I want to read one verse.
Now, the verse itself is quite long, but
I feel that this is the verse which
God has given to me for you.
It's a verse which challenges me every time
I read it, and makes me go back
and wonder whether I have done all I
should.
Have I given him all he asked?
And I rededicate all over again from where
I started.
The verse is the tenth verse of the
third chapter of the Old Testament book of
Malachi.
Now, you'll find that this will not be
a sermon.
You've already been to your churches, I hope,
and had your sermons.
Shall we just listen as if God is
speaking to us?
Now, as I read this verse, I would
like to remind you that my Bible is
Chinese, and so, as it comes to you,
it will come in a different wording, because
I just turned it round from Chinese back
into English.
Chinese is very beautiful, you know.
There's much, much more of it.
And so, sometimes the verses are quite long,
where in your English Bible they're quite short.
The tenth verse of the third of Malachi.
The great over and above all one, Jehovah,
who controleth the hosts, leans, saying, If you
will bring into my storehouse your completed tithes,
that my family may be sustained, then you
can prove me, and see if I will
not open wide windows in heaven, pouring out
blessings so many, you will never be able
to use them all.
The great over and above all one.
This, in Chinese, is a very beautiful expression,
which we use to speak of our God.
You just can't use the word God.
A God, to a Chinese, is some idol
sitting in a temple made of mud or
wood or stone, or sticking on your kitchen
wall on a piece of paper.
Our God is over and above not only
all other Gods, but over and above all.
Everything.
He is the greatest, the most powerful, the
most wonderful, the great, over and above all
one.
Here, when you preach or you talk about
your God to, you have to, according to
Chinese customs, give, as you would to anybody
of any standing, his status, his name, his
office.
English is very bare, you know.
And so here we have the great over
and above all one, Jehovah.
And what does he do?
He controls the hosts.
And I conclude that the hosts are those
things which man cannot control.
Man has gone a great length in time,
but he still has to, and then he
hasn't controlled.
The sun, the moon, the stars, the wind,
the sea, he controls.
You cannot rule the wind, you can try
all you know, but it still blows the
way it should.
The sea still comes at that split second
of the tide every time it rolls in.
He controls.
And yet this great over and above all
one, Jehovah, who controls these hosts, leaves.
The lovely little Chinese word here, I only
wish you understood it, jiang, which means to
lean out.
And here he is, as it were, leaning
out of heaven.
And he's speaking.
Leans, saying, If you will bring into my
storehouse your completed package, and you're going to
find that this is something very definite, to
be put in a very definite place.
For a very definite purpose.
There are no perhaps with God, you know,
no maybes, no later on.
Those words are not in God's vocabulary.
If you will bring into my storehouse, that
is a definite place, and a storehouse is
somewhere where you store something.
You put in those old days those jars
of pickles on the shelf for such time
as Mother wanted to use them, and she
reached them out at the appointed time.
If you will bring, says God, into my
storehouse, your completed, and you will find, as
I have found, that your completed pie is
as mine, is this.
This is Gladys Hill.
The completed pie, myself.
All I possess, all I have, my head,
my heart, my feet, my hands, that, that
is me.
My completed pie.
And when God asks us to do something,
he doesn't ask for one hand, or one
foot, or even one day.
He asks for the complete.
You.
If you will bring into my storehouse your
completed pie, that my family may be sustained.
And if you will look in the dictionary,
where I found this explanation, it says, this
means to uphold and to keep.
As a nurse, a dying patient, as a
mother, her baby.
So it isn't money, is it?
A dying patient has no need of your
palm, no?
A tiny baby has no need of your
half crown.
A dying patient needs the upholding care of
the nurse.
A baby needs the comfort of the mother's
arm.
If you will bring into my storehouse your
completed pie, that my family may be sustained,
this you can prove.
And do you see what I'll do?
I will open windows in heaven, and I
will pour out blessings.
And there'll be so many blessings, you'll never
be able to use them all up.
And the words here to describe this is
an expression which in Chinese says, wǔ chū
kè yóng, which literally means the incoming tide
of the sea.
