The Privilege of Suffering for Christ

Dannah Gresh: When Helen Roseveare found herself in the midst of terrible circumstances, she knew the Lord was asking her to do something that might sound unusual.

Helen Roseveare: “Can you thank Me for trusting you with this experience, even if I never tell you why?”

Dannah: We’re about to hear more of Helen’s story.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for November 29, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh with our host Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A Place of Quiet Rest.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: As believers, we’re not immune from the challenges and the suffering in this world. In fact, Jesus said just the opposite. He said we would face trials of many different kinds. But here’s the thing: through those trials, Jesus promises to be with us, to give us strength, and to give us tailor-made grace. You see, knowing Christ, belonging to Him, changes our perspective on everything in life—from the greatest joys to the most difficult trials.

Since I was a little girl, I have loved reading Christian biographies. And this is one of the biggest takeaways for me as I’ve read the stories of men and women who have walked through difficult things, through trials, through challenges, who’ve served the Lord in hard places and yet have found the grace to persevere.

One of the most inspirational people I’ve read about over those years is a woman named Dr. Helen Roseveare. She served for twenty years as a missionary doctor in the Congo. I’ve been deeply impacted by a number of books written about this woman as well as by her. She experienced a lot of trauma and suffering in the course of following and serving Jesus, and yet here’s what she had to say as she reflected on some of those hardships:

“I’ve looked back and tried to count the cost, but I find it all swallowed up in the privilege. The cost suddenly seems very small and transient in the greatness and permanence of privilege.”

Wow! When she went to count the cost of following Jesus, she said it all added up to a great privilege.

Well, Dr. Roseveare went home to be with Jesus in 2016, but today we’re going to listen to an interview that she gave in 2009 with television host Moira Brown. I know her story will be a blessing to you.

Dannah: Yes, it will. And, you know, Helen was a doctor, a missionary in Congo, and much more. Now, I do want to mention that some of what she said in that interview might be hard for sensitive little ones to hear. She did understate her descriptions of the violence she experienced, but I just wanted to let parents of little ones know it’s coming in case younger ears are close by.

Now, let’s get to know Helen a little bit. Here she is giving some background of her story and how she came to know Christ.

Helen: Being brought up in an ordinary middle-class, as we would say in England, family, I finished secular school. I date myself, it was during the World War II, not I (laughter), and I began to feel that God . . . I wasn’t even sure there was a God.

God seemed pretty . . . well, I didn’t see much point. He couldn’t control the world. Like so many other families, we had family men who’d been in the war, served, and never came back. And with all the carnage and brutality and cruelty of the war, I found that it blew my mind. I couldn’t see this in relationship to God—not the God I wanted to believe in.

So when I went up to university to study medicine, I decided in a way to drop God out of the story. I didn’t quite do that. I hadn’t the courage. I felt, in case I’m wrong, I better keep a foot in each world. So I went to service once every Sunday morning early. But apart from that, I didn’t reckon on God in the story.

But I was alone at University, and without God in one’s life, I found it quite frightening. There were no limits set any longer. I wanted to be brought up with clear limits, which made sense.

Then a Christian union girl befriended me. I watched them, and their lives were just so different from other people. They were always, consistently, kind, thoughtful, loving. They gave up time to help us find our way around the university. I began to go to their meetings. I was amazed! They talked about God as though they knew Him. I went to their prayer meetings. That blew my mind! They prayed to a God who they knew. And little by little this hunger grew in my heart.

And come the first Christmas holiday from university, they organized to get me to a Christian conference. We heard clear Bible teaching from a great Bible teacher of the last century, Dr. Graham Scroggie. He took us through Genesis, and he took us through Romans.

And through this I was forced to, I had to make a decision. I rushed upstairs. I was ashamed. I threw myself in bed in tears, and I said, “God, if there is a God, please make Yourself known to me now.”

I looked up through my tears, and written on the wall of the dormitory where I was staying there was a text. It was war time, and the roof had leaked, and the last word of the text had been wiped out. It just said, “Be still and know that I am.” The word God had been wiped out.

I’d just prayed, “God, if there is a God, make Yourself known to me now,” and He did! I was kind of overwhelmed. “God had actually spoken to me!”

And then, all the teaching that we had that week of our lovely Lord Jesus who had died on the cross for my sin, it all made sense! I think I was overwhelmed by the thought of the love of God, that God made me, so loved me. He died for me that I might be forgiven.

My friends say I shouldn’t say it, I’d be misunderstood, but I say I fell in love with Jesus that night.

Moira Brown: Oh, I think He’s delighted that you fell in love with Him.

Helen: Well, He was just so wonderful to me. And that was my missionary call. I never had another missionary call. I just knew from that minute I wanted to give my life to sharing Jesus with other people, telling them there’s nothing worth doing in life except serving and loving the Lord Jesus.

