Amy Carmichael: Compelled to Serve by the Love of Jesus

As she sang the popular hymn Jesus Loves Me, Amy Carmichael was captivated by the love of Jesus for the first time.

Jesus loves me—this I know,

For the Bible tells me so;

Little ones to him belong—,

They are weak, but he is strong.

Amy had grown up hearing her mother sing this song, but she didn’t personally know the strong love of Christ until that moment as a teenager. This same love would compel her to tell hundreds of people about Jesus when she served as a foreign missionary in the late 1800s. How did a young, single woman travel overseas and share the gospel before airplanes, cell phones, and email existed? How did she find the strength to mother hundreds of children who had been trafficked, stolen, or orphaned? Amy Carmichael found the courage to love sacrificially through the sacrificial love of Christ. 

“The great passion of Amy Carmichael’s life was uttermost love, which meant uttermost obedience.”[1] By the power of the Holy Spirit, God used his Word and prayer to drive Amy to such obedience. Though most of us are not serving hundreds of children in a remote context, we all have much to learn from her example as we serve the kiddos God has given us with the love of Jesus.

Compelled to Serve by Scripture 

After her conversion, Amy recorded her prayers in a journal filled with prayer requests and answers that she called her “Ask and Receive” book. While thumbing through it one day, she reflected on the words “Go ye” from Matthew 28:19 (KJV). These words—the very words of Jesus—compelled her to spend her life going and telling others about his love. As the old hymn continues, “Jesus loves me—this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Amy’s desire to share the gospel was fueled by Jesus’s love, which she knew through his Word. 

But her devotion to the Word wasn’t always well received. At one point during her time in India, Amy’s convictions required that she withdraw from the missions agency with which she was affiliated, because they no longer affirmed the inspiration of Scripture—the belief that the Bible contains the very words of God. She was convinced of this truth during a time in which many Christians were comfortably departing from it. Like Amy, we must be fiercely devoted to God’s Word, even when it hurts. In the pages of Scripture, we learn to walk in love, and we know his love more fully. Truly experiencing Jesus’s love compels us to love others the same way he loved us—to the uttermost.[2]

Strengthened to Serve through Prayer

Amy shared the gospel in many different contexts, but she is best known for her ministry to children in India, which began with a little girl named Preena. Before she knew it, Amy’s family grew into what would eventually become the Dohnavur Foundation, where Amy and her many children lived, worshiped, worked, and studied together. Such an operation required many resources, so Amy prayed and asked God to provide for their every need—especially the spiritual ones. 

One poignant request that Amy sent home stated, “Do please, dear friends, ask that we may exchange the eagerness of the flesh for the earnestness of the Spirit and so move in the force of that Holy Wind that we shall be carried along by His great calm.”[3] Through humble prayers like these, Amy displayed her weakness as she clung to Christ’s strength. As we cry out to God for help too, our children will see mothers who do not rely on their own strength, but who serve in the strength that God supplies.[4] Like Amy, we can lean into Christ’s strength by laying every care at his feet.

It’s tempting to think that Amy Carmichael was extraordinary and that we will never be able to serve as sacrificially as she did, but Amy would want us to consider just how ordinary she was. In the latter years of her life, she had a bad fall, which resulted in debilitating physical injuries that greatly slowed her work. Yet even in her frustration, God provided Amy with the ability to write and encourage the sick and to minister to women and children who would visit her bedside. Until the end, Amy kept clinging to Christ through his Word and prayer—two simple disciplines that make all the difference in our own service. Too often, we neglect the basics of our faith, but Amy’s life reminds us that ordinary people must prioritize ordinary disciplines to be extraordinarily empowered for Christlike service. May we remember her example as we lay down our lives to serve our little people today.

[1] Elisabeth Elliot, A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2005), p. 151.

[2] John 13:1

[3] Elliot, p. 126.

[4] 1 Peter 4:11