Surviving The Anointing Order Printed Copy

Author: David Ravenhill
Size: 196KB
|

Download Read Online

Continue with

Google Twitter

Email Register

Others like surviving the anointing Features >>

Following The Faith Of Abraham

The Assignment Vol 2: The Anointing And The Adversity

Slaying The Giants In Your Life

Right Thinking In A World Gone Wrong

The Character Of God’s Workman

About the Book

"Surviving The Anointing" by David Ravenhill explores the challenges and responsibilities that come with being anointed by God for ministry. The book offers practical advice and spiritual insights on how to navigate the pitfalls and pressures that often accompany the anointing, helping readers to remain faithful and effective in their calling.

Helen Roseveare

“If Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him.” That was her mission’s motto. In 1953, Helen sailed for the Congo with hopes of serve Christ as a medical missionary with WEC (Worldwide Evangelization Crusade). For so many years she’d dreamed of being a missionary. As a young girl, she’d hear stories of her aunt and uncle’s experiences on the mission field, and now she was eager to have her own stories to tell. In 1925, Helen Roseveare was born in England. Because education was a high priority for her father, Helen was sent to a prestigious all girls school when she was 12. After that, she went to Cambridge. It was during her time in college that she became a Christian, truly understanding the gospel for the first time. She left her Anglo-Catholic background and became an evangelical. Her focus was to finish her medical degree and prepare herself for the mission field. After she became a doctor, Helen sailed to minister in the Congo. She was highly intelligent and efficient, but her role as a woman created struggles with her fellow missionaries and nationals. In that time period, single missionaries were seen as second-class citizens of the mission station. In the Congo, the medical needs were overwhelming. She couldn’t just stand by and watch all the suffering around her. She was determined to make a difference. She dreamed of establishing a training center where nurses would be taught the Bible and basic medicine and then sent back to their villages to handle routine cases, teach preventive medicine, and serve as lay evangelists. She didn’t have approval from her colleagues, who believed that medical training for nationals was not a valid use of time, evangelism and discipleship were more important. Despite the conflict with them, after only two years after arriving in the Congo, she had build a combination hospital/ training center in Ibambi, and her first four students had passed their government medical exams. Her colleagues weren’t as excited about her progress as she was. They felt that she was wasting time, so they decided that she would better serve the Congo by relocating in Nebobongo, living in an old leprosy camp that had become overgrown by the jungle. Helen argued that she must stay and continue the nursing training in Ibambi, but they insisted that she move. It was a major setback, but she went. Starting from scratch again, she built another hospital there and continued training African nurses. Still, she was strong-willed and seemed to be a threat to many of her male colleagues. In 1957, they decided to relocate John Harris, a young British doctor, and his wife to Nebobongo to make him Helen’s superior. Dr. Harris even took charge of leading the Bible class that she’d taught. She was devastated. She’d been her own boss for too long, and although she tried to let go of control, she just couldn’t. Everything that had been hers was now his. This resulted in tension between them, of course. Her independence was her greatest strength, but also a definite weakness. She did not know how to submit to imperfect leadership. In 1958, after over a year of struggling with who was in control in Nebobongo, Helen left for England for a furlough. She was disillusioned with missionary work and felt like she might not ever go back to the Congo. Back in England, she really struggled with why she had all these issues between herself and the male leaders in the Congo. She began to convince herself that her problem was her singleness. What she needed was a doctor-husband to work with her