Dannah: In 1953, Dr. Roseveare journeyed to Congo. Brick by brick, she helped build a hospital which was much needed for the people there. No other medical care was available within 150 miles. Helen also founded a training school for nurses. Her medical work was vital to the people. And most importantly, it was a means to share the gospel.

A few years later, Congo gained independence from France, which eventually led to civil war.

Helen: Chaos broke. I mean, the European pale skins (we were called) left. Sadly, a lot of missionaries left because over the radios we heard that the African army had gone on the rampage, and they’d gone into a mission station and raped one of the missionaries. Fear took hold of the community. Most of the pale skin people fled and got out of the country.

We had four years of really frightening anarchy. Shops emptied. There was no food. There was nothing. There were no medicines. It was very difficult. You worked with what you got left to work with until that ran out, too.

And then in 1964, September, as far as I’m concerned, with no warning, we suddenly found ourselves at war. Saturday afternoon, early August, a truck load of these wicked soldiers drove into my village with a wounded man. They said it was a wounded civilian. The word they used in Swahili was a word you would only use if you were at war, which we didn’t know we were at war.

Moira: You were so cut off from world news?

Helen: Totally cut off from everything. That was the beginning of five months of really horrific . . . Initially, they didn’t touch us. They told us to keep out of things, but what we watched between dark skin and dark skin was terrible.

And then . . .

Moira: Ultimately, twenty-seven missionaries were murdered?

Helen: Twenty-seven of our missionaries were murdered. Over 200 pale skin nuns were murdered and countless priests. The murder figures were . . .

At the same time, a quarter of a million Africans lost their lives. We tended to harbor on what we pale skins got, but really, our African brothers . . . and any of our Africans who had loved us and cared for us and looked after us . . . When we were eventually rescued, they turned on them. It was very horrific.

And halfway through, about ten weeks, they actually came to my house one night. I don’t know what time. By then they had taken our watches and trucks and everything else that was takeable. It was a horrific night. They came into the house, and they said they were looking for . . . whatever. They smashed everything. They ransacked the house. They didn’t find what they were looking for. I didn’t happen to possess a radio or anything like this.

And then they turned on me. It was a moment . . . I was out on the veranda of the house at one moment, and this little—I don’t know what—sergeant/major of the rebel soldiers stood there with a gun pointed, pressed against my forehead. I don’t know if it was loaded or not, but I presumed it was. 

And he said, “Say that LaMumbo” (that was their patron saint), “Say that LaMumbo is the savior of the world.”

I wasn’t praying. I wasn’t thinking. I just knew that wasn’t true. I knew the only one Savior of the world, and that was Jesus. So I just said, “No! Never! Jesus is the only Savior of the world.” I think in my heart I was actually praying he would shoot. It’d be quick. Clean. Finished.

But out on the courtyard was one of my junior students from the college. He was being held by these men. He broke loose, and he threw himself between me and this soldier. He said, “You don’t touch her over my dead body!” And they turned on him, and they beat him up so savagely. I didn’t know for two years later he was not killed actually. He survived. But it was terrible, terrible.

Then they drove me down the corridor of my home. And somehow in that moment, I think I was saying, “God! Where are You? Whatever is going on?”

And there was suddenly a tremendous—what can I say—consciousness. God was there.

Moira: There was a moment when you thought you’d been abandoned.

Helen: Well, I don’t think I ever lost my faith in God, but I just felt He wasn’t looking after me.

Moira: Exactly.

Helen: But I suddenly knew He was, and He was in charge, and that these rebel soldiers were very small compared to the mightiness of God. As they drove me down the corridor, I think He spoke to me. I didn’t hear words, but after looking back, I had to ask the Lord, “What did You actually say? Put it into words for me.” I think what He said was, “Can You thank Me?”

And my heart was saying, “No. This has gone too far.” I knew what lay ahead. I could see the whole thing, and it was horrible.

And He said, “Can you thank Me for trusting you?”

And I thought, This is unbelievable. I know I trust Him, but I never thought of Him trusting me. It was revolutionary to think that He trusted me! And in this second, I could see what He was saying. “I thought I could trust you. I thought you wouldn’t bite Me.”

And God was saying, “Can you thank Me for trusting you with this experience even if I never tell you why?”

And even in the midst of the darkness, it was, “Dear Lord, I don’t know what You’re saying. I don’t know why You’re saying it. I don’t know who will ever be blessed by this. But if this is part of Your plan, yes. Thank You for trusting me.”

