(Christian Biographies for Children) Joanna Veenstra read

Today we'll hear the story of a lady named Joanna Wienstra and I'll show you a picture of her, Joanna Wienstra. Now Joanna only lived to be, I don't know how old she is in this picture, but she only lived to be 39 years of age before she died, so she was quite still quite young, but really wonderful testimony of her life, Joanna Wienstra. Okay, here we go.

Joanna, a golden-haired blue-eyed girl stood at the bed of her dear father, full of awe and confusion as he talked about meeting his Savior in heaven. For only seven months he had served as the pastor of a Christian Reformed Church in Michigan, USA, when he got typhoid fever and died. Life was not the same after this for Joanna and she caused her widowed mother much anxiety.

In school she was often disobedient and she was such a rebellious student in Sunday school that her teachers had to kick her out of Sunday school. Joanna was born in 1894 in Paterson, New Jersey, USA in a Dutch community which was said to have produced more workers for God according to its population than any other part of the city. Between the ages of 15 and 16 she got a job as a typist in New York.

She was so delighted with the freedom and money which she now had that she gave in to an increasing love of the world and its pleasures. She spent her money on expensive dresses of the latest fashion and lots of fancy jewelry. She started going to the theater frequently and she was just starting to develop an interest in social dances when all of that suddenly and firmly came to an end by a single word she heard from the God from God, stop.

Joanna was just finishing her day's work in the office when she received a telephone call. It was her church pastor asking her to come to his home that evening. She had no interest in spiritual things at that time in her life yet she surprised even herself by accepting the invitation to his house.

When she reached the doorstep of his house she was trembling violently and she didn't even know why. He had a kind fatherly personality however which put her at ease. He clearly cared about her soul and that brought her to tears.

After dinner and some time in prayer she returned home but that visit brought a turning point in her happy-go-lucky thoughtless life for almost a year. She lived under a sense of burden over her sin. After the day's work she often slipped away from the rest of the family to pray.

One evening her sister was curious to know what she was doing and peeked through the keyhole of the door of her bedroom. She saw Joanna on her knees crying out to God. Joanna frequently was unable to sleep filled with a dreadful fear of death and hell.

Finally God showed her that she couldn't find rest of soul because she had not submitted herself to God and his will. In other words she longed for a relief from the guilt of sin and for the joy she knew she would then have but she wanted it without having to pay the price of complete surrender. An intense struggle followed but finally Joanna looked up to heaven and exclaimed through her tears anything Lord anything I'll give up anything and the burden immediately rolled away from her heart and she had an assurance that she was forgiven.

Now she no longer wasted her time chasing after pleasure but rather in serving God. Until she was 19 years old she found great happiness assisting Mr. Peter Stamm of the Star of Hope mission in Paterson several nights a week as well as well as on Saturday afternoons. Peter was the father of John Stamm who would with his wife Betty later suffered martyrdom in China in 1934.

John was only a little child at the time that Joanna was a helper in the mission to his father. When Joanna entered the Union missionary training home in Brooklyn New York she wasn't sure that full-time Christian ministry was God's plan for her life. So for three weeks after arriving there she didn't even unpack her belongings planning to be to go back home at some point quickly.

All doubt was removed however when the words of Jesus were impressed upon her heart no man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. I hope you know where that is that's in Luke 9 verse 62. No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.

What that means is if you've made the decision to give yourself fully to Jesus and then you turn back and you want a little bit more of the world again you can't be used by God. During her second year at the school she represented the students at a missionary conference in Lake Geneva Wisconsin. One of the speakers was Dr. Carl Kuhn who was the brother-in-law of Geraldine Taylor the well-known author for the China Inland Mission which was started by Hudson Taylor.

Working in a large area of Central Africa Dr. Kuhn had not met a single Christian missionary there and he had a great burden to reach the numerous heathen tribes in that area. Joanna listened to Dr. Kuhn's message with great interest as he spoke about the condition of the many African tribes dying outside the reach of the gospel. By the end of the meeting her heart was so moved that she immediately went back to her tent and spent the next three days alone in communion with God.

It was then that God revealed to her that he was calling her to serve in Nigeria. It wasn't until she was 25 however before the door opened for Joanna to go to Africa. She spent the next three years training in midwifery.

