IT’S ALL ABOUT JESUS;
A WONDERFUL SAVIOR
FOR BEAUTIFUL WOMEN

Luke 24: 1-12 ESV

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn,
they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.
And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
but when they went in they did not find
the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were perplexed about this, behold,
two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.
And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground,
the men said to them,
”Why do you seek the living among the dead?
He is not here, but has risen.
Remember how he told, while he was in Galilee,
that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men
and be delivered into the hands of sinful men
and be crucified and on the third day rise.”
And they remembered his words,
and returning from the tomb they told all these these things
to the eleven and to all the rest.
Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and
Mary the mother of James and the other women with them
who told these things to the apostles,
but these words seemed to them an idle tale,
and they did not believe them.
But Peter rose and ran to the tomb;
stooping and and looking in,
he saw the cloths by themselves;
and he went home marveling at what had happened.

Beautiful Women

Beautiful women glow from their hearts
wholly surrendered to their Lord Jesus
just like these brave women
up early and seeking
some loving service they could perform
for Him whose life had compelled them to
follow and learn from His
miraculous teaching:
they had pondered His glorious presence,
wondered at His powerful healings,
admired His incredible
and His holy nature;
and still there are noble women
seeking to serve Him  who is their Lord and
their Redeemer as He
makes them so much like Him—
loving and giving and serving
and healing,  using compassion ever
blessing, forgiving;
these are the most beautiful of
women as they build up His own Kingdom
reaching out into this world,
giving as they’ve been given.

The Love Of Jesus
Makes Every Woman
Beautiful

From even before the beginnings of the Church after the life, death, burial, resurrection, appearances, and ascension of our Lord Jesus, women have played a foundational and  crucial role in serving Jesus and building His Church. Just look at the life and work of any local church and you will find strong and faithful women serving, strengthening and undergirding the life and witness of God’s people. (Of course, you will also find strong and faithful men also serving, but this week I have stories to tell about heroically faithful women.) In the churches which have blessed me throughout my lifetime, I have found, without exception that women often take on a hefty share of the opportunities available for those who would serve the Lord.

As Becky and I worked for many years in Africa among Nigerian and Nigerien Christians, we could not help but be impressed by the women of those African churches who  mentored and prepared us as they contributed mightily to the life and service of our various faith families. In both Nigeria and Niger strong women’s groups provided stirring, joyful and worshipful music accompanied by enthusiastic dancing—making every Sunday service or special gathering an exhilarating  expression of love and worship for our Lord Jesus. In our smaller church, Goudel Baptist, in Niger, three older women set the tone in glorifying the Lord through their always welcoming presence, and in their mighty, fervent prayers. The women’s group led the way in mission outreach, traveling together outside Niamey, the capital city, to minister and witness to various unreached people groups. The women’s choir also joined other groups in presenting public concerts as a means to share the Gospel in a heavily non-Christian nation. In the life of this wonderful church, the women served as a foundation and as a source of joy, energy and zeal for sharing the Gospel of Jesus.

There is always
joy in Jesus.

In Nigeria women in the churches worked just as faithfully; in worship, in prayer, in teaching the children and youth, and in missions outreach. The Nigerian Baptist Convention’s Women’s Missionary Union involved huge numbers of women throughout the country in praying for missions, giving to missions and going to join in missions work in Nigeria and in other neighboring  counties. The beauty of these Nigerien  and Nigerian women’s faithful service is that they were following in the footsteps of women in the Bible  and also  in the beautiful footsteps of the missionary women who had mentored them.

Here is the message for us: Jesus clearly honored and upheld women throughout His ministry, and in return they faithfully followed, learned from Him and chose Him as their Lord and Savior. Throughout our ministry in Africa, we both  found ourselves inspired and challenged and mentored by missionary women doing a wide variety of service in Jesus’ Name. We certainly learned from women who were teaching, counseling, writing, publishing, doctoring, nursing, advising churches, leading at the Convention, Conference and Association level. In general we admired them as they witnessed tirelessly through their personal, family and professional lives. Indeed, there were large areas of Nigeria where the only missionaries present were women. So, they gladly did what needed to be done

to win people to Jesus, to meet the the needs of people in Jesus’ Name. This has been true  throughout our Baptist missionary  presence in Nigeria for almost 175 years. Praise the Lord. Let me mention just a handful of the remarkable ladies we were blessed to know as they did everything imaginable to introduce people to the overwhelming Love of God in Jesus.

Women in West Africa, like women everywhere,
search for meaning as they live out often difficult lives filled with hard labor.

Emogene Harris

At one point in our lives in Nigeria, our family traveled a long day’s journey from Jos down into the East to Enugu, to see the dentist. There we stayed with Emogene  Harris, who served as the Missionary Advisor to Baptist Churches in that area of the country. Now, Emogene, from MIssissippi, always behaved as a traditional, a charming southern lady; and yet she worked harder than most men, and served those churches and their pastors faithfully, never drawing attention to herself, but always building faith among the people and their leaders—pointing them again and again to Christ. Emogene so obviously loved her Lord Jesus, and so obviously loved all people—her life of love became a powerful testimony to the Christ she served. She trained and taught with the best of them. She had the strength and the faith to keep these she loved so deeply, on track and moving in the right direction to build the Kingdom of our Lord. She certainly led by example, never gave anything less than her best to win people to the Lord, to disciple them, and to encourage them as they joined and served alongside her. And the glory of it is, Emogene was only one among a large group of women who served so faithfully in places no one else was willing or able to go.

