LIFE OUT OF DEATH   

 

The following talk was given by Mabel Francis at Nyack Missionary College in 1970.  Miss Francis was a missionary in Japan from 1909 to 1965. 

 

You will find the words I want to bring before you in Ephesians the 3rd chapter and the 16th verse where Paul is praying for the Ephesians. If you’ll permit me, I would like to read it in the Amplified New Testament:  “May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the (Holy) Spirit [Himself.] - indwelling your innermost being and personality.  

                                                                                                                        We’re right up against the awful conflict of the ages.  It’s upon us, and no ordinary doings will stand.  But we may be reinforced within by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling. 

Before I came to Nyack, I had been an evangelist quite a while, traveling about in the northern part of New Hampshire holding meetings.  And then God told me He wanted me to go to Nyack, and I told God, “But, Lord, I have no money to go.”  I was at Old Orchard at the time, and just before I was to leave, a lady whom I had never seen before stepped up to me and said, “I’ve been watching you here, and I think you ought to be at Nyack, don’t you?”  I was rather taken aback, but I didn’t like to say, “Yes, I do think so,” so I said, “Well, I don’t know.”  I had a rescue mission at the time, and I guess I looked the part because she said, “Well, maybe it’s the finances.  If that’s the thing that’s holding you from going to Nyack, here’s my address.  You take it and write me and let me know.”

                                                                                                                                        I knew then what I had to do, but I didn’t tell her.  I waited until I had gone home and prayed a bit.  Then I wrote to her and told her that I should be so glad to go to Nyack if I had the means.  And she replied, “I will underwrite your expenses there.”  So by God’s infinite grace I was able to spend two years here at Nyack.  And, oh, how many things He taught me here! 

                                                                                                                                  Then after graduating, I got ready.  In those days we had to get our own passage money, our own outfit, and our first year’s support.  (That was considered the stamp that God put on you that He had called you.)  And so I just looked up to the Lord, and He gave it all.  I wrote to the board that I was ready to go and would be all packed and ready in November.  I didn’t have a penny, but the minute I wrote that letter by faith, money began to come in.  And by November I had the whole thing.  You know, if you are going to trust God, you’ve got to step off the edge.  As long as you stand there, God doesn’t do anything.  But when you step off, then you begin to see the mighty power of God working. 

                                                                                                                                 How happy I was when finally my feet stood on Japanese soil!  I said, “Now I’m just where God wants me to be.”  And I gave myself in a full and complete new surrender to be just used as He would use me.  But I didn’t have any language.  I couldn’t say a single word, not even “good morning” to the people.  I was just absolutely dumb.  Yet my heart was burning with desire to tell them of the love of God.  And, of course, I had to sit down and study the language.

 

Now there’s not very much inspiration in language study, as you put one word, one funny word after another, into your brain and think you’ve got it.  And then you say to some friend, “Now just listen to my vocabulary, and see if I’ve got it.  Oh, where has that gone?”  You just get so frustrated.  And then the customs in Japan, where you have to sit on the floor.  You can’t sprawl around on the floor.  You have to sit proper, especially ladies.  You kneel down, then sit back onto your feet, and sit that way.  Now no matter how much your feet and legs have gone to sleep, you must sit prim.  You may change your toes; you may put the big one down, and the other one up.  But that’s about all you’re allowed to do!  And oh, how many times I sat there just aching from top to toe.  There were so many things that had to be learned.  In those days, Japan was slow. (She’s quick now!)  She hadn’t got her speed on then, and the trains went at the enormous rate of 15 miles an hour.  And everything was just like that.  There were no buses and no cars.  (Of course, we didn’t have cars in America very much then either.)  You went by rickshaw; a man pulled you along.  That didn’t go fast enough to suit me!  No, I got my bicycle where I could pedal fast and go over the mountains.  But, oh, I got so frustrated and impatient.

