RJ LETOURNEAU
AMY CARMICHAEL
CORRIE TEN BOOM
High SQ CharacterS IN HISTORY
“You will never know what you can accomplish until you say a great big yes to the Lord.”
My life has been deeply shaped by the testimonies and spiritual biographies of those that have gone before me. I have been drawn to those who knew God intimately, not just those who accomplished great things for God. As a young disciple I devoured the biographies of Praying Hyde, Reece Howells, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Amy Carmichael, Jackie Pullinger, A.W Tozer, Hudson Taylor, Jonathan Goforth, Charles Finney, George Whitfield and so many others. Their passion for the Presence and power of God inspired me to seek the face of God and surrender myself continually to Him. I desired to discern and follow the Holy Spirit’s leading so I too could experience what only God could do. My brief summaries of several of these high SQ servants of God are meant to inspire you to dig deeper into their lives and read their biographies for yourself. We are transformed in the Presence of God, by people, and the books that we read. For all the SQ seekers out there, there is always more!
JOHN HYDE (PRAYING HYDE)
John Hyde was born in Illinois, the son of Presbyterian minister, and raised in a spiritually devout home. John entered seminary as a spiritually disciplined but not passionate Christ follower. A turning point occurred in seminary when a fellow student challenged him, “John, the Lord has been speaking to me about you. You are not as Spirit-filled as you ought to be.” John began to seek deeper surrender and greater infilling of the Holy Spirit. That quest continued when he boarded a ship to India in 1892 as a Presbyterian missionary. During the six-week voyage, John often spent whole days in his quarters seeking God. His prayer was, “Lord give me the Spirit of Elijah, the double portion.” During the voyage the Holy Spirit met John in such a powerful way that his life was never the same. John’s impact on the Presbyterian Mission Society and the nation of India was incredible, not through preaching, but through prayer!
The Lord would lead John to unreached towns and he would begin his work in prayer. His practice was to find a room to rent in the town and begin to pray. The Spirit of the Lord led him in intercession to claim the ground spiritually and even confront the powers of darkness. This hidden intercession could go on for weeks until John knew the victory had been won. He would then emerge from his prayer cave and announce to people on the streets, “You are now free to come to Jesus,” and they would, in large numbers! John believed that his time in the presence of the Lord was not just affecting the spiritual environment around him, but also the transformation needed within him. “Self must be entirely, completely annihilated. Only Christ must remain.” John believed people were attracted to Jesus in our lives, but it was the stench of our sin which repelled them. “When we keep near to Jesus, it is He who draws souls through us.” John’s discernment in prayer was the fruit of knowing the Holy Spirit. “God is the one who must work. It is not my prayer that moves Him, but His Spirit that moves me to pray.”
John’s investment in the prayer room, transformed the annual Presbyterian mission workers in India conference. After several years more missionaries were flocking to the prayer room than were in the general conference sessions because they wanted to spend time in God’s presence with John! Soon this young missionary was invited to speak at the general sessions as other workers were thirsty for the living water flowing from his life.
John’s passion for the transformed lives of people was captured in his well-known quote, “Father, give me souls, or I die.” One year John asked the Lord for one soul a day. He would not complete his day until he experienced the answer to that prayer. The next year it was 2 souls a day, and the next year 4 souls a day. There were days when he would not see 4 people come to Christ, and he would ask the Lord what blocked His blessing and inevitably John would be convicted about his lack of joy! This high SQ servant of God made his life focus to know and cooperate with God’s work.
I first heard of Praying Hyde through a Swedish prayer leader who had served as a missionary in Pakistan (formerly part of India in the days of Praying Hyde). He would share Christ in some towns and no one would respond. He would travel to other towns, with the same approach and many would come to Christ. He was puzzled by this pattern and asked the Lord about it. While attending a mission conference in Brazil a fellow worker gave him Praying Hyde’s biography, knowing Hyde had worked in the same region as my Swedish friend. What my friend discovered, to his amazement, was that in the places where Praying Hyde had spent time in prayer and sharing Christ, people were still responding to the gospel, 100 years later! In other places where the spiritual ground had not been softened through prevailing prayer, there was little to no fruit. Hyde’s legacy of SQ lives on!