The ever-flowing of a fountain.
Now it doesn't matter what you do down
at the seaside, the tide always comes.
The water comes.
You can put pipes and dry it off.
You can take buckets and bucket it out.
You can build breakwaters.
But the water is still coming, and there's
still as much.
This is what God promises in blessings to
you and me when we have put in
a completed pie.
And so friends, you and I have got
to come down to realize that why we
have not got a blessing either in our
own life, in our family, in our community,
or in our nation, is simply because we
have not fulfilled the condition that God made.
Now you can say, well that's all right,
Miss Ayerwood, but remember this is law.
Yes, it is law.
Jesus said, I came not to do away
with the law, but to finish it.
And if you go back to the dictionary,
you will find that to finish something is
to add to it.
The definition in the dictionary says, to finish
a cape, you ice it.
To finish a hat, you trim it.
To finish a garment, you put on the
buttons.
So, if you will bring into my storehouse
and finish your completed tie that my family
may be safe and sustained and upheld and
kept, I will open the windows of heaven
for you.
It won't cost you anything.
I'm doing the blessings.
I'm opening the windows of heaven.
And you're going to say, well I just
don't know how to do that because I
can't give up this, or I can't do
that.
God isn't asking you to fulfill a law.
He's asking you to find the love of
Jesus Christ and pass it on to someone
else.
Tonight, in this testimony, I pray that you
will realize that it is said for one
purpose only, that it may help you in
some way, it will comfort where you need
it, it will challenge where you need it,
it will urge where it is very needed,
but most of all, we shall be willing
to go away and give to God what
we maybe have never given to Him before,
our completed self.
We have most of us given just one
part of ourselves, one piece of ourselves, or
just a little bit of our time.
Friend, God does not want your bits and
pieces.
God is not hard up.
The silver and the gold is mine, the
kettle and the hose is his.
He produced them.
He made them.
He creates them.
He's not hard up.
And so if you think that God is
waiting for you to put your sixpence in,
then He isn't.
If you will bring yourself, I will open
the windows of heaven and may God speak
to us or have a blessing on us
so that we can go out and bless
someone else.
I went to China exactly 36 years ago.
I went as a girl in my twenties
and I rarely and truly believed that God
told me to go.
I was saved, not in my home, I'm
terribly sorry to have to say, but after
I'd left my home and gone up to
work in London and I was pulled in
to a church one night by a group
of young people who were standing outside that
church door who had been saved during the
previous weeks in some revival and they were
so happy they thought they'd got everything in
Jesus Christ that they were determined everybody else
was going to find him too.
And I that night sat in that church
and for the first time in my life
realized that Jesus Christ, Son of the Living
God, it shook me, it moved me and
it was going to alter my whole life.
I went out not realizing of course what
had happened and I rushed home to the
little place where I was living and I
said, God if you're real, oh please prove
yourself to me and if you prove yourself
to me tonight I promise I will do
anything you ask.
I had no idea what he was going
to ask but all I can say is
this, if I was to be put back
tonight to that very moment in that it
has been we have a very wonderful God
and a very marvelous Savior.
That next year I floated around and before
I had joined a church really knew how
to read the Bible or understand very much
of prayer in any what I call concrete
way he called me to China.
Why he called me I don't know, I
only know he did.
I was reading one day a periodical and
in it was an article on China that
somebody had written because they had come into
the news just a few weeks or days
previous the fact that the first airplane had
flown over China and the article pointed out
that western civilization was going in at a
great rate to this great land and yet
there must be thousands it may even go
into millions of people in China who had
never heard the gospel.
Well this shook me as much as the
fact that Jesus was real and I thought
well how dreadful fancy having to go all
through your life without Christ.
Oh, but how dreadful to not know where
you were going.
Well then somebody ought to be doing something.