And immediately, I was flooded with a sense of enormous peace—the peace of God. It was wonderful. I just knew. It was like He said, “All I want of you is the loan of your body.” And it was Jesus in me. They weren’t fighting me. They were fighting Jesus. All I had to do was say, “Yes, Jesus, I’m Yours. You’re in me. Do just as You want.”

It didn’t stop the pain, the humiliation, the cruelty. It didn’t take that away. It was all there. But suddenly it was with Him and for Him. And it just revolutionized everything. It was wonderful.

Later years when we came home on furlough (we were rescued by mercenary soldiers, and we were sent home), I talked all over the United Kingdom. Every now and again, a woman would come up to me at the end of a woman’s meeting and would say, “But why did God allow . . . ” And then they’d just pour. . . “Why would a God of love allow such suffering?”

Really, they were saying to me, “Why would God allow you to suffer? You were a missionary. You were out there serving Him.”

I thought, We never asked that question, so I didn’t have an answer, because we never asked the question.” I just thought, Lord, You’re just so wonderful, and You’re so marvelous.” It’s such a privilege that He is our Master, our Friend, our Savior, our Lord, our King. He has the right to do anything. I’d given my life to Him. So, why not?

Moira: Well, that’s one of your teachings—a living sacrifice. Romans 12:1, “Submit your body as a living sacrifice.”

Helen: Yes.

Moira: God was calling in a way you would never have anticipated. And that night prior to your teeth being kicked out by a rebel boot, prior to being brutally raped twice, were you aware that He wasn’t abandoning you, that He was there, and He was going to do something through this darkest, most evil experience that you couldn’t at that moment see?

Helen: Yes. It really was as though He wrote one word, and I could almost read it in the sky: privilege. Like in the night I was converted, the leader of the conference where I was gave me a Bible. I’d never owned a Bible before. He wrote in my Bible Philippians 3:10, “That I may know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the privilege of the fellowship of His sufferings.” I’d been a Christian about a half hour, and he was saying to me it could be a privilege to suffer for Jesus.

And right from that day, the word privilege has really underlined everything in my Christian life. It was a privilege. He asked me for something. He said, “I want the loan of your body.” And I’m amazed! The Almighty God, the Great Creator, heavenly Father, and it was something I had to respond to, and it was privilege.

I think it’s this word privilege which has made such a difference, just because it’s a privilege to be given the opportunity to serve Him or to . . .

Moira: . . . suffer.

Helen: Suffering is so tiny. But getting perspective, for me it was five months. I’ve lived eighty-five years. What’s five months? Now, I’ve read books of other people–Pastor Wurmbrand it was nine years, I think, in prison by himself, and terrible tortures. I’ve heard of Pastor (I can’t remember his name now) in China in terrible imprisonment and the wicked, wicked things they did to him. Mine was very, very small.

Moira: How long was the healing—emotionally, spiritually—out of this terrible ordeal?

Helen: When I got home, it was as though one woke up from a nightmare, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to die. I wanted to go to be with Jesus. It really took three months. I got home on New Year’s Day. In late March or early April, I don’t remember now, I went with my mother for Easter to our cottage home in the U.K. It was there at the Palm Sunday service that the Lord eventually got through to me to stop being a fool. 

You see, quite a lot of our people were murdered. Other people said, “There’s a lovely American boy, and he was murdered. People said, “His mother prayed for him. Your mother prayed for you. Why did God answer her prayers, and not his prayers?”

I thought, That’s ridiculous! We thought he got the best part; He’d gone to be with Jesus! I was still down here suffering.

Dannah: So, Helen is in the middle of these terrible circumstances. Just imagine what she might have been feeling, what she might have been thinking.

Moira Brown asked this of Helen:

Moira: Did you not feel betrayed in your trust and in your hopes and dreams as these events unfolded?

Helen: No. None of us ever thought like that. I suppose there was a moment of consciously being alone, as far as being a pale skin was concerned that night. Yes, I suppose there was a momentary thought of saying, “Why, God?” But immediately He spoke into the situation, and He said, “Don’t ask why.”

I think I grew up with the phrase, “Is it worth it?” Everything in life had to be worth it. If Dad said to me as a child, “You don’t touch the kitchen knife.” And I’d look at the kitchen knife, and I’d think, Why not? And then I’d think, Uh uh, Dad said, “Don’t!” I knew my father, so it wasn’t worth trying it out.

So everything was, “Is it worth it? Is it worth it?” I think when the awful moments came in the rebellion, and the sense of, “Is it really worth this?” And you almost felt, “No. This has gone too far. I can’t accept it. It seemed the price was too high to pay.” And then God seemed to say, “Change the question.”

He had to keep on saying this to me . . . Quite recently He said it again. It’s not, “Is it worth it?” It’s, “Am I worthy?” Is He worthy? It almost sounds like saying, “Is it worth it? Is He worthy?” And it just turns the whole thing around. Instead of looking at the price I think I have to pay, it’s seeing the privilege He wants to give.

