Mabel Francis' Testimony of the Exchanged Life

Mabel Francis served as a missionary in Japan for over fifty years. This is her testimony of discovering Christ as her life from an article that she wrote for The Alliance Witness in 1963. A request was made for her to write the article when she was heard to say, while receiving the 5th Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese government: "It was not I who did anything. It was the indwelling Christ. It is Jesus who does the work." This article is called "When Christ Took Over My Life":

"Before I became a missionary I had many blessed experiences with God and had learned something about a walk of faith. At the age of fifteen my eyes were opened to see that the Holy Spirit was given not only to the disciples in the Early Church but to all who obey Him. This was a great revelation to me, and after earnestly seeking to understand these great truths I laid all my will on the altar. Deep in my heart there came the assurance that He had come to abide.

"When I was seventeen God called me to give up my position and enter evangelistic work. At the time I was teaching a small country school in Tamworth, New Hampshire, but God laid on my heart a burden for the people of that town. So I opened a Sunday afternoon service in my one room schoolhouse. From the beginning the whole community came and a revival broke out. The news of this revival spread and calls began to come from one church after another. In each place God poured out His Spirit and many were brought to saving faith.

"When I was nineteen God definitely called me to go to Japan. I was alone in my room praying when suddenly I became aware of the presence of God in a very special way. As I listened He spoke to my inner heart. 'You know that I love you.'

" Yes,' I answered, 'I know that You love me." And then He spoke a word that changed my whole life.

"'Just as I love you,' He said, 'I love the people of Japan.' At that moment the whole nation of Japan seemed to be standing before me and Jesus was in the midst of them. He said, 'I know their sorrows, I have seen their tears; but I cannot help them for they do not know Me. I have no lips with which to speak, no hands with which to minister.'

"At that moment I sensed the awful yearning of Jesus over the lost. He said, 'Will you give Me your lips to tell them of My love?' I could only think of a mother seeing her child suffer while her hands were tied so that she could not help. Would I use my hands to help her child if I came upon such a situation? This feeling never left me. It is for Jesus' sake that I have remained in Japan.

"The call was so clear that I began at once to prepare. I entered Gordon College, then known as Gordon Training College. While studying there the terrible moral conditions of factory life in Brockton were brought to my attention. I felt that God would have me open a rescue mission there, trusting Him alone for the needs. For two years I was there in this school of faith when God led me to go to Nyack. There God taught me many lessons.

"After graduation I went to Defiance College in Ohio, but the burden to get into the work to which God had called me became so heavy that I was unable to complete the course there. I returned to my home and wrote to the Board of The Christian and Missionary Alliance in New York that I would be ready to leave for Japan in the fall.

"In those days every missionary candidate was responsible for his own transportation, outfit and first year's support. At the time I wrote to New York I had nothing, but I believed God would supply. Soon the Brockton Olivet Memorial Church pledged my first year's support. Then daily, as though an unseen hand was moving, money came until I had the full amount for my passage. I did not have a very big outfit, but things meant nothing when I was so burdened to get out with
the gospel and in some small measure relieve the pain in the heart of Jesus as I had seen it in my call.

"I sailed for Japan late in 1909. Upon my arrival in Japan everything changed. I had to sit quietly and study the language. The exhilaration of the public ministry I had carried on in America was gone. The work seemed so vast with millions in heathen darkness all around me. What could one little person like me do?

"Not only did I feel my absolute insufficiency for the work, but whereas I had thought I had experienced victory over self I now felt its uprisings. I felt the subtle desire for appreciation and understanding from the Japanese for whom I was giving my life. At that time God made very real to me Matthew 20:28. Jesus came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life as a ransom. He revealed to me that after He had ministered He did not seek appreciation but still had to give His life. Instead of thanks He received the crown of thorns and the cross.

"I had to follow Him, but I felt bewildered and frustrated. In my distress I cried to God, 'What can I do?' Then He said so clearly, 'It is not for what you can do that I brought you here, but for what you will let Me do through you.'

"It seemed so simple just to let Him take over, but I found that there was something in me--the old self that would not recede so easily. It was at this time God revealed to me that deliverance from the Adamic nature must be by death. I must die. But how could I die? The consciousness of this nature which 'is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be' became so terrible that finally my health broke from the strain.

"Daily I sought, expecting that God would send a fresh anointing of the Spirit; but only greater depths of the subtlety of the old nature were revealed until one day as I walked into the woods a voice ever so clear rang through my being: 'I will dwell in them, and walk in them' (2 Cor. 6:16). At that moment I realized that it was not that I should have a new blessing, but that the Blesser Himself had come in and taken over. Galatians 2:20 became a glorious reality: 'I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'

"The sixth chapter of Romans was wonderfully opened up to me: 'Do you not know that you are dead by virtue of oneness with Him in His death?' 'If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection' (verse 5 ). I saw that I was made one with Him in His death and that the living, resurrected Christ had come in and taken the throne of my heart.

"All sense of defeat and sadness was gone. He had come and shed His light and love through every part of my being. I need not struggle to he better. He, the perfect One, had come. I was just to surrender to Him and let Him live out His life. I need not struggle for victory; the Victor was within.

"At this time Dr. Simpson's hymn became very precious to me:

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.

"Also the stanza from Gerhard Tersteegen:

More near than I unto myself can be
Art Thou to me;
So have I lost myself in finding Thee,
Have lost myself forever, O my Sun!
The boundless heaven of Thine eternal love
Around me and beneath me and above;
In glory of that golden day
The former things are passed away--
I, past and gone.

"Oh, the joy that came as I experienced the reality of this truth! 'I, past and gone.' Crucified with Christ, and now Christ lived in me.

"As I write this my heart thrills afresh. What a wonderful salvation! I was not only saved from sin but saved from myself. Now His presence within is a glorious daily reality. I never dreamed that such a life of victory and peace was possible.

"A Being more real than hands or feet has come into my heart and as I obey Him I realize that I am more and more fused into Him, made one with Him, taken up into Him, a joint heir with Him, seated with Him in heavenly places. He who rules the universe rules in my heart. 'My life flows on in endless song amid earth's wild commotion.' It is not I but He.

"The more we know of this wondrous One the greater the marvel becomes, and the more fully we know Him the more He can manifest Himself to the world through us."