I had not been brought up in the
circles that talked about missionaries and mission fields
and all this kind of thing I didn't
know anything about that and so I felt
that somebody ought to be doing something I
went to the churches, went to the Bibles
couldn't read them when I discovered there weren't
well then somebody ought to be going and
telling and I now believe that this is
my job to see that at least one
person went to China for Jesus Christ and
so for that next year and two months
every time I went out I called on
somebody either a relation or a friend or
somebody I knew and later on people who
I didn't know but as names I saw
in the paper with this one idea that
I could persuade them that they were the
very person who should be going to China
for Christ.
They were all very clever and educated and
they had good positions they were doctors, they
were nurses oh they were wonderful and to
me they were just the very people who
should be going.
Well I'm terribly sorry not one of them
even took me in earnest.
They all thought I was a bit funny
in my head and asked me such peculiar
questions that I came out very disappointed and
then at the end of that time I
stood in our sitting room at home while
my sister was sending off an aunt of
mine who had been to visit and I
heard her say Aunt Nell, be very careful
if our blood knocks at your door don't
open it because you might find yourself on
the way to China and I decided that
even my sister thought that I was a
little bit funny up here and well perhaps
I was after all it was a queer
idea wasn't it running around trying to push
somebody off to a place you didn't know
anything about to do something you didn't know
anything about to a people who you also
didn't know anything about and I left one
last try and then I'll throw the whole
thing up and I'll go back and enjoy
myself my last try was my own drunk
I went home I caught him in the
kitchen and I proceeded to tell him all
that was in my mind I promised to
pay his fare I promised to keep him
if he'd go all he got to do
when he got there was to send me
a letter with what he needed and I
would send it to him I would work
I could earn money and this is where
it would go and he laughed and he
laughed and he thought it was the biggest
joke he'd ever heard and he said I
don't know what you're worrying about them Chinese
do you know anything about them?
Nope Do you know where China is?
Nope But he didn't read any books about
China?
Nope Well that's a queer thing isn't it
what are you worrying about them for?
Because they do not know Jesus Christ and
I feel they should You wouldn't go?
What me?
Oh no I'm not interested and he made
a run from the kitchen where we were
standing he had already gone out from the
door when he put his head round the
door and this is what he said If
you really believe somebody ought to be going
why don't you go yourself?
Peng went the door and away he got
I don't know how long and they went
on and is it me?
isn't it me?
all the falls all the again you know
and well I wasn't educated I hadn't any
money and I wouldn't know how to begin
I couldn't I didn't know that so oh
no oh no and then why don't you
go yourself?
If you really believe somebody ought to go
the first Dear Lord Jesus if you will
open the way and show me how I
will go myself I will never again ask
anyone to do something that I believe you
are asking the first promise I kept within
the next year and a half by buying
from Siberian Railway and still
seeking with his help to keep and I
praise God that even although I didn't and
all it was going to cost you
the call to give to God only
just a few years ago I realized that
to pay my own fare was something to
me it was just the ordinary conclusion I
went to work and I earned the money
and I could spend the money how I
liked and full of
leaners because the leaning post is going to
hope he doesn't give it to you stand
on your own two feet you're a man
and you're a woman and you are answerable
to God not even although that man be
somebody you love like your father I never
asked my hand I believed I was doing
what God wanted me to do and I
praise him that although they did not understand
all that it was going to mean they
accepted Europe, Poland, Russia, across Japan
and into the north of China and here
I joined an old lady Gina Lawson Gina
Lawson was 74 and she had spent most
of her life in China and now I
we had met the idea of joining up
and working and living together God is a
great God you know and he didn't allow
that he evidently intended we were to be
together and so we did not meet until
we were right in the middle of Gina
Lawson she had never been to a big
city she had been more than a few
miles to my own house she was 74
we knew nothing that the other one age
and youth north and south I did not
learn to love Gina Lawson as I have
loved lots of other people in my life
74 still going for Jesus Christ 74ers with
their feet on sofas grumbling about all the
all their operations all if
you will bring into my storehouse your completed
time God gives strength courage and everything that's
necessary he said I'll open the windows of
heaven for you and pour out blessings on
you and friend I pray that you will
get down before God as some of us
have had to do I pray again and