 

And some of the people annoyed me so.  I used to say, “He gets my goat.”  And the Lord said, “Your goat has got to go if you’re going to serve Me.  It’s not that man that’s the trouble; it’s your goat.”

 

One day I was reading Andrew Murray’s little book on humility.  My servant was an old lady who was slow.  I’d tell her what I wanted her to do, and it wasn’t done.  Now, I had told her this morning just exactly what I wanted her to do, and she hadn’t done it.  I’d been pretty impatient. As I read that morning, it said, “True humility is never to be fretted, or vexed, or irritated, or sore, or disappointed.”  Just let me say that once more, because it pierced my heart.  “True humility is never to be fretted, or vexed, or irritated, or sore, or disappointed.”  I just laid that book down and cried.  I wailed.  I said, “Lord, I’ve failed in every point.  I do get fretted, I get irritated.  (Do you ever?)  I do get vexed.  I get sore.  I get disappointed.  Then I read on, and it said, “It is to expect nothing.  It is to wonder at nothing that is done to me.”  (I wouldn’t have thought he’d treat me like that.  No, this important me.)  “And it is to feel no resentment against anybody or anything.”

 

In those days nothing was made just right in Japan.  Now they’re very exact.  But in those days you would try to shut your bureau drawer, and it would shut this way, then that way, and you’d pull it out, and the back would go here.  Oh, how impatient I felt!  How resentful I felt towards that old bureau!  Why can’t I shut it straight?  And the Lord said to me to have no resentment against anybody or anything.

 

You know, I think it takes a lot of grace to drive a car.  I see people get pretty resentful sometimes when the thing doesn’t pick up as they want it to.

 

“It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, or when I am blamed or suspected.”  Well, I laid that book down and said, “Lord, I just don’t know anything about it.”  I felt so helpless.  I had had wonderful victory over here in America.  I had been an evangelist and seen souls saved.  My life had been spent in prayer.  I thought I knew something about the things of God, but found I didn’t know a thing.  And I went to the Lord and said, “Lord, what am I going to do?”

 

He said, “It’s nothing that you can do that I brought you here for.  It’s what you let Me do through you.  Will you really let Me take over in your life?”

 

I thought I had.  I had made as full a surrender as I knew how.  But I had had a wrong idea which I hope none of you have.  When I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at fifteen, I believed that the Holy Spirit came in and that my heart was cleansed.  That was true, but I also thought that that did away with all this self-life.  You know what I mean by self-life, don’t you?  This old fellow inside that gives you all your troubles, gets you down.  Well, I thought I was free from that.  And once in a while, here in America, it would pop up.  I’d get upset, but I thought I’d simply lost the victory.  So I’d go back to the Lord and pray for victory and cry and have a time of repenting.

 

But now God said, “You have been mistaken.  My method of dealing with the self-life is not cleansing.  It is not something that you can wash off and wash away, but it is death.  ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.  But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.’”

 

Now I had heard Dr. Simpson tell me that, but I didn’t quite agree with him.  I thought Dr. Simpson wasn’t quite up to the mark.  I thought he ought to say that you are cleansed, and that’s it.  But when I got onto the field, I found that this old self was my greatest trouble.  It wasn’t the people.  It wasn’t anything else.  It was something inside.

 

And He said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.”  And I said, “Lord, I don’t know how to die.  I can see the need of it, but I don’t know how to die.  How shall I die?”  Do you know?  I didn’t. Then the Lord gave me that wonderful verse, “If any man will be My disciple, let him deny self, take up his cross, and follow me.”  I had often wondered, “What does that mean?”  If I deny myself, still I’m here.  Now what does God mean by denying self?  Then God said to me, “I mean that you never give self any place.  Whenever self comes up, just immediately bring it to Me.”

 

Now, you know, when somebody has hurt us or said a mean thing to us, we want to have a little time to think it over, don’t we?  We would like to have at least about half an hour or maybe an hour to think about how mean they were.  And we would really like to go and tell our dearest friends what a mean thing they said.  “What shall I do?  I’m so hurt.”  Well, the Lord Jesus said, “Not one moment.”  Oh, how many times things came up, and I wanted just a minute to ponder over it, but that voice would keep ringing within, “Not one moment.  Bring it directly to Me.”