If you don't know what midwifery is it's helping mothers who are about to give birth and in the pregnancy period. She also worked with a certain city mission which helped her learn different ways of presenting the gospel to those who hadn't heard it. She shared Christ in rescue homes, prisons, hospitals, gypsy camps and even areas full of drugs and other forms of sin in the Chinatown area of New York City.

In October 1919 she said goodbye to America. Due to an unplanned delay on her trip she had to remain in England for three months on the way but finally in the early part of 1920 she reached Lagos in Nigeria which was once upon a time one of the largest slave trade centers on the western coast of Africa. She had a long journey ahead of her before she reached her planned destination in Central Africa.

At the town of Ibi in Nigeria she was welcomed by the field secretary of the Sudan Interior Mission. He told her that her final assignment was to be the Takum district in the state of Taraba in Nigeria. The people of that area were mostly cannibals at that time and the mission hoped to get a foothold there for the gospel.

It was more than a year before she reached that area but the period in between was not wasted. She learned the language so fluently that in six months she was able to preach in it. During this period also Johanna reached the most important crisis of her life.

One which for the rest of her life set her apart from nominal Christians. Spending much time in prayer the Holy Spirit led her to more clearly understand his work in the human heart. She read and reread and read again two books about this which created in her an intense hunger to be crucified with Christ, emptied of self and filled with power.

I want to mention those three things again. To be crucified with Christ, emptied of self and filled with power. This is the secret to Christian fruitfulness no matter what your calling in life is.

Ava Stewart wrote this in her biography of Johanna Wienstra. Johanna finally realized that the work she had been called to do was not hers at all but the Holy Spirit's. He had been sent from heaven to reveal Jesus to the hearts of men.

All he needed were instruments willing to be used. Even if she spent her entire life preaching to the heathen and preaching well, she would never be able to convict them. She could wear herself out working and yet reap no harvest.

He came to convict of sin. He that is the Holy Spirit came to do the reaping. Would she allow him to break her and empty her and then to work through her? Only in eternity will we realize the value of those lonely evenings with God.

Johanna later told a fellow missionary how much of a blessing God gave her through the challenge of those books. The result was that she abandoned herself completely to the Holy Spirit and allowed him to fill her heart fully. The Holy Spirit had led Johanna to the secret place of the presence of God that lies within the veil and she said that for the rest of her life she was constantly aware of the immediate presence of God.

That means the presence of God right there with her. That means she was always aware of his presence no matter what she was doing. She recognized God was right there with her.

A friend wrote this about her. I'm convinced that Johanna's inner closet was the secret of her success as a missionary. It was this constant communion with her Lord that made her so confident in the spiritual battles that she faced.

Johanna had learned her own nothingness and from that time onward she saw that what God had made available to her in Christ was an endless supply. As she put it, her flickering self-life, that means her self-life that was like a little flame, was completely extinguished by the blaze of God's glory. Her flickering self-life which was like a little flame with all the good desires that she had but it was still driven by self, was completely extinguished by the blaze of God's glory.

Johanna could say like Paul, the world is crucified unto me and me unto the world. In February 1921 Johanna set out on her journey to Takum. While local porters carried her bags she rode on a bicycle.

The area where she settled was not far from the Cameroon mountains and included many small villages in the foothills where the devil and his powers of darkness ruled. Demon worship and human sacrifice was common among the people along with child marriage and polygamy. One chief was said to have had 93 wives and here's what Johanna wrote in a letter home.

Even if I tried I couldn't fully describe just how dark this area is. Sometimes and I say this solemnly, I feel as if we are being drawn through the very gateway of hell itself. I do so want to learn the lesson of letting the Lord carry the burdens for me.

Not to just because that will be the easiest way but because that's how he wants it to be. He wants to be the one carrying the burden not me. I'm slow slower to learn these precious lessons.

Johanna found comfort and strength through prayer. She began every day with secret prayer for an hour or more before the routine of the day's work of household planning, morning meetings for the local servants, classes for the children from the nearby villages, frequent calls for medical aid etc. She would wake up before dawn meditating on God's Word using a small hurricane lamp in the stillness of the early morning.