again for some good old pioneers still going
even though old we opened Gina Lawson and
I in this small city hidden in the
southern shanty hills in north China a mule
is now this was not because we loved
mules or because we went wanted to go
to business or make money or get important
going over those mountain trails with their
animal trains Gina looked up and she said
if those let's
go home and ask in
the church but I had never heard anybody
what I call that at the gates of
heaven for the souls of men in the
way Jeannie now bested for the souls of
the men of Yankton I am afraid was
a little concerned and I knelt rather trembling
behind her but I was to praise God
that although Jeannie never taught me how to
eat Chinese food with chopsticks or anything about
Chinese customs or even gave me any hints
on how to learn the Chinese language and
when the souls of men she's got that
little special compartment down there in my I
pray to those of you who've been beautiful
or done it because you have taught these
men with their animal trains came in to
me they listened to a story from Jeannie
who sat on a little stool in the
middle of the courtyard while they finished their
food or smoked their pipe I don't know
the story one I did not understand even
if I had had
to do this job and there was no
other job I could do so I got
irritated and
all the smell would go and look at
Jeannie come and the men the owners of
the mules leaning forward trying to catch every
word of the story of Jesus if you
will bring into my storehouse your friend when
God asked to go to China he didn't
ask for one hand he didn't even ask
for two hands he didn't even ask for
one and this I be and all I
can do is Jeannie died but the
very men who had come in to the
inn were our first Christians they weren't even
men when Jeannie died
I now believed that because I was a
young and single girl and alone I just
didn't live alone anywhere China anyway has been
a land of great convention women didn't go
out alone however old they were always accompanied
by a some male servant male member of
the family and if they hadn't got that
then they didn't go out and so the
consequence was I couldn't go out I found
that I was simply because I had no
chaperone and no one to accompany and I
longed to know the women I longed to
go into the village to be
free and now I was bound that
I would have to where well I didn't
know I suppose God would tell me what
thoughts came into my mind the first was
that in a particular place pour blessings upon
them and then because it was uncomfortable yet
knowing that they were the only real Christian
there expect them to know the second
thought was that I knew the only bit
of language at that place was only understood
just there so that if I moved I
would have to start learning an entirely new
Chinese in that I wouldn't understand anybody outside
as a God of common
sense as well as love something that
I wouldn't advise you to do unless you
feel very definitely led I decided that every
day when I read my portion if I
came across in that particular portion the word
go I'd get up and go if I
didn't find the word go then I just
wouldn't move but I read day after day
after day after day but I didn't find
the word go so I stayed rather puzzled
and lonely all day long
all I could do was study the Chinese
in a very so that there was nobody
to teach me only the old cook and
then at night time get mixed up with
the military and then the door opened I
discovered that the Christian I was the only
woman from two
to four years old on those baby feet
and walked those baby steps he
made a law the holding of women's feet
was now to cease you
do not know how much we owe to
this man and his courage and his stand
for the faith that is in Jesus Christ
and when you would you be very careful
if you bring into my storehouse your completed
time you find yourself in love with people
you don't you might not like but whom
you know are your brothers and sisters in
Jesus Christ this meant that every headman of
a district had got now to find somebody
who he could organize Changxian
so the day he
came with the intention of this job we
stood on each side getting no nearer to
each other and refusing almost to listen to
him he was
interested in but you know I do you
really believe they should have
dreamed of or
because I knew how to climb mountains which
again I didn't cannot
tell you that the job was wonderful that
the pay was glorious I only know that
I was hot in
the local militia oh
if only they knew how to
of every village everybody had all the doors
open all streaming from the inn all
there glowing and smelling and
so we started well anyway
you do the same as I do us
little babies and their feet were the same
because through
the inn came the first Christians so now
through my job whoever would have dreamed that
God was going to use what was then
a heathen government there
never has been they
were the only people who knew anything about
me they never entered their heads because
we don't step facing
problems also these two men
who are my bodyguards conclusion
Lord Jesus used amazing ways to pull me
do you believe that it was God's will
there are people in the state and I
challenge you men and women to seek God's
will to seek God's will to seek