Rosalind Goforth

Not a few Christians find it very difficult to forgive, especially when they’ve been deeply wronged and hurt. Rosalind Goforth was an outstanding missionary to China with her husband Jonathan for forty-seven years (1888-1934). In her autobiography Climbing, Memories of a Missionary’s Wife she wrote honestly of her own struggle and eventual victory in this difficult matter of forgiving a marked offense.

Rosalind did not reveal the specific offense that was committed against her husband and her by a fellow missionary at the station where they were ministering. “Suffice it to say,” she later wrote, “that those who knew the facts agree that humanly speaking one can scarcely imagine a case where unforgiveness was more justified. Yet my dear husband, who had equal reason with myself for feeling as I did, quietly and calmly laid it all before the Lord and left it there. He begged me to do the same, but I could not, or rather would not, forgive.”

For more than a year the person who had caused the offense continued to live at their mission station, during which time Rosalind would neither speak to nor acknowledge him. After he left the station, another three years passed in which Rosalind held the matter “more or less in abeyance.”

Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth

Then the Goforths and some other Christians traveled by train to a large religious fair in a distant town where they carried out an intensive annual evangelistic campaign. Rosalind had been put in charge of the women’s outreach work that year, and she had a great yearning in her soul that the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s power would be experienced in her life and ministry endeavors.

While they traveled along she bowed her head and cried to God to fill her with His Spirit. As she did, she sensed the Lord speaking to her in her heart: “Write to _____ [the one toward whom she felt hatred and unforgiveness], and ask forgiveness for the way you have treated him.” Instantly her whole soul cried out, “Never, never can I forgive him!” Twice more she prayed the same request and sensed the same clear inner prompting from the Lord. At last she jumped to her feet and said to herself of the divine blessing which she desired, “I’ll give it all up, for I’ll never, never forgive!”

As a result: “Then followed the saddest part of my life. For several months I taught and prayed to keep up appearances. But all the while my heart was becoming harder, colder and more hopeless.” One day Rosalind was reading Pilgrim’s Progress to her children. She came to the passage where Christian came to the man in the iron cage who said, “I have grieved the Spirit, and He is gone; I have provoked God to anger, and He has left me.” As she read those words, a terrible conviction came upon her that they were true of her. For the next two days she was in the depths of despair.

Pilgrim Progress’ Man in the Iron Cage

Jonathan was away from home at the time, and there seemed to be no one to whom she could turn for spiritual help. Then a young missionary, whose wife had died under exceptionally sad circumstances, came to their station and stopped by to greet Rosalind. They sat on the front steps of the Goforths’ home while he related with tears the details of his wife’s tragic death. 

Apparently the emotion of the moment combined with Rosalind’s already distraught spirit proved too much for her to bear, and she began to weep uncontrollably. When at last she was able to do so, she shared the entire story about her struggle to forgive the man who had wronged them. She ended by saying, “I have grieved the Holy Spirit of God, and He has left me!”

  “But Mrs. Goforth,” the young missionary asked, “are you willing to write the letter?” She replied: “I now know what it would be to be without God and without hope. And if I could only have another chance, there is nothing I would not do.” Again her fellow missionary asked, “Are you willing to write that letter?” When she indicated she was, he said, “Then go at once and write it.”

With “a glorious ray of hope dawning” in her, she hastened into the house and returned a few minutes later with the letter. It contained a few lines of sincere, humble apology for her actions toward the one whom she had been unwilling to forgive. Of the immediate and long-term consequences of her finally choosing to forgive she afterward related:

“O the joy that came, and thankfulness that it was indeed not too late! From that time, I have never dared not to forgive. There have been times when for hours, or even days, the battle was on again. But always the remembrance of this experience has enabled me to conquer and forgive.”

An important clarification: I do not understand the Bible to teach that the Holy Spirit actually leaves true Christians when they persist in sin. But Scripture certainly teaches that when believers refuse to forsake sin they grieve God’s Spirit and forfeit His empowerment and many other precious spiritual blessings.

A vital application: If we’re aware of unforgiveness or some other unforsaken sin in our lives presently, let’s hasten to get that cleared up with the Lord and any other appropriate individuals. Then we’ll once again fully honor and please the Lord and experience the restoration of spiritual joy and blessings in our lives.