Dr. Martha Haygood
Jackie Legg

Over the years we met many outstanding missionary doctors and nurses. Dr. Martha Hagood, had come from long years of service in Japan to serve in Nigeria at the Eku Baptist Hospital. A tiny woman, she had a huge heart, a powerful personality, and excellent skills as an ob-gyn doctor. Her determination and will served her Lord and her patients well, as she gave each patient every bit of the medical skill she had developed, along with hearty, faithful prayers—and the results—many, many miracles of healing to the glory and in the name of Jesus. Also serving at Eku for many years as a Nursing Instructor, Jackie Legg, nursed and taught with the best of them. She also served and loved the Lord with extraordinary passion, leading her deep into the power of prayer and spiritual growth in the Lord. As a result, He glorified Himself as she prayed, taught Scripture, counseled and led people to spiritual breakthroughs in a mighty, mighty way. She and her husband, Gene, became loving spiritual mentors to many Nigerians and also, many missionaries and MK’s.

Medical missions involves the service of many dedicated doctors and nurses as they minster in Jesus’ Name.

Bettye Ann McQueen

Bettye Ann McQueen loved and ministered to who knows how many Nigerian university students throughout her many years in Nigeria—and as the Lord willed, during a time when the Holy Spirit was pouring out His Spirit in a remarkable way in the lives of university students throughout the country. At ABU in Zaria and as the Baptist Student Fellowship leader for the Nigerian Baptist Convention in Ibadan, Bettye Ann discipled students and developed deeply spiritual study materials for them as the Lord captured their hearts and minds and molded them for dynamic Christian leadership the exercise even now, giving direction and purpose for Christian outreach and missions in Nigeria and throughout the world.

Dale Moore
Roberta Fine

Becky had the privilege of getting to know two extraordinary women during her two years of missionary service in Port Harcourt. Dale Moore  oversaw the Baptist Churches in the large and important city of Port Harcourt. Like Emogene Harris, Dale became a shepherdess to the shepherds of many churches, small, medium, and large. She mentored, discipled, advised and prayed with these pastors and other Christian leaders throughout this oil rich city. She also mothered and mentored young  Journeymen missionaries like Becky. Roberta Fine served with her husband Earl, as they ministered up and down the coastal rivers, often traveling by boat to remote villages to evangelize and establish churches among the many tribal groups of that region. Like Dale, she also mentored and mothered Becky and other missionary journeymen. Like Dale, she was an ever faithful witness for her Lord  Jesus.

For women there is joy in worshipping and serving their Lord Jesus.

Sherry Woods

Sherry Woods originally traveled to Nigeria to serve with the WMU of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, to assist in their youth programs. After spending her first term of service working with them out of the Ibadan WMU, Nigerian Baptist Convention  headquarters, she spent some time in the U.S, helping to care for her ailing father, while receiving further training for counseling. Then she came to Jos as the Guidance Counselor at Hillcrest School, an international school which met the educational needs of missionary children from all over the world. Sherry strongly impacted many, many MK’s for Christ, even as she gave excellent educational counseling and preparation for their future lives. She also trained other women and older students for mentoring young women in their faith walk. She particularly loved participating in an effective prison ministry, also in Jos. In all of this Sherry LOVED people, LOVED making people relax and have fun,  and LOVED discipling people, leading  Masterlife and Experiencing God groups. She even led all of us Baptist missionaries in Jos together as we studied Experiencing God. And she became the best of all aunts to every single one of the Baptist MK’s in Jos, hosting sleep-overs, birthday parties and all kinds of fun extravaganzas for every MK lucky enough to call their her Aunt Sherry.

Angel Oswood

In her quiet, consistent manner, Angel Oswood has fulfilled many of these same roles as a missionary over the years, She has played the role of mission aunt well, and has faithfully mentored and encouraged Nigerian Christians. But her love has always been teaching the Bible in schools where pastors and their wives are trained for ministry. And she has always put in countless hours of preparation and planning so that the Holy Spirit has been able to use her teaching and her mentoring to train godly and faithful pastors and wives and missionaries to serve in some very tough places as they have established and strengthened churches among the unreached peoples of Nigeria.

You know, I have to say it again: IT’S ALL ABOUT JESUS. It‘s all about His holy love which draws women and men to Him, eager to receive and return that love in repentance and in their commitment to Him of everything He has made them to be. The New Testament gives us such beautiful stories of lives changed for the better forever, changed so much as His Holy Spirit enabled them to mirror that love gloriously, Then others were drawn, not to them but to this Jesus who  was their Savior, their Shepherd and their Lord. Join me in praising His Holy Name for these and multitudes of missionary women who have devoted themselves to His service and His glory, much to the joy of those  who like us have been privileged to experience His power to redeem through their beautiful lives.

African Christian women share their joy
in Jesus as they lead worship times
in their churches.

AN APOLOGY

I must apologize to the dozens of missionary women who so inspired our lives while we served in Africa. There are too many to name in this post; but not only for our lives, but  for those of countless others who have been truly blessed and inspired for service as they  so lovingly and tirelessly worked for our Lord Jesus. He knows your names. He knows your hearts. He knows the impact you each have made for His Kingdom. I know you are blessed in Him. We are eternally grateful for how beautifully He blessed us through each of you.

Acts 1:8 ESV
“But you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,
and you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem and in all Judea
and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”