 

I remember one morning a man came to the door, and because my room was quite a distance from the entrance I had placed a box of pencils there and two or three other boxes also.  I said to my girls, “Now if you break off the lead of the pencil, don’t put it back into this box.  Put it into these other boxes, and then we’ll sharpen them all together.  But if I come in a rush and pick up a pencil, and the lead if broken off, it is very troublesome.  “Oh, yes, we understand,” they said.  (I always had to be sure they understood what I was saying.)

 

So I went to the door this morning.  The man said, “Hurry up.  I’ve only got a minute, and I want to give you this address.”  So I rushed to my box of pencils to pick up a pencil.  I picked up one that was broken off.  I threw it over into the other box.  I picked up another.  It was broken off.  I picked up seven, and they were all broken off.  The seventh was the last one in the box.  There was nothing there.  You know how I felt, don’t you?  “I told them not to do that, and they’ve broken every one.  There is not a one left.”  And the Holy Spirit said, “I was grieved when you threw that pencil down.”  I found a pencil and wrote what I had to write and sent the man on.

 

Then I called my girls together, and I said, “Girls, I have grieved the Holy Spirit.  I want you to pray for me.”  Well, we had a blessed time of prayer.  I told them what I had done, and, of course, they confessed that they were careless in letting the pencils go, but that was beside the point.  My inner being had been impatient.  I was wrong.  You know, we’re so apt to say, “Oh, well, it was because he said that that I got upset.”  No, it wasn’t, it is because you got something inside that made you upset.  No matter what people say, if this old self is dead, you can punch him all your life, and he doesn’t cause you trouble.  And I knew that it wasn’t because the girls had failed.  It was because I had failed.  But you know the best of it was, that by taking that to the Lord and definitely dealing with it, putting it out in the light, I have never had that feeling from that day till this.  Isn’t that precious?

 

No matter what comes up, God deals with self and brings it to the cross when we’ll deal definitely with self.  But, oh, how we excuse ourselves!  “It’s that girl in the room across the hall; she just gets me.  And I get upset when I meet her.”  Well, it’s not “she”; it’s you.

 

And God said to me then, “I never let anything come into the life of My child that I haven’t purpose in.  I have undertaken to perfect you.  I have undertaken to bring you into this place of complete deliverance, and everything I let come into your life is purposeful.”  So don’t ask why, but ask, “What is God doing now?  What is He trying to teach me now through this?”

 

We are very sensitive, aren’t we?  And we get hurt very easily.  Some of us seem to have our nerves all on the outside, and we get hurt so easily.  But it’s not the hurt things, it’s you that God wants to deal with.  He wants to show you where that self is residing.

 

God let me go through some very, very hard things.  He let me be misunderstood.  Now, you know when you’re misunderstood, you want to explain it.  But He said, “Not one single word.”  Oh, did I want to say just one word, just one!  And then I thought I could keep still after that, but He said, “Not a word.  Just leave it in My hands.”  Oh, how I cringed under it, but oh, how patiently He dealt with me, showing me one thing of this old self-life after the other. 

 

Finally the strain was so great that my nerves just gave way, and I had to withdraw.  I went up to our little cottage which we have in order to get away from the heat in the summer.  I just waited on the Lord.  My nerves were broken, and the devil kept saying, “Now you’ll just go home a physical wreck; you’re done for.”  But I just kept looking up to the Lord, and He said, “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty.”  I had always taken that as “in the midst of us,” the church.  “No,” He said.  “You have been opening your inner being up to Me as I have shown you this old self.  You have opened every step.  Now I’m in the midst of you.  I’m your inside God.”

 

Oh, beloved, if you want to be a missionary, you want to know God is inside and not in heaven, and He is dwelling in you.  Oh, what that meant to me!