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Rosalind Goforth wrote several inspiring books, including her autobiography Climbing, Memories of a Missionary’s Wife. I believe that volume is no longer in print, but can easily be found online through various used book sources. It is well worth the effort to track down and read the work, in which Rosalind honestly and humbly relates her own beneficial (and oftentimes remarkable) experiences of growing in her relationship with and service of the Lord. Reading that book may very well lead you to read several of her other works, as I have.

Copyright 2019 by Vance E. Christie

Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth
Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth

One of the greatest necessities and challenges for Christians is to genuinely love those whom we serve. Such Christlike love makes our service much more effective, and enables us to faithfully serve even when ministering to difficult people or under trying circumstances. Rosalind Goforth, who served with her husband Jonathan as a missionary in China for forty-seven years, learned that love lesson from a fellow missionary and sought to live it out through her many years of faithful service.

About nine months after arriving in China in 1888, the Goforths moved to an inland mission station in Shantung Province. One of the missionaries serving there was a Mrs. S., who was widely known for her success in ministering to Chinese women. One day Rosalind went to visit her shortly after she returned from teaching in the neighboring villages. “Mrs. S., I wish you would tell me some of your experiences that might help me in reaching the women.” 

“I think something I went through today might help you,” the veteran missionary responded. She then related the following incident:

“This morning I went to a distant village where the Christian women of that section were to meet in a certain house for study. But it began to rain, and no outside women came. So I started to read with the Christian woman at the home. We were sitting close together on the kang [a brick platform bed]. I had my arm around her as we read. Suddenly she began to cry, saying, ‘O Mrs. S., don’t let us read any more! My heart is so full I must talk to you.’

Rosalind Goforth with her children
Rosalind Goforth with her children

“So I drew her closer while she told me her troubles. The woman went on to say: ‘My sister died some months ago, and since then I have had to care for her children as well as my own. Besides all the regular work of meals, sewing and so on, I have to weave cloth late into the night. And for weeks I have had no time for lice hunting. I and the whole family are just crawling with them. Even the bed we are sitting on is just alive!’ ”

“O Mrs. S.,” Rosalind gasped,” didn’t you jump off the kang?” She replied: “Mrs. Goforth, listen! I felt like it. But just as I was about to do so the words flashed through my mind, ‘The love of Christ constraineth us’ [2 Corinthians 5:14]. And instead I just drew the woman closer to me.”

When Rosalind heard this, tears flowed freely as she cried in her heart: “O God, give me such love for my service in China!” She would later write: “Never was the lesson forgotten, and in years to come it was often needed as like experiences were gone through.”

In 1890, after moving to the town of Chuwang in Honan Province, Rosalind needed to put that lesson into practice in what proved to be one of the greatest tests in all her missionary experiences of properly loving people. The people of Chuwang were initially quite hostile toward the Goforths as foreigners.

Rosalind had given strict instructions to the amah (nanny) of their infant son Paul never to carry the child outside the gateway of their home’s “fairly large courtyard with trees.” But one day as Jonathan and Rosalind were leaving to have lunch with a neighbor missionary, she turned to wave goodbye to the baby in his high chair. His face had a strange expression on it, and he was wriggling back and forth violently. Rosalind ran to her son, fearing something was hurting him. When she lifted his shirt, she discovered his entire back was covered with eighty big lice! (They counted them later.) She immediately stripped the child and put him in a bath.

Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth’s Gravestone

Some hours later, Rosalind conducted “a council of war” to determine the cause of what had happened. It was learned that, against her orders, the amah had taken the child into a Chinese home nearby. A Chinese teacher then spoke up to reveal further: “We must tell you the truth. It is not an uncommon thing for a woman who is jealous of another’s child to gather all the vermin possible and put it on the little one!”

Rosalind afterward related both her initial reaction and her eventual victorious response to this situation: “Oh, the horror of it! For days I went about simply loathing the thought of getting in close contact with the women again. But as with Mrs. S., divine love conquered, and from that time I felt a love for the women such as I had never realized before. A miracle? Yes, truly, the miracle of divine grace!”

# # #

Rosalind Goforth wrote several inspiring books, including her autobiography Climbing, Memories of a Missionary’s Wife. I believe that volume is no longer in print, but can easily be found online through various used book sources. It is well worth the effort to track down and read the work, in which Rosalind honestly and humbly relates her own beneficial (and oftentimes remarkable) experiences of growing in her relationship with and service of the Lord. Reading that book may very well lead you to read several of her other works, as I have. 

Copyright 2019 by Vance E. Christie