Helen Roseveare Quotes

Christ loved me enough to die for me while I was yet His enemy. If God had waited for me to learn to love Him before He died, I would never have been saved. I knew that with my head, but when I met someone who behaved in such a completely Christlike way, I was amazed. - Helen Roseveare

If I truly believe in Him, I'll trust Him to desire for me that which is for my highest good, and to have planned for its fulfillment.

To be a living sacrifice will involve all my time. God wants me to live every minute for Him in accordance with His will and purpose, sixty minutes of every hour, twenty-four hours of every day, being available to Him. No time can be considered as my own, or as "off-duty" or "free." I cannot barter with God about how much time I can give to serve Him. Whatever I am doing, be it a routine salaried job, or housework at home, be it holiday time and free, or after-work Christian youth activities, all should be undertaken for Him, to reveal His indwelling presence to those around me. The example of my life must be as telling as my preaching if He is to be honored.

When would I learn the secret of happy, contented teamwork? Why did I always want to be the last link? If I would love the Lord with all my mind, I had to give Him all that I thought I knew or could do, and be willing for Him to place me anywhere within the team to do any job He chose for me. Only then would I exprience true peace of mind.

We are called to reflect the Lord's beauty through our lives as much as through our words, and God will use this in His own perfect time.

The desire for my "rights" in order to preserve my individuality (rather than allowing God the full right to take over my life and to perfect my personality) has to be stripped away. I have to learn to persevere in the race He has set before me, drawing strength only from Him, and not relying at all on what I may consider any natural abilities I may have. I have to let God take from me even that strength which I thought I had in order that He may more fully reveal His own strength: in order that He may continue in me the work of conforming me to the image of His Son.

To love the Lord my God with all my soul will involve a spiritual cost. I'll have to give Him my heart, and let Him love through it whom and how He wills, even if this seems at times to break my heart. To love the Lord my God with all my soul will involve a volitional and emotional cost. I'll have to give Him my will, my rights to decide and choose, and all my relationships, for Him to guide and control, even when I cannot understand His reasoning. To love the Lord my God with all my mind will involve an intellectual cost. I must give Him my mind, my intelligence, my reasoning powers, and trust Him to work through them, even when He may appear to act in contradiction to common sense. To love the Lord my God with all my strength will involve a physical cost. I must give Him my body to indwell, and through which to speak, whether He chooses health or sickness, by strength or weakness, and trust Him utterly with the outcome.

It would seem that God had merely asked me to give Him my mind, my training, the ability that He has given me; to serve Him unquestioningly; and to leave with Him the consequences....How wonderful God is, and how foolish we are to argue with Him and not to trust Him wholly in every situation as we seek to serve Him!

If you think you have come to the mission field because you are a little better than others, or as the cream of your church, or because of your medical degree, or for the service you can render the African church, or even for the souls you may see saved, you will fail. Remember, the Lord has only one purpose ultimately for each one of us, to make us more like Jesus. He is interested in your relationship with Himself. Let Him take you and mould you as He will; all the rest will take its rightful place.

Can you thank Me for trusting you with this (difficult) experience, even if you never know the reason why?

I had never deserved to be forgiven in the first place when I aas converted. I could do nothing to merit God's favour, His grace, His love. If all I had ever known was unmerited and undeserved grace, how could I then forfeit that which I never earned?... Was I too proud, in some strange, inverted way to humble myself to accept an unmerited forgiveness? I know that it was all of grace, yet my inner being wanted the right to do something to merit it. I was trying to work out my own salvation, to earn God's forgiveness, to prove the sincerity of my repentance...At last I knew that it was true. It was not based on my feeling or on my emotions. It was not dependent on my faith or my obedience. In no way could I merit or deserve it. He loved me. He knew me through and through, better than I knew myself, and yet still, He loved me. Christ died on Calvary to tell me that. Christ lives in Heaven, an unceasing intercessor on my behalf to make that love real to me in my experience.

Could I see that God wanted to transform my life from a somewhat ugly, useless branch to an arrow, a tool usable in His hands, for the furtherance of His purposes?....To be thus transformed, was I willing - am I till willing - for the whittling, sandpapering, stripping, processes necessary in my Christian life? The ruthless pulling off of leaves and flowers might include doing without a television set or washing machine, remaining single in order to see a job done, re-evaluating the worthiness of the ambition to be a "good" doctor (according to my terms an values). The snapping of thorns might include drastic dealing with hidden jealousies and unknown prides, giving up prized rights in leadership and administration. The final stripping of the bark might include lessons to be learned regarding death to self - self-defence,self-pity, self-justification, self-vinidication, self-sufficiency, all the mechanisms of preventing the hurt of too deep involvment. Am I prepared for the pain, which may at times seem like sacrifice, in order to be made a tool in His service? My willingness will be a measure of the sincerity of my desire to express my heartfelt gratitude to Him for his so-great salvation. Can I see such minor "sacrifices" in light of the great sacrifice of Calvary, where Christ gave all for me?

Together we learned why God has given us His name as "I AM" (Exodus 3:14). His grace always proved itself sufficient in the moment of need, but never before the necessary time, and rarely afterwards. As I anticipated suffering in my imagination and thought of what these cruel soldiers would do next, I quivered with fear. I broke out in a cold sweat of horror. As I heard them drive into our village, day or night, my mouth would go dry: my heart would miss a beat. Fear gripped me in an awful vice. But when the moment came for action, He gave me a quiet, cool exterior that He used to give others courage too: He filled me with a peace and an assurance about what to say or do that amazed me and often defeated the immediate tactics of the enemy.

I had never deserved to be forgiven in the first place when I Was converted. I could do nothing to merit God's favour, His grace, His love. If all I had ever known was unmerited and undeserved grace, how could I then forfeit that which I never earned?... Was I too proud, in some strange, inverted way to humble myself to accept an unmerited forgiveness? I know that it was all of grace, yet my inner being wanted to right to do something to merit it. I was trying to work out my own salvation, to earn God's forgiveness, to prove the sincerity of my repentance...At last I knew that it was true. It was not based on my feeling or on my emotions. It was no dependent on my faith or my obedience. In no way could I merit or deserve it. He loved me. He knew me through and through, better than I knew myself, and yet still, He loved me. Christ died on Calvary to tell me that. Christ lives in Heaven, an unceasing intercessor on my behalf to make that love real to me in my experience.

loving mercy, spoke peace into my heart. I almost felt his loving arms around me. ‘Twenty years ago, you asked me for the privilege of being a missionary. This is it. Don’t you want it?’ No, I didn’t want it! And yet, I desperately wanted God’s comfort. ‘Can you thank me for trusting you with this, even if I never tell you why?

Obedience tends to be a cold, legal word of calculated action: sacrifice throbs with life and passion. Certainly the one will inevitably involve the other. Sacrifice can only be worked out by obedience, but obedience will need sacrifice to give it fire and momentum.

Go ahead and make me more like jesus, whatever the cost. But please, when I feel like I can't stand anymore and cry out "Stop!" Will you ignore my quotation mark stock quotation mark and remember that today I said "Go ahead"?