 

“I am your inside God, and My resurrection life is in touch with every nerve center of your being.  My life, my resurrection life, is going through you.”  How marvelously He healed my nerves!

 

Then He said to me, as I was walking out one morning, just like a voice from heaven, “I will dwell in you and walk in you.  It’s not going to be you anymore.  You have opened up to Me, and I’m coming in.”  The next morning, when I was fasting and praying before the Lord, He said, “If we are planted in the likeness of His death, we are raised in the likeness of His resurrection.”  And, oh, I saw Him, Jesus, come in - in His glorious resurrection life, in power - and take over.  He just possessed me, and I saw that this old self had gone to the cross.

 

This is a wonderful thing, to have self, you, the petty, old, sensitive, irritable creature go to the cross and Another living within.  This is what God wants us to have.  Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ.  The glorious resurrected Christ has come and is living in me.  Another one has taken over.”  Oh, what a transformation, a brand new control!

 

Beloved, I would like to ask you, can you control your emotions? I could not.  I would just get upset.  I found in the Word of God that the carnal nature is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.  No use to try to subject it, it cannot be.  The only thing to do is to bring it to the cross, and let it die.  Dr. Tozer says, “It’s not easy to die, but oh, it’s so good to be dead.”

 

So let’s press on even though we have to go through some terrible things.  I went through some terrible things where  I was just down at  the bottom, but God said, “Now, not a word!  Don’t say a word.  Don’t seek for sympathy.  Just die, that’s all.  Just drop down.”  I remember Susan Dickey, a friend of mine from Japan. We had great times together, and she used to say, “Oh, Miss Francis, I can’t take it.”  “Well,” I said, “Don’t try to take it.  Die.  That’s what God wants you to do.”  She thanked God she found it after a while.  It’s for every one of us.

 

Aren’t you often sick of yourself, this old self-life, that’s so sensitive and gets so upset, gets “mad” at folks, gets all out of sorts?  Somebody else is loved more than you are, some other girl is more popular than you are, and, oh, you feel so bad, you’re so lonely because you would like to be popular, too.  Oh, that’s all the old self, and God has made a way whereby we may be delivered from self. 

 

Dr. Simpson wrote that wonderful poem:

 

Life’s crisis has been passed,

And I have come at last

Into the Promised Land of Peace and Rest;

The crisis hour is o’er,

And now forevermore

I’m dwelling in God’s blessing and God’s best

 

It came, I know not how,

But this I know, that now

My life has found a new and nobler plane;

Something has passed away;

Something has come to stay,

And I can never be the same again.

 

The change is not in me;

Rather, it seems that He

Has come Himself to live His life in mine;

And as I stepped aside

And took Him to abide,

He came and filled me with His life divine.

 

Isn’t that precious?  All of this became a reality within.  I knew that it was not a teaching but a reality – crucified with Christ, self gone to the cross, Christ living within.  That’s what made the joy.  Now this was over forty years ago when God brought me through.  Oh, what a blessing it has been all through the long years of the war, all through the years of testing – Christ living within, no more I, no more of that old sensitive longing for some appreciation, but Christ the glorious, resurrected Christ.

 

Oh, friends, it is a reality.  It is real, Christ living in you.  He gives you strength.  He gives you endurance.  He gives you victory.  I used to be saying, “Oh, now what shall I do?”  I don’t say that anymore because now I trust Him, and I can do all things through Him which strengtheneth me, things that I wouldn’t do because He does them; I don’t have to do them.  Isn’t that something?  That is the life that God wants us to live.

 

Let me tell you, when you get out onto the foreign field, you are dealing not with humans, but with principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world.  It’s a hand-to-hand conflict.  When we go to the field, we just throw down the gauntlet.  We don’t say it with our lips, but in our actions in our life, we say to the devil, “Now you’ve had charge of these people.  You’ve held them in your power all these generations, but I have come in the name of Jesus to deliver them.”  When you say that, the conflict is on, and the devil says, “I’ll show you.  You thought you were doing something.”  Oh, doesn’t he come against us with such tremendous power?

