Finding Hope in Loneliness With Amy CarmichaelSample

He Will Satisfy

He will be enough for you. “Shall never thirst” (John 4:14) is a true word, and whatever His thoughts may be for your life, He will satisfy you. “Thou, O Lord, art the thing that I long for."* And to you He says, “I have longed for thee.” That deep, wonderful word amazes me again and again. Psalm 132:13-14 Prayer Book Version: “For the Lord hath chosen Zion to be a habitation for Himself: He hath longed for her.”

And now to Him who heard “what time the storm fell upon thee" (Ps. 81:7), to the tenderest of tender ones who can quiet our restless longings and teach us to do without until our soul is even as a weaned child—to Him whose you are, I commit you.

God gives love; it isn’t in us to love. I don’t naturally love people I don’t know (and I don’t naturally love all the people I do know!). Love is of God and from God, and He pours it into our hearts if we let Him.

Our Lord did not say, “Go ye into all the world if you feel an ardent flame of love to all the people in it.” He just said, “Go ye” (Mark 16:15–16), and as we obey, He gives us all we need to lead them to Him. And of course, as we most of all need love, He gives it to us.

So fear not. God hath given us a spirit not of fear, but of power and of love and of discipline.

* “Let us lift up our heart,” a hymn by Samuel Sebastian Wesley

EXCERPTS from Candles in the Dark: Letters of Hope and Encouragement by Amy Carmichael. For more information, please visit https://www.clcpublications.com/shop/candles-in-the-dark/

Amy Carmichael was the eldest daughter of a large Christ-centered family in Millisle, Ireland. She was impressed at an early age that “nothing is important but that which is eternal.” This understanding proved to be the foundation for her service to the Lord among the mill workers of Ireland, the Japanese briefly, and then in India, where she began her ministry to children in 1895 and where she remained until her death in 1951.