LAST LESSONS #97 – RBS SENIORS

 “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” Isaiah 46:4

There is one “good work” that God is allowing me to do in my old age and I am praying that it will grow into a program to help old people. Because I am in a senior living facility, I live with about a hundred old folks. None of us has many more years (or even months!) to live. I am concerned that there are so many here who are not Christians. They will die without hope.

Therefore, I decided to see if some of them would come to a Bible study where God would reveal himself to them. Most of the residents here have a hard time hearing and a hard time seeing, so I asked Rafiki if they would print questions and notes of the Rafiki Bible Study (RBS) using a larger font. Eight women (including me) responded, and I bought them all a large print ESV Bible. They were delighted and we started with RUTH and then took up GENESIS. None had ever been in a group Bible study, and they were not used to doing homework, but God is teaching them. Of course I am learning the most!

1. I am learning to work outside my cocoon. I was raised in a Christian home, went to church my whole life, married a Christian, became a missionary, led BSF and Rafiki. Now I am attempting to lead people some of whom have never opened a Bible. One in our group had no idea that there were two testaments—Old Testament and New Testament—making up the Bible. But she wanted to learn! And she is learning.
2. I am learning to be patient. I want all our RBS Seniors to learn everything fast while they still have life. But God knows everything about everybody, so he knows what they need to learn when. I have learned that some of the members have difficulty understanding and answering the questions, so I tell them that they can answer only the ones that they can and leave the others. No pressure!
3. I am learning to deal with infirmities—the group members and my own. All of us have either walkers or wheelchairs or scooters. Sometimes we have doctors’ appointments on the day we have our meetings. Some can’t see well enough to read their Bibles in our meetings, and we all need to speak up (!) when answering questions. And by the way, we are not going to get better!
4. I am learning how to pray for my friends here in our RBS Seniors group. As we all share our personal prayer requests (no one is allowed to pray for better food!), we learn to love each other more.

Although I have been leading this RBS Seniors group for less than a year, I have learned that it will be successful if God wants it. I have also learned that there are 1,700 independent or assisted living facilities (not counting nursing homes) in Florida alone! What a mission field! Every state has them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every one of these “old folks” facilities had an RBS Seniors group—men and/or women? The leader could be a resident or someone who comes in to lead. This would be a perfect ministry for a church to pick up.

If you want to do a REALLY good work in your community, I would be glad to help you do it. You can email me at RMJ@rafikifoundation.org.

My prayer is that God will bring many seniors to himself so that he can take them home to be with him.

LAST LESSONS #96 – GOOD WORKS

 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10

For years this verse has been one of my favorites. Knowing that I was saved and being sanctified for the good works that God prepared for me to do before I was even born, I wanted to do those works. I wanted to please God, and by God’s grace, I was able to do some works.

Now that I am old (almost 93), a couple of other verses have taken the place of Ephesians 2:10. They are:

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Hebrews 10:24-25

“The Day” is drawing near for me, either by the Lord’s return or his taking me home to be with him. Either way, I know I do not have many days left to do good works.

It seems wise for me to no longer ask God what good works he wants me to do but ask him what he wants me to help others do. I have learned some lessons by doing good works that maybe the Lord wants me to share with others.

But first, what are “good works”? Theologians tell us that Jesus did “good works” and so did the apostles and other Bible characters. For our purposes I want to reduce “good works” as “good” meaning deliberately done out of love for God and others, and “works” as an action that produces something that you did not do before. It is a new thing you do that glorifies God and that can be done only by depending on God to accomplish it.

We don’t want to confuse “being” with “doing.” All of us are to “be” good parents, or good church members, or good citizens. But we are also to “do” something because we love God and others, so we take action and produce a good thing.

Here are a few examples of good works:

• A Christian organization like Samaritans Purse
• A Christian business like Chick-fil-A
• Christian music like the Gettys
• Christian art like Katherine Cook’s(!)
• A Christian classical school
• A new church
• A Christian book
• A Christian pregnancy center
• A Christian sports program
• A local food program for the needy
• A single mothers club
• A Rafiki Bible study for the elderly
• A mission organization like Rafiki.

