Helen Roseveare was an English missionary to Congo/Zaire in the 20th century. She remained in Africa for over 20 years.
“…We were put off at a house in the jungle–nineteen defenseless women and children surrounded by some seventy-five men, soldiers and others, all filled with hatred and evil intentions toward us…And in my heart was an amazing peace, a realization that I was being highly privileged to be identified with [Christ] in a new way, in the way of Calvary.”
“He (God) understood not only my desperate misery but also my awakened desires and mixed up horror of emotional trauma. I knew that Philippians 4:19, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus,” was true on all levels, not just on a hyper-spiritual shelf where I had tried to relegate it….He was actually offering me the inestimable privilege of sharing in some little way in the fellowship of His sufferings."
Upon retirement from the mission field, Helen wrote this..
“I suddenly knew with every fibre [sic] of my being that these twenty years had been worth while, very, very worth while, utterly worth while, with no room left for regrets or recrimination. I have looked back and tried “to count the cost,” but I find it all swallowed up in privilege. The cost suddenly seems very small and transient in the greatness and permanence of the privilege.
Now that I have given up everything else—I have found it to be the only way really to know Christ and to experience the mighty power that brought him back to life again, and to find out what it means to suffer and to die with him.”
| Isaiah 11:1, Isaiah 49:2 | |
| Description: Helen Roseveare spoke this message in 1975, sharing candidly of personal tests and trials she underwent while serving as a medical missionary in the Congo (now Zaire), including pride, marital longings, prolonged illnesses, and beatings, rape and imprisonment by rebel forces. The cost of declaring the glory of the Lord Jesus costs all our heart, soul and body. "The branch," Roseveare says, "had to lose its leaves and flowers to become an arrow;" such is the privilege of sharing in the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. | |
Living Stones - Sacrifice, Faith, Holiness, Fellowship
Living Sacrifice: Willing to be Whittled as an arrow
Living Faith: Willing to be stirred as a pot of paint
Living Holiness: Willing to be the Legs of a Galloping Horse
Living Fellowship: Willing to be the third side of a triangle
Digging Ditches: The Latest Chapter Of An Inspirational Life
We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive. We had no incubator. We had no electricity to run an incubator, and no special feeding facilities. Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts.
A student-midwife went for the box we had for such babies and for the cotton wool that the baby would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle. She came back shortly, in distress, to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst. Rubber perishes easily in tropical climates. “…and it is our last hot water bottle!” she exclaimed. As in the West, it is no good crying over spilled milk; so, in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying over a burst water bottle. They do not grow on trees, and there are no drugstores down forest pathways. All right,” I said, “Put the baby as near the fire as you safely can; sleep between the baby and the door to keep it free from drafts. Your job is to keep the baby warm.”
The following noon, as I did most days, I went to have prayers with many of the orphanage children who chose to gather with me. I gave the youngsters various suggestions of things to pray about and told them about the tiny baby. I explained our problem about keeping the baby warm enough, mentioning the hot water bottle. The baby could so easily die if it got chilled. I also told them about the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died. During the prayer time, one ten-year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with the usual blunt consciousness of our African children. “Please, God,” she prayed, “send us a water bottle. It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, the baby’ll be dead; so, please send it this afternoon.” While I gasped inwardly at the audacity of the prayer, she added by way of corollary, " …And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl so she’ll know You really love her?" As often with children’s prayers, I was put on the spot. Could I honestly say, “Amen?” I just did not believe that God could do this. Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything: The Bible says so, but there are limits, aren’t there? The only way God could answer this particular prayer would be by sending a parcel from the homeland. I had been in Africa for almost four years at that time, and I had never, ever received a parcel from home. Anyway, if anyone did send a parcel, who would put in a hot water bottle? I lived on the equator!
