of the Chinese church, rescued one hundred orphans during World War II, spied for the Chinese nationalists, put down a prison riot, befriended a mandarin and finally ended her days in Taiwan.

Neither of these women would have made it through the selection criteria of a modern missionary society. Lilias suffered a debilitating heart condition while Gladys was regarded as insufficiently educated. (She went on to master both written and spoken Chinese.) Mission societies often look for “team-players” Gladys and Lilias show that there is a place for the eccentric loner.

Clearly God is not limited by the decisions of missionary selection committees. But does merely having a strong conviction qualify one as a missionary? Lilias and Gladys were women of fervent prayer, profound compassion for the lost, and gifted evangelists whose life experiences equipped them for their work. Although their understanding of guidance and use of Scripture are not always what I am comfortable with I give thanks for the witness of Christ’s power in their lives.

Picture of Lilias Trotter from: www.squidoo.com
Picture of Gladys Aylward from: www.jeremytiss.com

Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God – Pt 1

It’s not too late to join in for this month’s reading! If you haven’t obtained a copy of the book it is available to download for free from the Desiring God website.

Judith Nicholls writes ...

This book made me a little nostalgic. Christian biography was considered essential for discipling young Christians then. It’s still not a bad corrective to the “what’s in it for me” nature of much contemporary Christian literature. For this book comprises brief accounts of the lives of five astonishing women who differ in background, status, education and ethnicity but are consumed by a passion to serve the Lord Jesus whatever the cost.

Sarah Edwards - Faithful in the Mundane (1710-1758)

Although remote in time, Sarah Edwards’ life will resonate with many women. Her husband, Jonathan, was the famous preacher of the Great Awakening whose influence on both the church and the nation of the USA is incalculable. A beautiful and accomplished young woman her life with the intense Jonathan could be described as one of domestic drudgery and fearsome expectations. That may ring bells for some! Yet her focus on Jesus enabled her to transform the mundane. Samuel Hopkins, one of a long line of apprentice pastors to ship up on the Edwards’ doorstep describes Sarah’s sensitive concern for him (keep in mind that at this time she had seven children ranging in age from thirteen to one):

I told her I was in a Christless, graceless state … upon which she entered into a free conversation and … told me she has prayed respecting me since I had been in her family; that she trusted I should receive light and comfort and doubted not that God intended to do great things by me.

Hopkins remained a great admirer and later became a leader of the abolitionist movement.
The great English preacher George Whitfield prayed for a marriage like that of the Edwards but Jonathan’s criticism of her at a traumatic time in their ministry brought on a spiritual crisis. Complete physical breakdown preceded a sense of blissful fellowship with God. This incident highlights an important issue in reading biography. How do we evaluate what we are told? Piper clearly regards Sarah’s experience as a work of the Holy Spirit. Other writers psychologise what happened. The biblical test of any “spiritual” experience is whether or not it results in more godly behaviour and devotion to Jesus. Jonathan Edwards was in no doubt. He noted of his wife:

A great meekness and gentleness, and benevolence of spirit and behaviour, and a
great alteration in those things that formerly used to be the person’s
failings.

Picture from www.bookforum.com: John Badger, Sarah Edwards, ca. 1740, oil on canvas.

How to read Christian biography?

As you know in August we'll be reading Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God. I've always LOVED reading a good biography. I'm very interested in people and what 'makes them tick', so that makes this genre right up my alley. I also think that biography is important to us as Christians in learning from the lives of others who have served Jesus in their lives.

At the same time, though, I've often struggled to know what to do with biography. The lives of the people I am reading about are often very different from my own, so can I really emulate them? What do I with the different attitudes and assumptions that they had, as Christians from a different time and place?

With those two tensions in mind, at the beginning of this month, I wanted to think through the question of how to read biographies. Here are the two traps I think I have been tempted to fall into when reading biography. Both come down to a kind of perfectionism - they are both driven in different ways by the common assumption that the lives of the people I read about are only of any use to me if they are perfect:

Trap Number 1 - Worship them as heroes

The first trap is to make the person I am reading about some sort of hero. In this situation, I'm tempted to ignore any flaws and bad decisions the subject of the biography made and put them on a pedestal. The problem with this, of course, is that no one is perfect and only God is to be worshiped! It also goes with a tendency to value only the spectacular and the extraordinary, and to undervalue the importance of faithfulness to God in the small things of life.

Trap Number 2 - Write them off because of their flaws

On other occasions I've been tempted to 'write off' the person off if I see a few flaws or discern some ways that I think differently from the person being written about. Sadly, I think in this situation, it means I don't learn anything - I lose the opportunity to see God's work in another person's life, and to learn from the aspects of their life that I do need to be convicted about.

A good example of this was when I read a biography of Amy Carmichael a few years ago. I found that her piety and view of God's guidance grated against my view of the Christian life, and the way I think God reveals his plans for us. Unfortunately, this meant I was blinded to anything I could be challenged by and learn from in her story.

(I wonder sometimes whether the self-righteousness in this posture - finding the flaw in the person I am reading about and using it to protect me from feeling criticised or challenged at the points where her life exposes my blind spots - also carries across to the way I relate to Christians of other backgrounds and different generations whom I know in the flesh.)

A better model

So, as we start reading biography together this month, I need to decide to read with a knowledge of these traps I can so easily fall into, and adopt a different model of reading biography. It's a model that allows us to learn from saints who have gone before us - and indeed to allow the possibility of 'heroes' - without worshiping them and pretending they were without their flaws. By adopting this model, I can learn from the way God has worked in them, and pray that God will use me to achieve his purposes.

John Piper writes:

The lives of our flawed Christian heroes are inspiring for two reasons: because they were flawed (like us) and because they were great (unlike us). Their flaws give us hope that maybe God could use us too. Their greatness inspires us to venture beyond the ordinary.

(You can also read a longer version of these comments, with reflections on some of the particular, and very serious, flaws of Augustine, Luther and Calvin, in the first chapter of this book.)

Pic from Dreamstime.