During these times she got revelation on how almighty the Lord of hosts is and became assured that he was on the battlefield with her. Her biographer writes, she was very conscious of her weakness and unworthiness but determined that God should win in her life. She saw that the Holy Spirit was the senior partner in their relationship.

He knew the battles to be won and even though many giants defied her he was able to defeat them all. If she spent enough time in his presence he would reveal his plans to her. She knew that if she immediately and fully obeyed his commands victory would come.

So like Joshua she would fall down before the captain or the host and say what saith my Lord unto his servant. That's what Joshua said when the angel of the Lord hosted before him. You can read it Joshua chapter 5 verse 14.

She yielded to follow his leading even though it often went against her own feelings. Sometimes the battle raged strong and Satan seemed to triumph over the souls of those she was working with. She would then stay up all night praying in spiritual warfare.

She could wage a constant battle against the powers of darkness with these spiritual weapons, the weapon of prayer. She also trained others to be spiritual warriors like herself. One of these was a little Nigerian widow who was known to the villagers as the daughter of prayer.

In the prayer meetings she would cry out to the throne of grace with tears running down her cheeks for people who had grown cold toward the Lord. Sometimes her body would be bent to the earth with her face buried in her clasped hands. She prayed aloud morning noon and night for the surrounding tribes and missionaries.

This old lady even though this poor widow couldn't read a word of the Bible she knew how to win back territory from the forces of darkness by prevailing prayer. Isn't that amazing? This poor widow couldn't even read a word of the Bible and yet she knew how to win back how to win battles in the heavenlies. Saturday was always a day spent working extra hard so that Sunday would be a day of complete rest.

Johanna never allowed anything to interfere with this time alone with the Lord. Even if she received a long awaited letter from back home, sorry let me start that over again, even if a long awaited letter from home arrived on a Saturday she would lay it aside until Monday. She wanted her devotion to the Lord on Sunday to be undistracted.

Visitors were asked not to come visit her on the weekends. During her years of service Johanna was helped from time to time by people from other missionary stations but they all recognized that there was a special grace over her life. One of her co-workers described her this way, Johanna was very humble yet very human.

If she was ever irritated or impatient with me because of her tiredness she would always come later and ask me to forgive her for her behavior without making any excuses. Prayer cemented us in unity. Isn't that a wonderful statement? Prayer cemented us in unity this co-worker said and I think that's a wonderful example for us to take heed to for us as a church.

Let prayer be that which cements us in unity. This lady wrote we prayed morning and night over everything. Johanna was then asked to visit Donga which was an especially difficult area and Johanna wrote about this in a letter.

Mr. Hood was working in Donga previously and before he died he said to me the stench the stink of ungodliness in Donga reaches up to heaven and I think that is true Johanna said. Donga has been one of the lowest places spiritually for some time and has only been getting worse. So it was with great hesitation and trembling that I was willing to come here at all.

The first Wednesday prayer meeting after her arrival in Donga was very depressing. The people behaved in a most unruly way. Even the people who call themselves Christians there were in such a bad spiritual condition that she had to call a special session with them to speak the truth to them with tears.

She urged them to repent speaking plainly about their secret sins and correcting them for how they had treated former missionaries. She told them that she had already counted the cost of how they may hate her for speaking God's message to them. The result however was just the opposite.

Many of them were broken and one after another stood up to confess disobedience and wrongdoing. 19 of them who remained unrepentant had to be put out of the church. She wrote in another letter if it comes down to choosing between a Sunday meeting or drinking beer there's only one man in all of Donga who would do that.

May God help me to straighten things out here. After all it's easier to speak to a crowd than to deal with one nominal Christian on a specific area of sin. It is easy to speak in the church thou shalt not steal but much harder to speak directly to one who is dealing dishonestly in his business.

We are not bold enough in our stand for righteousness or fearless enough in our battle against sin. What she's saying there is that she realized that she had to deal specifically with individual sins within those even those who call themselves Christians instead of speaking in a general way about sin and that meant that she risked the anger and the hatred of the people whom she had been called to serve. The leader at Donga was dismissed and replaced by four godly Christian men.

The chief even though he was a professing Christian had been secretly playing around with witchcraft and Johanna courageously exposed his hypocrisy. Because he respected her he listened to her. They prayed for a long time and convicting power descended upon the chief resulting in his seeing things he never before had understood.