 

I’ve helped young missionaries who are coming through and just seem as though they would be torn in pieces with the awful power of the darkness coming against them, but when they saw the light of death, that it is no more I but Christ, that already Christ has taken the victory, then they get the victory.  We don’t have to gain the victory; He has taken it.  We have to get into Him and let Him get into us, and then it’s victory all the way along.  Bound up with Him – this is such a wonderful thing.  I just long to tell everybody about it, and I long, too, for everybody to come into this place of glorious triumph in Christ.

 

One of the greatest troubles on the mission field is the personality problem.  People get so at points with each other because you are awfully close together out there.  Every day I see that same person, and I know all their in’s and out’s and all their weak points and their naughty points, and they know mine, and the first thing you know, you get on each other’s nerves.  But when Christ comes in, you just love everybody because it’s Christ loving them through you.  This is wonderful, Christ in you, the hope of glory.  It is God’s great plan.  He said it was a secret for ages and generations, but now it is made known to all the saints.

 

Some years ago an old lady left a thousand dollars for me in her will.  Well, I wouldn’t settle for $500, would you?  No, I said, “I want that thousand.  I want to give it to the missions, and I want the whole business.”  But when it comes to dealing with God, we often settle for very little.  We say “I guess this is about it.  I’m a weak creature anyhow.  I’m very sensitive naturally.”  God said to me, “Do you not know that I can change your natural disposition and make it over so that you’ll be another person?”  And I am, because Christ dwells within.  It’s not I anymore; it’s Christ.  He’ll help you.  He’ll give you the victory, but don’t settle for less.

 

Make up your mind that you’ll die when God sends these cutting things. You don’t die easy.  “Yes, I see the light.  I see the truth.  I’m dead.  I’m going to die.”  Then somebody comes along with a sharp point and pricks you.  All of a sudden you’re all alive.  You don’t die that way.  You have to go through.  You have to place yourself in the place of death.  Jesus said to me one time, “It wouldn’t have done for Me to have been slain by the sword quickly.  You see, I had to get into the place of death and wait till death came.”  He was nailed to the cross and He said that in dying to self, you must put yourself in the place of death, and then you’ll have to be patient until death comes.  But hallelujah!  Beloved, it comes.  There is such a thing as being crucified with Christ.

 

Paul wasn’t there when Christ was crucified, but he became so one with Christ that he entered right into it.  It says in Romans 7:4, “You are dead to the law by the body of Christ that you might be married to another, even to Him that is raised from the dead.”

 

That is an inner marriage.  It doesn’t involve your outside marriage at all, but it makes it all the sweeter.  But you’re married.  Now what does that mean?  It means that I am one with Christ.  When you get married, all that your husband has belongs to you.  In Japan, one crown prince is married to who you call a commoner.  But she’s not a commoner anymore, she’s royal and her children are in the royal line.  She is royalty.  Now that is it, beloved. We’re really married to the Lord Jesus Christ inside, made one with him, and His death, resurrection, His ascension are all mine. 

I’m living here on earth, but my inner being is not living on earth.  My inside with Christ is in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  And oh, it’s just grand up here.  I was just coming across from Canada the other day in a plane, and the captain told us to look out on the left to see Niagara.  Oh, I thought that would be grand.  (I had once seen it from the ground.)  I rushed over to the left and looked out, and it looked so small!  And I thought, “Get high enough, and the things of earth will look mighty small.  Live in the heavenlies, live in Christ Jesus.”

 

Oh, beloved, it’s just wonderful.  Precious students, you give your life to Christ.  You have come here to learn the things of God.  The greatest thing you can ever learn is to learn to die.  So learn what it means to become perfectly joined to Jesus Christ so that Christ is in you.  It is no more I, but Christ.

 

This article first appeared in Bread of Life, a publication of the Ridgewood Pentecostal Church.