Holy Stubbornness

Holy Stubbornness

Let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Galatians 6:9

WHEN SINGLE WOMEN BEGAN APPLYING for missionary service in the 1800s, many men who led mission organizations were reluctant to accept them. Over time, they did, but single women were often resisted at mission stations on the field. The attributes that qualified them for service—persistence, assertiveness, outspokenness, and an adventurous and independent spirit—were apparently the same attributes that rubbed fellow missionaries the wrong way. Maude Cary was often called prideful in her early years in Morocco.^a Lottie Moon repeatedly felt the need to insist on equality in the work assigned to her in China.^b Isobel Kuhn was at first considered “likely to be a troublemaker.”^c Women like these felt it necessary to pray persistently and faithfully on two fronts: that God would use them to reach people with the gospel and that they would be accepted by fellow believers.

Those prayers were eventually answered on both fronts. These single women missionaries became fruitful in their ministries, sometimes after years of hard work in difficult fields, and were eventually accepted as significant, even indispensable colleagues. At certain times—during the world wars, for example—they were the only missionaries “manning” the stations and keeping the work alive. What had begun as a slow and controversial practice in missionary recruitment developed into a mainstay of missionary service. God backed them up with his presence and power, even in those early years when he may have seemed far away.

If we want not only to pray with faith but also to dedicate our lives as offerings of faith, we will need a holy stubbornness to continue the work God has given us and to believe in spite of contrary and adverse situations. God never promises easy roads for those who follow him, and sometimes the difficulties come within our own camp. But he does promise to be the Lord of the harvest, and in time, our faithfulness reaps its rewards. We bring to him our weakness; he gives us his strength. And one way or another, his work in us proves fruitful.

It is indeed a wonderful story. . . . We began in weakness, we stand in power.