I’m sure you can think of many good works you could do. Could I “stir you up” to do them? I believe that stirring you up is my good work at this time in my life. I am convinced that everyone who reads these blogs wants to please God. We look at our world today and except for knowing that God is in control, we are dismayed at what we see. Marriages need help, families need help, schools need help, many churches need help, and our whole country needs help. There are so many in our world who need to hear the gospel and be taught the Scriptures. Jesus said, “You always have the poor with you” Matthew 26:11. The needs are everywhere.

Your question is what can you do about the needs of others? My question is what can I do to help you do good works? Suggestions are welcome.

“The Day” is drawing near for us all. We don’t have much time to do good works. 

LAST LESSONS #95 – SUNDAY SCHOOL

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17

One of Rafiki’s distinctives is that we do not send missionaries to Africa to tell the Africans what we will do for them. Instead, we wait until our African friends ask us for what they want and need. In Rafiki’s history we have been asked for medical help, orphan care, schools, teacher training, Bibles, and Bible study materials. We have given all these things in the past 36 years. We stopped medical clinics when the countries themselves were providing enough medical care for their people. At present, orphan care is being phased out because Rafiki countries want to look after their own orphans, and that’s good. It is anticipated that in ten years, Rafiki will no longer have resident orphans and that the buildings where they grew up will be converted into school rooms.

In 2020, African churches asked Rafiki if we could provide Sunday School (SS) lessons for them. Hmmm. Since I no longer worked in the Rafiki Home Office and had time, I agreed to work on Sunday School lessons!

It made sense to me to prepare the lessons for SS teachers using the Rafiki Bible Study lessons (already done!), re-organize them to fit within a 45-minute time-period, for students who would not come to church with prepared lessons. I’ll admit that this was fun! I started with the Book of MATTHEW and have done half a dozen other books so far. The teacher’s lessons included a few questions to ask the students, notes for the teacher to either read or tell, a printed hymn, and a suggested commentary for the teacher’s personal study. After I finished the adult lesson, Rafiki asked level writers to prepare the lessons for three ages of children including activities for the small children. We organized the SS Lessons into packets for teachers of adults and children and included the commentary for the teacher.

When the churches in Africa heard that we were preparing these packets for churches they were delighted. We sent several hundred packets to Uganda and Kenya. When Ghana heard about this, the Methodist Church there asked if we could give them ROMANS. They have 4,000 churches and they want to teach ROMANS in all of them next year! We immediately began working on ROMANS, the RJBF ordered commentaries, and 4,000 churches in Ghana will have them soon! How exciting is that?! Imagine 4,000 pastors preaching and adults and children in many thousands of Sunday school classes all studying the Book of Romans at the same time. Only God could do that!

Rafiki has made these packets of SS LESSONS available for purchase in the USA now, but what makes me sad is that many churches no longer have Sunday School. When COVID hit, many churches closed their SS classes and have not re-opened them. I know of several denominations that produce SS material for their churches, but most do not. I am praying that Rafiki can help these churches with material to encourage them to teach the Bible to their adults and children.

I have learned that many Christians are biblically illiterate. They have no idea what the Bible says. I wonder how they know how to live! The Bible tells us who God is, who we are, what the world is, and how we are to live in it. Where should we learn what the Bible teaches us? In church!

Will you pray with me that not only can Rafiki get SS lessons to African churches, but also to churches in the USA? These lessons are available through Rafiki’s website www.rafikifoundation.org. Look at the menu and select Rafiki Bible Study, then Sunday School.

I know that God will answer this prayer if we pray in Jesus’ name and for his glory. After all, it’s his Word and he’s written it for his people.

LAST LESSONS #94 – RJBF

 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11

Two years after Bob had died and I had suffered from several strokes, I asked the Lord why I was still alive. I had learned enough to know that God keeps us alive until we have finished the “works” he planned for us beforehand (Eph. 2:10). My problem was that I did not know what God wanted me to do as a disabled widow. I don’t hear voices, but it seemed that the Lord asked me what was it that I loved. After all, the Lord gives us the desires of our hearts! (Ps. 37:4). I loved the Bible and I loved Africans so the thought came to me that I should put the two together! The first thing I did was to ask Ligonier Ministries how much they would charge me for 1,000 Reformation Study Bibles, and they gave me a good price. Then I asked them to give me a second 1,000. My pastor R.C. Sproul who headed Ligonier, asked me what in the world I was doing! I told him that he was right – that I wanted to continue working in the world by getting Bibles into the hands of Africans. I knew that Rafiki sent containers to Africa and that I could get the Bibles to Africa, so in 2017 I set up a 501(c)3 organization so that I could ask my friends in the US to help me buy Bibles to send to my friends in Africa. I got a board together and we decided to call the organization the ROSEMARY JENSEN BIBLE FOUNDATION (RJBF).

