Following Desire

Following Desire

Commit everything you do to the LORD. Trust him, and he will help you. Psalm 37:5

AMY CARMICHAEL WAS BORN IN NORTHERN IRELAND and did mission work in Japan and Sri Lanka (Ceylon then), but she spent fifty-five years of her life in India, most of them rescuing children from temple prostitution and slavery. Her work infuriated temple authorities, she endured accusations and legal prosecution, and she had to overcome the resistance of other missionaries who thought she was wasting her time or becoming too focused on what they saw as a relatively minor issue. But Carmichael knew what happened behind temple doors—she had stained her skin with teabags, covered herself in a sari, and entered in at times—and had a passion for the children who had been dedicated to temple priests by their parents or otherwise been drawn into captivity. By faith, she simply went where she was led, ministered where her heart was drawn, and fulfilled the vision and desires God had given her. The ministry she began in the early 1900s continues today.

Carmichael wasn’t driven by an overarching vision, at least not at first. She had sensed a call to missions in general and worked at several ministry fields, but she followed God’s leading step-by-step into the type of ministry she was eventually known for. She responded to needs, those responses built certain interests and desires in her heart, and she pursued the passions she had been given by faith in order to help a segment of the population that had few, if any, advocates. She understood the workings of God in her heart and wrote about them prolifically. She dedicated her life to the moment-by-moment calling God had given her.

Sometimes God fills our hearts with faith for a big vision or specific calling. Sometimes he only unfolds the vision a day or a season at a time. He knows when we need the whole blueprint or when it’s better to have it in stages, and usually our faith involves elements of both. But no matter how big and coherent the vision seems, the response of faith is always today. Faith embraces God-given desires and the next step toward them.

It is a safe thing to trust him to fulfill the desire that he creates.