At last, God comes first.

No one would have blamed her for staying home.
No one would have said she was wrong.
No one would have disagreed with her logic.

The plan now laid before her was to spend a year traveling unreached northern portions of China at the beginning of the 20th century.  It meant transient life, poor sanitation and living conditions, far from anywhere, threat of rampant smallpox, diphtheria, and scarlet fever epidemics constantly.  She had buried four children already.  The family had almost died many times during the Boxer Rebellion.  Rosalind Goforth agonized as her husband Jonathan asked her and their three youngest children to join him now on this new venture.

In my innermost soul I knew the call had come from God, but I would not pay the price. My one plea in refusing to enter that life was the risk to the children.



Again and again my husband urged that "the safest place" for myself and the children "was the path of duty"; that I could not keep them in our comfortable home at Changte, but "God could keep them anywhere." Still I refused. 
Just before reaching our station he begged me to reconsider my decision. When I gave a final refusal, his only answer was, "I fear for the children."



I have honestly never been in this woman's shoes.  There have been dark times, hard times, painful times of learning to trust God's leading when I could not see the path before me.  But I have only felt the faintest inkling of difficulty compared to many that have gone before me.  Is it possible to learn a lesson just from someone else's example?


The very day after reaching home our dear Wallace was taken ill. For weeks we fought for his life; at last the crisis passed and he began to recover. Then my husband started off alone on his first trip! He had been gone only a day or two when our precious Constance, a year old, was taken down with the same disease that Wallace had. From the first there seemed little or no hope. The doctors, a nurse, and all the little mission circle joined in the fight for her life. Her father was sent for, but arrived just as she was losing consciousness. 
A few hours later, when we were kneeling round her bedside waiting for the end, my eyes seemed suddenly opened to what I had been doing -- I had dared to fight against Almighty God.

In the moments that followed God revealed Himself to me in such love and majesty and glory that I gave myself to Him with unspeakable joy. Then I knew that I had been making an awful mistake, and that I could indeed safely trust my children to Him wherever He might lead. 

I saw at last that God must come first.

As I write this, eighteen years have passed since we started on that first trip, and none of our children has died. Never had we as little sickness as during that life. 

Oh me of little faith!  To know God as dearly as this woman did would mean I must trust Him as fully. I get upset when we have to disrupt nap time!  How much I have to learn!  A long, typical Monday is enough to ruffle my feathers.  But to have such a relationship with my Creator as she did, I have barely dared to indulge for fear of the difficulty.  Yet I know it is worth it all.  Incomparably.

Trust the hands that guide you...

As I recall those years of touring life with our children, words fail me to tell of all the Lord's goodness to them and me. Though there were many hard, hard places, these were but opportunities for special grace and help. 
Many times, when discouraged almost to the point of never going out again with the children, there would come evidence that the Lord was using our family life, lived among the people, to win them to Christ. Then I would take new courage, and go again. It is so true that:

We may trust Him fully

All for us to do;

Those who trust Him wholly

Find Him wholly true.     

(All italicized words quoted from How I Know God Answers Prayer by Rosalind Goforth.  Chapter 6.)