Of course, all work of RJBF is done by volunteers enabling 100% of donations to be applied to the purchase and shipping of Bibles. Donations are tax-deductible and can be sent with an email address to the Rosemary Jensen Bible Foundation, P. O. Box 488, Eustis, FL 32727.

 

Since Rafiki works with 23 denominations and 30 seminaries, so far, we have sent 50,000 Reformation Study Bibles to seminarians with Ligonier’s promise to give us 50,000 more in the next five years. We have also sent Crossway’s Systematic Theology Study Bible to 20,000 pastors, thousands of Crossway’s Study Bibles to teachers and secondary school graduates, Following Jesus Bibles to school children, and Holy Bible for Kids to Rafiki and church schoolchildren as soon as they were able to read. Praise God, he has seen that close to 100,000 Bibles have been sent to Africans with who knows how many more in the days to come!

 

It’s hard for me to believe that God would allow an old disabled widow to be involved with something this exciting. The Africans appreciate these Bibles and they use them! Pastors preach from their Bibles. Teachers use their Bibles to instruct their students. Schoolchildren take their Bibles home and read them to their parents and siblings. God says that his Word “shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

I know this is true, and I am grateful that I have been able to see a little of the fruit in the lives of the Bible recipients while I am still alive. I am also grateful for:

• The ability to still put some of my money into the RJBF fund each month.
• The friends who are donating to RJBF to get more Bibles to Africans.
• The board members who are giving of their funds, time, and effort to make RJBF successful.
• That when I die, Rafiki will manage the RJBF so that thousands and thousands more Africans, especially children, will receive Bibles to accomplish the purpose for which God wrote it.

What an amazing God we have!

LAST LESSONS #93 – BOB

 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24

December 5, 2014 was the saddest day of my life. It was the day that I lost my husband Bob. Although I had lost both my parents and some of my siblings, losing my husband was very different. After having been married for 60 years, when Bob died, I lost half of me.

But God showed his mercy in the way he took Bob home. It happened this way:

Bob had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for eight years and was declining. Then came the point where I knew that I could no longer care for him and I said to God, “I can’t do this anymore.” Two days later Bob had a massive stroke and died within 15 hours. So instead of my having to take my loving husband to a nursing home, God mercifully took Bob home to be with him. What a great God we have!

And what a great husband God gave me! Bob was strong physically, mentally, spiritually, and morally. He gave me three wonderful daughters and was always a loving and faithful husband.

Bob was a hero too. He enlisted as a young doctor and was sent to Korea during that war and served as a battalion surgeon and a regimental surgeon. He was highly decorated receiving a silver star, a bronze star, and oakleaf cluster. He wrote his memoirs of his 14 months in Korea in a well-documented fascinating book called Bloody Snow. You can get it from Rafiki (www.rafikifoundation.org). Bob was a brave man, and he was definitely my hero.

After Bob came home from Korea we met and were married in 1964. I remember one of the first things Bob said to me was, “Stick with me baby, and we will go places!” Truer words were never spoken.

We went all over the world together, living in four continents. But the most meaningful was living for nine years in Tanzania, East Africa as missionaries. While there, Bob worked with the President of Tanzania, the government Minister of Health, and the Presiding Bishop of the Lutheran Church to plan a 450-bed hospital on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. They named it the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC). That hospital is still there and stands as a beacon of Christian medical service and training. Besides the hospital for inpatients and outpatients, it includes a medical school, residency training, nursing school, and all the ancillary services. It is also noted worldwide for research, especially in dermatology. If Bob had not envisioned KCMC and raised the funds to build it, Tanzania would not have its best Christian medical services today. Furthermore, I am particularly grateful to God and my husband because without Dr. Robert Jensen, Rafiki would not be in Africa today.

There is much more I could write about Bob, but most important is that his name is written in heaven. He is there with his Lord, and I wouldn’t wish him back. He is in a much better place where I will join him someday soon.