REECE HOWELLS
Reece Howells who lived from 1879 – 1950, was a Welsh intercessor, revivalist and the founder of the Bible College of Wales. Reece’s spiritual intelligence and unique sensitivity to the work of God in prayer and the lives of others was birthed through a life-changing experience with the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit said to me, ‘I am not going to live in you as a guest. I am going to be the owner.” The outworking of that experience with the Holy Spirit began Reece’s journey of true intimacy with God – knowing Him as not just Saviour but Lord of every area of his life.
Reece’s discernment in prayer illustrated high SQ. During the critical war years Reece was given specific prophetic insight as to how to pray for specific battles. Some would say his intercession turned the tide in the North African campaign (you’ll need to read his biography to learn more). He trained thousands of bible college students who came to study with him how to know God intimately and pray under the leading of the Holy Spirit. Reece believed that effective prayer required that we first knew the mind of the Lord. “Unless we know God’s mind, we cannot pray in faith.” This goes to the heart of why most prayer is of the “shopping list” variety. Few of us want to invest the time in asking the Lord how to pray in each circumstance and then discerning well the will of God so we can pray in faith. Its easier to pray out of our own compassion, fears or interest and ask God to hear our prayers.
One of Reece’s best-known teachings was that “intercession means identification,” to truly intercede one must first enter into the suffering or burden of the one being prayed for, as Christ did. Reece’s obedience to the Holy Spirit was total. He gave up everything to find all that God had promised him.
One of my friends visited the Bible College at Wales and had an opportunity to look in Reece bedroom, which had remained unoccupied as it was. The wooden floorboards next to Reece’s bed have deep grooves worn out from his knees where he spent countless hours in prayer. His son later wrote, “My father became the embodiment of his prayers.”
R.G. LeTourneau lived from 1888 – 1969 and was a successful inventor of earth moving machines and industrial equipment with over 300 patents. Both his IQ and SQ were applied in the areas of solving engineering problems, product designs, business leadership and living with generosity. LeTourneau’s walk with God was significantly affected when his business collapsed in 1915. Rather than turning away from God in anger, LeTourneau went deeper with God and dedicated his business to God. “The question is not whether God can bless my business, but whether I can bless God through my business.” This transformed how LeTourneau viewed business in every way. “Not everyone is called to preach, but everyone is called to serve. God needs businessmen as well as preachers.”
Business now became the avenue through which LeTourneau grew in his knowledge of God and service with God. In 1927 LeTourneau devoted his business entirely to God, tithing 90% of his income and living on 10%, a radical reversal of what many would call generosity. “Its not how much of my money I give to God, but how much of God’s money I keep for myself.”
LeTourneau established missions, schools, and a Foundation to support Christian ministry. It wasn’t just his generosity though which reflected high SQ, but his prayer life and capacity to listen for God’s voice in decisions. He believed the Creator of the universe was co-creating with him in his research and engineering designs. LeTourneau believed that the marketplace became a sacred space when surrendered to God. His high SQ was reflected through his integrity in business dealings, compassion for employees, and generosity in funding Christian causes locally and globally. LeTourneau’s life stands as a challenge to business leaders everywhere to grow in SQ by dedicating their business to God and invited the Lord to lead through them.
Amy Carmichael lived from 1867 – 1951 and served in India for 55 years without furlough. She is a shining example of SQ expressing a deep intimacy with Christ that replaced all other dependencies. Her poems, journals, letters and devotional writings reveal a woman who knows God’s heart through quiet worship, suffering and daily surrender. Amy knew prayerful listening to God filled her soul and then led her into assignments of risk-taking obedience. She took in hundreds of girls fleeing from forced temple prostitution, eventually forming the Dohnavur Fellowship.
Despite physical frailty (including chronic neuralgia that caused lifelong pain), Amy served the poor and radiated Christ’s love. “When I consider the cross of Christ, how can anything that I do be called sacrifice?” Suffering, joy, surrender and intimacy with Christ are constant themes in Amy’s writings. “Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace.” Amy’s inner life with God, gave her the strength to serve in a challenging context and with a challenging physical condition. “Can we follow the Savior far, who have no wound or scar?” More than that, her passion to know Christ was like a fire that drew others to also know Him.
