The last two chapters of this book (chapter 4 and the epilogue) are full of lessons I am really wanting to share on this blog…but my mind is just not capable of condensing them all (the way I would like to). So, rather than try to say things in my own words, I am going to let Dr. Roseveare speak for herself as I end these blog posts on her book:
(The context for the following quote is when rebel soldiers were threatening to brutally kill her and a young student flung his body in front of her to keep them from harming her). I was no longer praying. I was beyond praying. I held on to the name of Jesus. Someone back home must have been praying earnestly for me….Then, quietly, God met with me. He had reminded me that twenty years before I had asked for the privilege of being a missionary. ‘This is it. Don’t you want it?’ He seemed to say to me. The fantastic privilege of being identified with out Saviour dawned afresh in my heart….Together we learned why God has given us His name as ‘I AM’ (Exod. 3:14). His grace always proved itself sufficient in the moment of need, but never before the necessary time, and rarely afterwards.(105-106)
To love the Lord my God with all my strength might, paradoxically, mean to love Him wholly in my weakness. By giving Him what I thought of as my strength, realizing my actual weakness, He could then demonstrate His real strength. ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9) took on new meaning. (113)
I long to be kept by God in an attitude of willing surrender so that He con go on to perfect that which concerns me; so that He can go on stripping and whittling and sandpapering until He is content with the new arrow He is creating. Crucifixion, the death-to-self life, must surely be seen by us all as costly, but the abundant life that He wishes to bestow on each can only be seen as unutterable privilege. (117)
Today it would appear that we Christian prefer to talk of a measure of commitment, the length to which we are willing to become involved, rather than the depths of God’s immeasurable love in which we long to become immersed. There is abroad an atmosphere of careful calculation, “thus far and no further,” maintaining certain reasonable limits. The carefree abandonment of love that marks the sacrifices of Paul, of second-century Christians, of nineteenth-century missionaries, seems sadly lacking. Today we weigh up what we can afford to give Him: in those days, they knew that they could not afford to give Him less than all! (125)
I will end with these words from our sister; a refrain which we have heard time and time again throughout this book. May God help us take these words to heart:
As He loved us, so we should love Him, that He may love through us all whom He would reach. Christ so loved us that He gave Himself to be the propitiation for our sins, a willing substitute, the one perfect, sufficient sacrifice. He left the glory of heaven to come to earth to pay the penalty of our sin, taking our place on the cross of Calvary, and dying for us, the just for the unjust, that He might redeem us and bring us to God. In a response of overwhelming gratitude and love, let us count no cost too great to give to the Lord the service of our lives: through every moment of every day, rendering to Him those ‘spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.’ (137-138)
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