LAST LESSONS #160 — STORIES — 10

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

I promised you Becky’s daughter Jane’s story so here it is:

My daughter Jane laughed when I told her you (Rosemary) asked if she’d like a job! And then said she doesn’t know what she would blog about, though she is willing to write something for your blog. (I have yet to hear from Jane with a blog, but I imagine she’s too busy to write!)

Her school (HeritageAcademyKalispell.org) is using Rafiki Bible Study (RBS) Romans materials this year for 4th and up in class, and for families at home. Their high school students are also studying Romans and the teachers are using RBS materials for reference/discussion.

The Lord used her to begin this school about 20 years ago, though she didn’t know it’s what she was launching at the time. She’s a biology major / chemistry minor from Covenant College. Upon returning home to Montana, married and with a baby, local homeschool parents sought her out to tutor their students in math and science.

From those unassuming beginnings, she is now Head of School with about 270 students and 30 teachers. She’s also married and mom to 9 children herself, 2 of whom are grown (18 & 21), so she’s currently “only” homeschooling 7 of my grandchildren, ages 8 (adopted from China in 2017), 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18 (also adopted from China in 2017).~Becky

P.S. from Rosemary: I am amazed at what Jane is doing as a result of her family’s emphasis on Bible study. Jane’s school is a hybrid homeschool/school that is classical and using some of the classical material that Rafiki produces. You may not start a school, but if you homeschool your children (or know someone who does) please contact Rafiki to see all the courses available to you, especially the Bible study.

P.P.S. I’m not suggesting that you adopt 9 children!!

LAST LESSONS #159 — STORIES — 9

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

I was raised in a mildly religious home (rather chaotic due to long-term parental overuse of alcohol) but knew little of the truths of the Christian faith, and nothing of the Bible. Somehow, I believed the Bible had magical properties causing answers to prayer if one laid on hands while praying. Having no Bible in our home, it was an easy thing to believe without testing to see if it might be true.

Coming of age in the late 1960s/early 1970s I willfully chose to deny the existence of God. I got married at age 23 and moved from Minneapolis, MN to Whitefish, MT where I lived as a ski-bum atheist for several years until our first child was born. The second baby came within a year and a half, and, to put it mildly, atheism was no longer working for me.

Marital problems coupled with being a young mom, among other life-challenges (thank You, Lord!!) brought me face to face with a compassionate & godly Christian pastor whom the Lord used over a period of several months in 1983 to lead me to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I was instantly hungry for the Word of God, drinking it in as from a firehose.

In 1984 I began to study in Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) with my then 2- and 3-1/2-year-old daughters. Oh, how we grew! And how the Lord began to bring life to my marriage! He gave me the privilege of various leadership positions in BSF over the next 35 years. My husband Charlie also received the instruction & leadership training provided there for several years before his unexpected death in 2013.

The Lord has seen me through so very much!! Surely, He IS The Good Shepherd, having proved again & again that, with Him as my Shepherd, “I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). In 2018 He brought into my life the widowed husband of a friend. Though neither of us were looking to marry again, our Lord had other plans. Curt & I were married in April of that year and find ourselves thoroughly enjoying our Lord’s “other plans” for us.

Having heard Rosemary explain her earliest vision for Rafiki in the 1980s, I’ve been privileged to follow our Lord’s working in & through this ministry all these years. In 2019 I began leading Rafiki Bible Studies, first in our home, and in the last 3 years in the home of a disabled friend. To my surprise, my pastor recently requested that I begin leading a Rafiki Bible Study (RBS) for the women in our church.

So, apparently the Lord isn’t finished with me!~Becky

P.S. from Rosemary: Think of all the people Becky’s RBS studies are affecting—in homes and in her church. You could do the same by checking with Rafiki about how to start an RBS group. It will be amazing how much you and they learn and how much fun you will have as you meet together! But besides that, Becky has a daughter, and her story is beyond amazing! I will blog it to you next week. Keep watch!

LAST LESSONS #158 — STORIES — 8

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

Despite the autumn sun, the air was cool in the park where 6-year-olds played soccer. “So, what do you do?” the mom sitting next to me asked, as we waited while little players lined up. “Well, I teach the Bible,” I responded. “Why?” she asked. “Because it is true,” was my answer, “you should try it!” She ended the conversation, but those words, “it is true!” did summarize God’s loving and powerful action, through His Word, in my life.

Having been taught the Bible from my earliest years, I have always believed the Bible was true. I understood the gospel: that God sent His Son Jesus to die for His people’s sins, and with faith in Him we are forgiven, given His Holy Spirit to live within us, and provided a home with Him forever.

Yet I secretly feared. I wondered if I really had faith enough to be taken with Jesus when He returned, wondering if I was transformed enough. And then as a young mother, in God’s personal grace to me, I began, with the help of structured Bible study and teaching, to understand that God’s true Word, and the gospel message in it, was eternal and also day by day. With the help of structured Bible study and teaching, I began to hear Jesus’ words, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29 meant Jesus Himself saved me; He is enough, though I am certainly not. And I could rest and be assured in Him.

He was there for me every day, home with my kids, cleaning the house, figuring out finances, wondering about significance. As I read and studied the Bible, I realized that Jesus, through the Word and the Spirit would change and lead me.