Johanna wrote in another letter I feel sorry for Donga because it seems that Satan knows exactly where to attack. It is so sad they need more help. I've been here for four weeks and we leave next Tuesday but I feel that the month here has been well worth the while.

Let's not grow weary or faint heart hearted. The battle is the Lord's and the victory is sure. What a difference it would make if we would be convinced of the value of New Testament methods and may we put them into practice.

I want to say that again. What a difference it would make she writes if we would be convinced of the value of New Testament methods and put them into practice. We can pray and weep and fast for the rest of our lives but unless we obey the Lord we shall never have true blessing.

Again I want to say that again. She realized we can pray and weep and fast for the rest of our lives but nothing will happen. It's when we obey the Lord that we will have true blessing.

He is jealous. God is jealous. Oh that he might write his law on our hearts.

As this little prayer warrior missionary walked on with God she learned an important truth that treating sin lightly either in one's own personal life or in the lives of the converts only results in confusion and deadness. Again I want to repeat it so we get it. Treating sin lightly whether it's in one's own personal life or the lives of the converts will only result in confusion and spiritual deadness.

At a missionary conference she shared with her fellow missionaries the truths she had been learning. She said when I had to deal with a matter in the church strictly one of my co-workers asked me why should you be so exacting and demanding of these Christians more than is done back at home in America and she writes I don't want the church on the mission field to fall into the backslidden condition of the churches back home. The New Testament explicitly tells us she writes to maintain discipline.

Most of us are unfaithful to these commands not because we don't believe it's needed in the church but because we are afraid. We neglect what is clearly the most difficult part of our work on the field. It cannot be done unless we have God's Holy Spirit.

We need discernment and who but the Holy Spirit can give this to us. We need courage to deal with sin before a holy God and who but the Holy Spirit can give such courage. We need consolation for our own hearts and love for those who have defiled the Church of Christ and again only the Holy Spirit can give us these gifts.

How is it that Satan can keep sin hidden in the middle of the church year after year without our knowledge? This is all Johanna Wienstra writing. It's because we lack the wisdom from above to discern it. One Sunday morning I was speaking to the people from the text knowing not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and while speaking the Holy Spirit of God convinced me that the man sitting right in front of me in the first row was guilty of sexual sin and I was actually speaking about the seventh commandment do not commit adultery.

This man was actually the cook in our house. When I returned home he came to me to plan the meals. My whole being rebelled against having to confront him but I managed somehow to say sit down sir I have a question to ask you and I asked him plainly whether he was guilty of that sin and he said yes Baturia who told you? It was difficult to make him believe that no one but the Lord himself had told me but the whole truth came out.

He had committed that sin only two days previously. A missionary confronted me about how I had gone about dealing with the sin saying we had no right to suspect our fellow Christians but I asked was it suspicion that gave Peter boldness to drag into the light the sin of Ananias and Sapphira or was it revealed by God? We need to see sin as God sees it. We need to see sin as God sees it.

I think that many of us again Joanna's writing have a very unscriptural attitude towards sin. For example here is a member of the church guilty of deep sin that everybody knows is sin. The news of a sin travels from Dan to Beersheba as it were.

All of the Christians everywhere believe that he should be disciplined and not allowed to take part in communion. I agree with them but here's the difficulty. Another member who loves money doesn't come to the meetings because he wants to spend more time growing his business.

Even though the lust for wealth has gripped his soul no one thinks he needs to be disciplined. The first person has defiled his own body the second has defiled his very soul out of the love of money. We do need courage again means Joanna goes on to write.

When I was in the Bible training school I chose this as my life motto only be strong and of a good courage. Little did I realize then how much I would have to lay hold of this commission. We cannot get this courage by willpower it must be given from above.

I'll never forget when I had to rebuke a teacher evangelist who was part of our missionary society. He had been with the mission a long time and I was keen to keep him but he was getting very lazy. It took three weeks of prayer before I had the courage to call him up.

It would have been so much easier to ignore it and say nothing. Only the Holy Spirit can give us courage to crucify personal feelings and follow his conviction. No one can exercise discipline in the church and not find his own spirit burdened.