This prayer of Amy’s is the prayer of all who seek to grow in SQ, “Give me the love that leads the way, the faith that nothing can dismay, the hope no disappointments tire, the passion that will burn like fire…”
Corrie ten Boom lived from 1892 – 1983 and was a watchmaker until the events of WWII upended her life. Raised in a devout Christian home, Corrie’s family joined the Dutch resistance during WWII, hiding Jews in their home. They discerned through prayer and conviction that protecting the lives of others was God’s will for them, even when it was illegal and could place them in jail. “God’s guidance is often step by step, and He gives just enough light for the next step.” Sheltering Jewish families eventually cost the ten Boom family their freedom, and they were imprisoned in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. It was the presence of God in Corrie’s life which sustained her. “Trying to do the Lord’s work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.” While in Ravensbruck, Corrie’s sister Betsie shared these words with Corrie on her deathbed, “We must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.” That request and prayer for the reality of Christ’s love and forgiveness to redeem the pain of their family’s experience, shaped Corrie’s remaining years of global ministry following the war.
Corrie’s message of forgiveness brought healing and hope to countless people after the war. “Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred.” One night as she shared this message of forgiveness in a German church, a man came up to her afterward and introduced himself as a former guard at Ravensbruck. Corrie recognized him immediately and wanted scream at him that he killed Betsie and her family. The man thanked Corrie for the presentation on forgiveness and said he had always wanted to shake the hand of a camp prisoner, because although he knew forgiveness intellectually, he still didn’t feel it. As he thrust out his hand at her, Corrie had a choice. “Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them…Jesus help me! I prayed silently. I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.” What happened next shocked Corrie, as she physically experienced God’s love flow over her head, down her arm and into the outstretched hand of the former prison guard. God’s love filled her life in a new way. “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” God has used that story to set countless people free from unforgiveness, bitterness and a life of pain.
This awareness of God’s work and our privilege in joining God, continued to shape Corrie’s life for years following the war. She continued to believe that “God does not have problems, only plans.”
Corrie, like many other high SQ disciples of Christ, grew in spiritual intelligence through pain and suffering as she invited God to redeem and transform her life. Her learnings were part of God’s plan to bring healing to many others.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
Dietrich Bonhoeffer who lived 1906-1945, was raised in a devout Christian family in Berlin, Germany. His father was one of the leading psychologists in the country, and education was highly valued in their home. Bonhoeffer developed both his IQ and his SQ as a young intellectual and doctoral student in theology. He wrote prolifically and was active in local church ministry. With the rise of Naziism, and the coopting of the German Church by Hitler, Bonhoeffer was faced with a huge challenge and opportunity. He was in a spiritual war. Practical theology was always Bonhoeffer’s primary focus, and when he was asked to lead the spiritual training program for young adults in the Confessing Church, he began a Christian community called Finkenwalde which included seminary training. His discipleship practices and insights led to books like “The Cost of Discipleship” and “Life Together.” For Bonhoeffer, all of life was discipleship. “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (The Cost of Discipleship). Grace is not cheap, discipleship demands total surrender, even to death.
Bonhoeffer spoke out against Hitler and the Nazis when most German Christians remained silent or supportive. He discerned the will of God courageously as he declared, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless.” Spiritual intelligence informed Bonhoeffer’s decision to move from spiritual discernment to moral action. He joined the underground resistance to Nazism when most remained quiet. This was his understanding of obedience to the call of God, even as he was training seminary students, he was working to overthrow Hitler.
Eventually Bonhoeffer was discovered and imprisoned. His ministry in the prison to other prisoners and guards was thoughtful and incarnational. “To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way…but to be a man – not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us” (Letters and Papers From Prison). In prison Bonhoeffer lived and wrote about a “Christ shaped humanity” where believers image Christ in the real world in ways that are just, sacrificial and compassionate.
Several days before Germany surrendered to the Allies, Bonhoeffer was executed in prison at the personal request of Hitler. One witness of his execution said, “In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” Bonhoeffer lived and died with high IQ and SQ for the glory of God, to the very end. We don’t know what will be asked of us in our generation, but we can look to those with spiritual intelligence who have gone before us to show us the way.
There has been tears in my eyes as I have reviewed again the lives of these SQ mentors of mine. Their self sacrifice and capacity to discern and then cooperate with God’s transforming work in their lives and the world around them inspires me! Discerning and praying for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, will lead us into assignments of risk-taking obedience. The intercession of Praying Hyde and Reece Howells has affected the destiny of nations, as has the faithful witness of Corrie ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. High SQ servants of God are called to the center of the political, economic and social challenges of the day. Walking with God frees and equips us to be part of the answer to our world’s problems, where we all have our assignments.