Opportunity to teach God’s Word was one of the supreme privileges of my life. God’s Word for His people is like an expanding universe—as we learn and believe, its radiance reveals more and more. The Bible is:

God’s revelation of Himself—His glorious character and attributes, shown against the backdrop of the story of us, humanity, carrying His image, ruined by sin, yet provided with hope of redemption and renewal.

God’s revelation of His Son—His sacrifice and His supremacy foreshadowed through stories, prophecies and ceremonies in the Old Testament, chronicled and interpreted, and His triumph assured in the New Testament.

God’s revelation of renewal in His Spirit—given to those redeemed through Jesus, who guides us through His Spirit and Word. “The unfolding of your word gives light,” (Psalm 119:130) David wrote. It’s true. When sickness and loss come, God’s Word promises, “I will never forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:8). When discouragement brings temptation to abandon His work and His direction, we find, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).

If I could see that woman on the soccer field again, I would press her more to read, to try, to find the truth, with God’s help. God’s Word is truth and continuing new life in the truth.~N. W.

P.S. from Rosemary: She is right. God’s Word is truth. The Bible is true, and the best way you and your friends can learn what is true is by either being a part of (or starting!) a Rafiki Bible Study (RBS). I have the joy of recommending a commentary for every Book of the Bible to help RBS group members get the most out of their study. Most of the commentaries can be purchased at a discount from Rafiki. Check it out! www.rafikifoundation.org

LAST LESSONS #157 — STORIES — 7

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

I had no inkling that beautiful fall morning almost fifty years ago how completely my life would change, be reshaped by that encounter with the Word of God. I was captivated by the study and the teaching in that Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) class and came to love the Word with a passion beyond anything I’d known before.

Because of my own unstable and unpredictable upbringing, I was determined that my children would have something very different. The Bible became my roadmap through that unfamiliar territory. Those busy years of PTA and T-ball and gymnastics, AWANA and VBS, track and drill team flew by. We were active in our church and community, I became a discussion leader and then a teaching leader, the kids did well in school…we had our share of struggles and sorrows, broken bones and broken hearts, but it seemed that I had, indeed, found the right path.

And then the freight train hit. My freight train consisted of a son in drug rehab, a daughter with an eating disorder, the discovery that both my children had been molested by a trusted family member, and then we were moved from Houston to Dallas in a very bad job situation for my husband, leaving behind my support system and a challenging and fulfilling ministry. And on top of everything else, selling our house in Houston in a buyers’ market and buying in a sellers’ market in Dallas. Needless to say, there was a LOT of strain on my marriage. Pretty much everything in my very carefully constructed, precisely right, always in control life was coming apart at the seams.

I probably could have managed any two or three of those freight cars—I am, after all, a fairly strong, capable woman—but the whole train derailing sent me into a pit of despair. I was stunned and gasping for breath, every spiritual bone broken, feeling abandoned and discarded by God. I holed up in that house in Dallas and probably didn’t stick my nose out the door five times in two and a half years except to go to Houston to cry on every shoulder I could find. I was mad at God, I was mad at my husband, I was mad at my friends who finally got fed up with my crying and my despair, but even more, I was mad at myself because I hadn’t managed my life any better than that. I was mad because He is God and I’m not. He was in charge, and I didn’t get to tell Him what to do. Lots of anger, lots of despair, lots of hopelessness.

Every day I went through my litany of woes...just in case You have forgotten, Lord, here’s my list and here’s what You added yesterday. And the list just kept getting longer and longer. We were in a “disaster of the day” cycle, and I thought it would never end.

Jeremiah became my best friend. He seemed to be the only one who understood—Lamentations 3:1-20 became my theme song. “I’ve seen the afflictions that come from the rod of the Lord’s anger…He has led me into deep darkness…He has broken my bones…surrounded me with anguish and disaster…He has walled me in, I cannot escape…though I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayers…my own people laugh at me, sing their mocking songs…everything I’d hoped for from the Lord is lost…I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.”

It took a long time lying there by the tracks to get to verses 21-32. “Yet I still dare to hope when I remember we’re not completely destroyed because of His mercy, because His compassions never fail, they are new every morning, great is Your faithfulness…the Lord does not abandon us forever… though He brings grief, He also shows compassion out of the greatness of His unfailing love.”

The dark and broken places of hurt and confusion, doubt and anger, disaster and loss can become places of intimate struggle with our Almighty God who deigns to wrestle with us so we might discover the deeper reality He reveals in His Word.

Annie Dillard has said, “You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.” There is beauty and truth which can only be found in the dark. But even in the dark, you have to look up to see them.

The deepest reality, the final and ultimate truth beyond the unspeakable evil the enemy unleashes to crush my faith and defame my God, beyond my own depravity and brokenness, there is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God. He was “a Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, despised and rejected, wounded, bruised, oppressed and afflicted.” He’s been there—He’s here now, with us in whatever darkness or brokenness we suffer.

The happy ending is not yet. But it’s real and it’s coming. You can read about it in the Prophets and Revelation.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!~Kathy

P.S. from Rosemary: I met Kathy when she came into my BSF class in the 1970s. I thank God for how Christian relationships can last for so many years despite trials and tribulations. Once we are in the family of God nothing can separate us, and we will spend eternity together.