Only the one who needs to be corrected and often the one who needs to be corrected will show resentment. Some time ago a baptized Christian sent his eldest child to be raised in the home of a Muslim relative of his. I wrote to the father showing how he had despised the precious gift God had given him and that if God took the child away completely he better not complain.

Two months later sadly the child died from burns he received while he was in that Muslim home. The father was very bitter toward me no doubt thinking that I had used some sort of witchery or magic on his son. He wrote me a letter in which he cursed my father and my mother and the day of my birth.

As I read the letter I prayed for courage. The next day I went to see him but he was not at home and then I had to come back to America for a few weeks. It actually wasn't until two years later when in the middle of the night the father came to me and asked me to forgive him.

If we are true to our calling, Joanna goes on to write, in the matter of discipline God will give the comfort of his Holy Spirit. Many times people have said really unkind words in response to discipline but they have returned sooner or later to apologize. God perfects all that concerns us and his work but discipline must always be done in love.

However fierce the struggle in dealing with sin, love will always triumph and only constant prayer will keep the love fire burning in our hearts. Now I know this personally as an elder and in dealing with different situations exactly the truth of what Joanna's written but I believe it's not just for those who are in leadership in the church where rebuke and correction is necessary. We're all must understand the truth of this and many of us all of us I believe will be called to exercise that according to our sphere of responsibility but it's so important to understand the importance and the truth of discipline in the church and the importance of maintaining strictness and holiness in the church.

It means that we've understood how holy God himself is. We'll continue with the story. It was Joanna's conviction that the churches in Africa should become self-supporting and led by local leaders as soon as possible rather than be dependent on foreign missionaries.

Thinking about the ultimate good of the churches there she made it a rule to never give anything freely to people except the message of salvation itself. She believed that only then would people value what they were given and so she continued laboring on amid sunshine and shadow. She firmly believed that the seed of the gospel even though sown in tears would one day produce a harvest of joy.

She wrote when I see the devoted love to the Lord Jesus and some of these dear Nigerian people and their childlike trust in him I've often thought and I say it reverently that in the kingdom of God I won't even feel worthy to sit at their feet. She was able to come back to the US a few times during that period for furlough that is a short break. Still in December 1932 her body was so broken down that she planned to spend a month at a higher altitude in the spring.

Before she got to do that however she started to feel a nagging pain in her stomach. The doctor whom she consulted said that she needed to be operated for appendicitis and though the surgery was successful suddenly on the night of April 8th 1933 Joanna felt herself sinking and called out for help. To her and those around her it was clear that her time on earth was coming to an end at the young age of 39.

As they were all praying around her bedside she acclaimed altogether lovely he is altogether lovely and he is my portion. Then sending a message to the church who loved her so much and to her mother she uttered words of triumph which would never be forgotten by her friends. She said I'm not sorry don't feel sad for me it is all in the will of God I couldn't have chosen anything better than to go like this I'm all unworthy only a sinner saved by grace thrown into the presence of the Lord Jesus who has triumphed over death amen.

What I especially appreciate about brother and sister Harvey who wrote these biographies in they knew their God that we've been listening to is that they don't spend the time or a lot of the time in the in the book telling us about what they did because that is going to be different for all of us we know a few facts about what she did here and there but it's the spirit behind what they did their faith the difficult circumstances they faced and the trials they experienced and how they saw the nature of God and Christ's heart for his church that's the reason why we have chosen to hear these stories because that's true for all of us that's true for us here at RLCF and I pray that having heard these stories and heard this story again we will take to heart that we will as it says in Hebrews 13 verse 7 having observed the outcome of their conduct imitate their faith as you look at Joanna Wienstra's life and how in those short life and and I love that it tells that she was so bad when she was a little girl that they had to kick her out of Sunday school and this lady when God laid a hold of her life as a teenager and around the time of that her losing her father at a young age and through that time when the Lord laid a hold of her life and she gave her life to God as a teenager she gave what she didn't know that she was only gonna live till she was 39 years old but she gave herself completely to the Lord and her life was fruitful and the seeds of her life that were planted in that part of Africa I believe we'll see in eternity how many came how many came to know the Lord through those seeds that God was able to plant through her may the Lord bless us and give us a faith like hers a faith like Jesus Christ himself