Halfway through the afternoon, while I was teaching in the nurses’ training school, a message was sent that there was a car at my front door. By the time that I reached home, the car had gone, but there, on the veranda, was a large twenty-two pound parcel! I felt tears pricking my eyes. I could not open the parcel alone; so, I sent for the orphanage children. Together we pulled off the string, carefully undoing each knot. We folded the paper, taking care not to tear it unduly. Excitement was mounting. Some thirty or forty pairs of eyes were focused on the large cardboard box. From the top, I lifted out brightly colored, knitted jerseys. Eyes sparkled as I gave them out. Then, there were the knitted bandages for the leprosy patients, and the children began to look a little bored. Next, came a box of mixed raisins and sultanas - - that would make a nice batch of buns for the weekend. As I put my hand in again, I felt the…could it really be? I grasped it, and pulled it out. Yes, “A brand-new rubber, hot water bottle!” I cried. I had not asked God to send it; I had not truly believed that He could. Ruth was in the front row of the children. She rushed forward, crying out, “If God has sent the bottle, He must have sent the dolly, too!” Rummaging down to the bottom of the box, she pulled out the small, beautifully dressed dolly. Her eyes shone: She had never doubted! Looking up at me, she asked, “Can I go over with you, Mummy, and give this dolly to that little girl, so she’ll know that Jesus really loves her?”
That parcel had been on the way for five whole months, packed up by my former Sunday School class, whose leader had heard and obeyed God’s prompting to send a hot water bottle, even to the equator. One of the girls had put in a dolly for an African child – five months earlier in answer to the believing prayer of a ten-year-old to bring it “That afternoon!” “And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” Isaiah 65:24
Helen Roseveare a doctor missionary from England to Zaire, Africa, told this as it had happened to her in Africa. She shared it in her testimony on a Wednesday night at Thomas Road Baptist Church.
I know that the evening that I came to know the Lord Jesus as my Savior…seven o’clock in the evening, and I was at a youth house party over the Christmas holidays from college. And I went downstairs to evening meeting and somebody said, “What’s happened to you?” And I guess I was so overwhelmed at the wonder that God loved me so much He sent Jesus to die for me. And I was given a Bible. It was the first Bible I ever owned. And the man who had been doing the Bible studies at the house party, Dr. Graham Scroggie, wrote in the flyleaf of my Bible “Philippians 3:10”.
For some of you today I’ve been signing books, and you’ll find “Philippians 3:10” is written in them because that was my verse which was given to me. And he said to me…he quoted the verse first, “… that I may know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings being made conformable unto His death.” He said, “Tonight you’ve started that verse ‘that I may know Christ’.” He said, “My prayer for you in the years that lie ahead is that you’ll know more and more of the power of His resurrection.” And then he said very quietly, he was a very straight and upright man, very quietly looking straight at me, he said, “Maybe one day God will give you the privilege to know something of the fellowship of His sufferings.”
I’d been a Christian half an hour and I was told that it was a privilege to suffer for Jesus! And that word ‘privilege’ has stayed with me.
I’d been a Christian half an hour and I was told that it was a privilege to suffer for Jesus! And that word ‘privilege’ has stayed with me. I think possibly more than any other one word in my Christian life ever since is ‘privilege.’ It’s a privilege that He saved me. It’s a privilege that’s He’s allowed me to have any part in talking to others about Him. Everything has been privilege. And the fact that I was told the same night that I came to know Jesus as my Savior that it’s a privilege to have fellowship in His sufferings.
And I just fear that in today’s climate we…that’s any of us who have the privilege of speaking to others, encouraging others to accept Jesus as their Savior, we don’t underline straight away that the Christian life will involve suffering! That in our country we don’t really know what persecution is…we may get jeered at, cold-shouldered, laughed at; but we expect in muslim countries, we expect new Christians to accept suffering, and we think it’s very marvelous of them. We don’t think about it for ourselves. But we should all of us know that if we love the Lord Jesus, He himself said, “If you’re going to follow Me, take up your cross and follow Me.” And where was He going? He was going to Calvary, and we have to follow Him there. The ‘death to the self’ life, the death to my ambition, my rights to be who or what or where I wish—the giving of that over to Jesus and letting Him really live His life in and through us, in any circumstance, will involve suffering.
The ‘death to the self’ life, the death to my ambition, my rights to be who or what or where I wish—the giving of that over to Jesus and letting Him really live His life in and through us, in any circumstance, will involve suffering.
I believe the Savior suffers today for the millions of unreached, untouched people who have never yet even heard His name. And He invites us, and it’s such a privilege, such a privilege, to be invited to share with Him in His sufferings. I’ve got no panacea to offer you. I’ve got no way of saying you won’t suffer. You will suffer! You should suffer if you’re really a Christian because you’re going to be indwelt by Jesus and He suffers.
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"But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy." (1 Peter 4:13)
"And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together." (Romans 8:17)