and be on her side during the power struggles! She didn’t think that was too much to ask. So, she asked God for a husband, and told Him that she wouldn’t go back as a missionary until she was married. She met a young doctor and decided he would be the one. (She wasn’t very patient in waiting on the Lord’s timing.) She bought new clothes, permed her hair, and resigned from the mission, all to try and win his love. He did care for her, but not enough to marry her. Helen was heartbroken, mostly because she’d wasted so much time and money trying to force her plan into reality - without God. Still single, Helen returned to the mission and left for Congo in 1960. It was a tense time for that country. They had been seeking independence for a long time, so a huge civil war was on the verge of beginning. Many missionaries left because the risk was so high. Helen had no plans of going home. She believed that God had truly called her back to Congo and that He would protect her if she stayed. She was joined by a few other single women, who made it difficult for the men, they didn’t want to look like sissies. She was given charge of the medical base in Nebobongo because John Harris and his wife left on furlough. She had so many opportunities to minister in the midst of the turmoil. She was sure that God had her right where He wanted her to be. She continued to learn to see God in the details of her life, to trust him more fully. She had been coming closer to total trust in God all of her life, between bouts of depression, sometimes feeling that she was not really a Christian because she was capable of spells of anger and bitterness and other sins. “I was unable to reach the standard I myself had set, let alone God’s. Try as I would, I met only frustration in this longing to achieve, to be worthy.” She came to recognize that hatred of sin is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Rebels were gaining strength, and there were reports of missionaries being attacked. Helen endured a burglary and an attempted poisoning, but always in her mind the situation was improving. She felt that she had to stay, because there was so much need and so many people depending on her. On August 15, the rebels took control of Nebobongo, and Helen was in captivity for the next 5 months. On the night of October 29, Helen was overpowered by rebel soldiers in her little bungalow. She tried to escape, but they found her and dragged her to her feet, struck her over the head and shoulders, flung her to the ground, kicked her, struck her over and over again. She was pushed back into her house and raped brutally without mercy. Helen suffered more sexual brutality before her release. God used this in her life to minister to other single women missionaries who feared that they’d lost their purity due to a rape and thus their salvation. Helen knew that her relationship with God had not been damaged. She had not failed God in any way because of the rapes. Finally, on December 31, 1964 she was rescued. Helen had a sense of joy and relief, but also a sense of deep sorrow as she heard of many of her friends’ martyrdom. Helen returned to Africa for the third time in March of 1966. She served for 7 more years, but it was full of turmoil and disappointment. The Congo had changed since the war. There was a new spirit of independence and nationalism. They no longer respected the doctor who’d sacrificed so much for them. Helen left Africa in 1973 with a broken spirit. Her 20 years of service in Africa ended in defeat and discouragement. When she got home, she went through a very, very lonely period in her life. She turned to God. He was all she had. Instead of bitterness there was a new spirit of humility and a new appreciation for what Jesus had done for her on the cross. God was molding her for her next ministry. She became an internationally acclaimed spokes-woman for Christian missions. Her candid honesty was refreshing in a profession known as one of super sainthood. Helen mobilized people by showing them that God used imperfect people with real struggles to be his ambassadors to the unreached world. By Rebecca HIckman SOURCES Roseveare, Helen: Give Me This Mountain (1966) Roseveare, Helen: He Gave Us a Valley (1976) Tucker, Ruth A.: From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya

