Since she was small, Gladys had dreamed of becoming an actress. Now was her chance! She had little in the way of money, but she worked hard as a maid during the day and managed to fit drama clubs and theatrical meetings into the evenings.
Her schedule left little time for other things, including the Christian disciplines she’d been taught to observe as a child. Gladys didn’t give much thought to God. Until, one night, as she was making her way home from a theatrical meeting, she noticed the lights of a nearby church. They lit up the dark street. It was late. Much too late for a church meeting. Nevertheless, the lights were burning. Her curiosity drew her inside.
The minister was in the middle of a message as Gladys entered. She slipped into one of the sparsely occupied pews and listened. What she heard changed the course of her life.
The pastor’s point was something similar to Paul’s message to the Corinthians: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honour God with your bodies.” (1 Corinthians vi. 19-20, ESV)
Was it true? Had Christ purchased her on the cross? Was she His? Gladys thought of her busy routine, her ambitions and plans. She had been living like she was her own. Like it was up to her to decide how to live, what to do, and where to spend her time. But perhaps, she was wrong. Maybe she was not her own.
Bought With a Price
What did Jesus die on the cross to purchase?
1 Corinthians vi. 19-20 says He died to purchase you. “You are not your own,” it reads, “you were bought with a price.” That price was the life of God Himself!
The verse goes on to say, “therefore” — in other words, because you are not your own, because you were bought with a price — “honour God with your bodies.”
This is where Gladys paused to ask herself, have I done that? It is a question each one of us should ask.
How do we “honour God with [our] bodies”?
Living Sacrifices
“…Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans xii. 1)
Jesus gave Himself for us and Paul tells us it is our reasonable service to give ourselves back to Him as “a living sacrifice”. Jesus Himself said something similar in Luke ix.23, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”
We are called to deny ourselves daily. This means dying to our preferences and plans, as well as to our propensity towards sin. In Gladys Aylward’s life, that looked like surrendering her desire to be an actress.
Instead of continuing her education in drama, she enrolled in the China Inland Mission Society. Determined to follow God, who was leading her to China.
Every step of the way, she had to sacrifice: Three months into her training, the school committee decided Gladys’ wasn’t qualified to be a missionary. She was too old — at 28 — and her education too limited. “The Chinese language,” they told her, “would be far too difficult for you to learn.” So, Gladys had to leave the school.
She had just finished telling herself she was not going back to work as a maid, when the school director told her he had a job for her – working as a maid.
Finally, Gladys was able to pay her own fare to China. She went, not to fulfill her own dreams, but to further God’s kingdom. She offered herself to God as a living sacrifice and was prepared to accept any cost.
Gladys’ Surrendered Life
Late in Gladys Aylward’s life, an author came to her home and asked her to tell him about herself. Convinced she hadn’t done any worthy of writing about, she told him he must have the wrong person. At his request, however, she told him stories of the “simple life” she had lived with God.
When she first got to China, she had served mule train drivers at a missionary’s inn. She shared the gospel with the guests though she was just learning their language.
Later, she was hired by the Chinese government to work as a “foot inspector” — stopping the tradition of binding, and so crippling, little girl’s feet. She proved herself so calm and capable in this position that when a riot broke out in the prison, she was asked to speak to the inmates — to stop them from murdering each other. She succeeded in this task and because of this was allowed to go to the prison regularly to minister to the prisoners.
She opened an orphanage and saved hundreds of children who had been left in the streets to die or be sold as slaves. When Japanese armies invaded China, Gladys saved the lives of a hundred children by traveling with them over the mountains, to Siam.
It is easy to see this woman lived an incredible life, but it was not the life she would have chosen for herself. It was a life of sacrifice.
She said, “I have not done what I wanted to. I have not eaten what I wanted to, or worn what I would have chosen. I have not lived in a house that I would have ever looked at twice. I longed for a husband, babies, security, and love. God didn’t give that. He left me alone for seventeen years with one book – a Chinese Bible. I don’t know anything about your latest novels, pictures, theaters. I live in a rather out dated world. And I suppose you say, “well, it’s awful miserable, isn’t it?”
Friends, I’ve been one of the happiest women that has ever stepped this earth. I have raised someone else’s children, whom I have loved with a great love because Jesus Christ loved me, and who I am now receiving love back from. 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.”
It is our duty to live in obedience to God, but it is also our greatest privilege. This can be easy to forget, when He asks us to give up our plans and preferences. But may Gladys’ story remind us that His plans are far better than any of ours! May we pray, as she did, “Lord give us freedom. Freedom in Thee.”
In Christ
Quiana
*Scripture references in NKJV unless otherwise noted.
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