And always the answer is, “Yes! He is worthy!”

The fact that Almighty God is willing to apparently use us in any small ways. And He’s been so good to me. I mean, that was 1964. In those years He’s shown so often, in little ways, in bigger ways, people I’ve been able to encourage and help who have been raped. But why do we women we feel it’s the last word of horror, and we don’t want to talk about it. We don’t think about it. We say, “Don’t speak about it in public or on the television screen.” And yet, why? It’s external. You’re sinned against. It’s not your sin. It can’t touch your spirit. It’s only your body. And suddenly, it’s as though, “That’s true. That’s true.”

But it can’t get into my mind or soul. I'm me. I’ve been able to help so many girls to look at things like that, and to pray together with them saying (and I’ll use His phrase), “Can you thank Me for trusting you?”

Dannah: Those words that God gave Helen in her time of adversity ended up helping others find purpose in their suffering.

“Can you thank Me for trusting you with this experience even if I never tell you why?”

Helen: I shared this with this lady named Valerie. Little by little she came through. We knelt together. We were in a big tent, and she thanked God for trusting her even if He never told her why.

I met her three or four years later. I was back in Australia for meetings, and she came up to me on a Sunday night in a Baptist church. She said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

And I said, “I do, Val. I’ve prayed for you every day since I last met you.”

She shared with her husband what I’d said to her. A few months later, a child in a house down the same road they lived in ran out of the house and was killed by a passing car. The parents were not Christians. In fact, they were of another faith. She said, “We went and comforted the parents because they saw how we had taken the death of our son. They allowed us to comfort them. And over these four years, we’ve had the joy of leading first one and then the other to put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

And she said, “Now we know why God took our son home.”

And these sort of ways I can look back and say, “Now I know.”

Nancy: God is certainly not obligated to show us the why behind our suffering. And we may never fully know the why this side of eternity. But as we’ve heard from Dr. Roseveare today, even through the most horrific circumstances, we can be assured that God is at work, accomplishing His purposes in our lives and in the lives of others.

As you’ve been listening to Dr. Roseveare today, perhaps a difficult or painful situation in your life has come to mind. And perhaps God is asking if you’re willing to thank Him for trusting you with this experience even if He never tells you why.

Listen, that is the supreme exercise of faith, but I can promise you that in time, in God’s time, and in His way, that faith will be rewarded.

Well, we’d like to thank Moira Brown and our friends at Crossroads Christian Communications for the use of this interview. It came from the Canadian television program,100 Huntley Street, and I know it’s been a blessing and encouragement and a challenge to your own faith.

We’ve seen how Dr. Roseveare’s obedience and her faithfulness to Christ led to a much larger impact than she ever could have imagined. The Lord uses ordinary, unremarkable people to accomplish His purposes and to make a remarkable difference in our world.

You may feel incredibly unremarkable, but I want to remind you that God uses even small steps of obedience and faith. One way you can help women impact their world for Christ is with your gift to Revive Our Hearts.

We just finished our Giving Tuesday campaign to give women in Brazil, Cambodia, and beyond, biblical truth in their languages. I’m so grateful for what the Lord provided through you to help us produce and distribute teaching podcasts in those languages during 2024.

To find out if we reached our Giving Tuesday goal, just head over to ReviveOurHearts.com where we’ll have the total posted by the end of today. Every gift means so much, and I want to thank you for partnering with us in this special project.

If you missed the Giving Tuesday campaign, or even if you gave and you’d like to support Revive Our Hearts in other areas of ministry, I’m excited to share that we have a special matching challenge happening now through the end of December.

What’s a matching challenge? Well, it means that your gift will be doubled. It will have twice the impact, thanks to some generous donors who’ve set up this challenge.

When you donate, you’re joining us in the mission of helping women around the world experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

Dannah: That is right, Nancy. Every gift makes a difference. As our way to thank you for your special gift, we’d love to send you a copy of Unremarkable, Volume 2. The subtitle: Ten More Ordinary Women Who Impacted Their World for Christ.

Now, it was only available digitally before, but now the actual paper copy is here, and it is beautiful. Dr. Helen Roseveare is one of the women featured in this resource, along with many more inspiring women whose faithful obedience made a great impact for Christ.

Visit ReviveOurHearts.com to make your gift today, or call us at 1-800-569-5959, and be sure to ask for your copy of Unremarkable, Volume 2.

Now, I want to ask you: Is your life fruitful? Tomorrow Nancy’s going to be talking about the importance of living a fruitful life and what that actually looks like. I hope you’ll be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth encouraging you to find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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