the only certain hope on earth

“It is the hope that kills you,” as many English football (soccer) fans say. Is it not better to have low expectations instead of hoping your team will do well, only to see those hopes dashed in sometimes cruel ways? The world has an idea of hope that sees it as an optimistic expectation that something good may happen in this life or, for the religious, the life to come. People cannot help but hope; it is part of our DNA as humans. We hope for good health, a good marriage, good weather, or an enjoyable holiday. Many even hope for a better life after the life they have lived on earth, which explains why so many claim that loved ones (including animals) are “smiling down” upon them after their death. Much of the hope that is found in the world lacks promise and certainty, which is like building a house on sand. Christian hope is very different from worldly hope. Christian hope is a Spirit-given virtue enabling us to joyfully expect what God has promised through Jesus Christ. It is, therefore, thoroughly Trinitarian. Height of Our Hope Christian hope looks to God because he is “the God of hope” (Romans 15:13). Because of the resurrection of Christ, Peter says that our “faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:21). The degree to which we find God desirable and excellent will be the same to which hope plays a role in our lives. Our view of God will affect the hope we possess. A small god begets a small hope; but knowing God and Christ (John 17:3), which is eternal life, is ground for possessing a hope that bursts forth in our souls on a daily basis. The psalmist describes the blessed person as the one “whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God” (Psalm 146:5). Consider the words of Thomas Aquinas on this: Wherefore the good which we ought to hope for from God properly and chiefly is the infinite good, which is proportionate to the power of our divine helper, since it belongs to an infinite power to lead anyone to an infinite good. Such a good is eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of God Himself. For we should hope from Him for nothing less than Himself, since His goodness, whereby He imparts good things to His creature, is no less than His essence . Therefore the proper and principal object of hope is eternal happiness. ( Summa Theologica , II-II.17.2) In short, Aquinas is saying that our joy is connected to our hope, which is connected to our Savior, which is connected to our God. Christian hope exists only when we hope in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:13). The height of our hope is God himself. Certain as God’s Promises Certain conditions characterize biblical hope: it must be good, it must be in the future, it involves some degree of difficulty (for example, patient suffering), and it must be founded on God’s promises. Those who persevere, by faith, shall attain what we hope for: the sight of our Savior (Titus 2:13). “Christian hope is a Spirit-given virtue enabling us to joyfully expect what God has promised through Jesus Christ.” This hope of the blessed vision of Christ is based not only upon the fact that we know he will return, but also on the knowledge that God dwells in us. This explains Paul’s language in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Hope arises from not only objective promises, but also an internal “pull” toward God and Christ by his Spirit. Thus, Christian hope is not about probable hope or about mere conjecture concerning things future, but about great certainty. Faith, Hope, and Love Faith in God through Christ by the Spirit gives rise to Christian hope. Faith and hope bear an intimate relation to one another (Romans 4:18–21; 5:2; 15:13; Galatians 5:5; Ephesians 1:18–19; Colossians 1:23; 1 Timothy 4:10; Hebrews 11:1; 1 Peter 1:21). Faith is the foundation of hope, so that hope without faith is no hope at all. We believe God in order to hope in what we believe. But faith also returns to hope to give it courage to persevere. If faith apprehends God’s promises, hope expects what he promises. In times of trouble, despair, and suffering, faith and hope feed on God and his promises. The difference between faith and hope is not easy to discern. Simply put, faith believes, but hope waits patiently. (Yet there is an aspect whereby faith also requires patience.) God is the object of hope, as it specifically focuses on his goodness to us in Christ. Faith not only looks to God but also trembles at his threatenings (when appropriate). Hope remains free of such fear. Faith and love can relate to a present or future object, but hope looks to the future alone. And of course, faith and hope also bear an intimate relation to love. If hope relates to faith in terms of our expectations, hope relates to love in terms of our desire. Love requires desire, so the more we desire the good, the more we will love it. Equally, hope requires desire. The more we desire what is promised, the more we hope for it. Since faith focuses on Christ, hope will always be present where there is true faith. And since faith focuses on Christ, love will always accompany faith and hope because God and Christ are the object of faith and hope — how can we not love the one we believe has saved us and promised so much for the future? Thus, faith, hope, and love give expression to our Christian life (1 Corinthians 13:13; Colossians 1:4). Hope That Purifies The life of hope yields many benefits to the Christian, such as the expectation of eternal life (Titus 1:2; 3:7), salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8), heaven (Colossians 1:5), the resurrection (Acts 23:6), the gospel (Colossians 1:23), God’s calling (Ephesians 1:18; 4:4), and our inheritance (Ephesians 1:18). But there is also a “duty” bound up with hope, namely, purification of our souls: “Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). This command follows one of the greatest promises of Christian hope: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Those who have the hope of being made like Christ in body and soul must also have the present desire to be pure . While in sanctification the accent is often on what God does, here in 1 John 3:3 the accent is on what we do. Christians, if they embrace a hope of seeing Christ face to face, are to purify themselves. In other words, hope has a moral effect. The pursuit of purity arises out of our possession of hope. Hope gives birth to sanctification; and as we are sanctified, we hope even more because we get closer to God. Besides John, Peter also makes this point. He speaks of the future promise of the new heavens and new earth to his readers (2 Peter 3:13), and then reasons, “Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by [God] without spot or blemish, and at peace” (2 Peter 3:14). “Our joy is connected to our hope, which is connected to our Savior, which is connected to our God.” Likewise, Paul writes, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). The promises Paul speaks of include our adoption as sons and daughters, wherein God makes his dwelling and walks among us (2 Corinthians 6:16, 18). These promises are, of course, realized in this life, but they also await a type of consummation that we can all look forward to (see Romans 8:23). Christian hope has present realities, one of which includes our sanctification. In this matter, our faith clings ever so tightly to our hope, as we seek to be holy as God is holy. Hope Unlike the World’s In the church today, we have underemphasized the future motivation (our Christian hope) for how to live the sanctified life. As with the Lord’s Supper, we do not only look back to Christ’s death but also look now to the risen Christ and forward to the future blessings that await us. This is the purification of the truly hopeful. Our hope is unlike the world’s. The world’s hope is often vague, uncertain, a wish thrust up at the stars. But Christian hope is solid, certain, future, and cleansing. It lasts as long as the eternal God lives, and stands as tall as he stands. He is our hope, for apart from him, no such thing exists (Ephesians 2:13).