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How I Know God Answers Prayer(1921)

The Personal Testimony of One Lifetime

by Rosalind Goforth
(Mrs. Jonathan Goforth)
Went to China in 1888

"Go ... and tell them how great things the LORD hath done for thee"(Mark 5:19)

Digitally entered by Tom Stewart
<p>Preface to WStS Online Edition

Rosalind Goforth (1864-1942) and her husband Jonathan (1859-1936) were Canadian Presbyterian missionaries to China and Manchuria (1888-1934). Rosalind lost five of her ten children during her missionary service. Surviving the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, Rosalind and Jonathan were also greatly affected by the Revival Lectures </span>of Charles G. Finney in 1904, and went on to experience a Chinese extension of the Korean revivals after Jonathan visited Korea in 1907. Those Chinese revivals were documented in Jonathan Goforth's book,  </span>By My Spirit. </span>Both took part in the Keswick meetings (1910), following their participation at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. Troubled by the liberal tendencies of the Presbytery, i.e., the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, the Goforths left the Home Board (1917). Free to evangelize where they chose, the Chinese Christian warlord, General Feng Yu-hsiang, invited Jonathan to minister to his troops (1919).

Jonathan became totally blind in 1933, and when Rosalind became ill in 1934, they decided to return to Canada for good. Rosalind authored a biography of her husband, </span>(1937), and an autobiographical sketch of her own experiences, Climbing -- Memories of a Missionary's Wife (1940). Though Chapter 5 ("Our Deliverance from the Boxers" [1900]) would be considered one of the most riveting narrations of this book, it is thelast two chapters("To His Praise" and "Victory Found") that Mrs. Goforth details the Scriptural foundation for prayer and joyful Christian living: (1) a Bible study on prayer (Chapter 9), and (2) the realization of victory in Christ through resting in His indwelling presence (Chapter 10).

Tom Stewart

Table of Contents

Foreword
How these testimonies came to be written

Chapter 1: "Getting Things from God"
The simplicity of petition

Chapter 2: Early Lessons in the Life of Faith

Led by a bird
Toothache taken away
Reward of seeking first the kingdom
Financial aid
Sunday school scholars given
Guidance in time of crisis
A prayer preparation for China
A beautiful seal on the new life

Chapter 3: "Go Forward on Your Knees" (1887-1894)

The keynote of pioneer years
Help in the language from the Home Base
Prayer-opened doors
Deliverance in time of peril
"Kept by the power of God"
Prayer and medical work
Converts from the first
Wang Feng-ao, the proud Confucian scholar
Wang Fu-Lin, the opium fiend
Dr. Hunter Corbett's testimony
The result of obedience
From the gates of death
Lord Sandwich's testimony

Chapter 4: A God-Given Field (1894-1900)

A promise given
The promise fulfilled
Our great need
One need supplied -- an evangelist
A second need supplied -- a Bible woman
Paying the price of petition
A touch of healing
A Chinaman's faith -- the locust story!
A Christian woman's faith for her child
Our child died -- a case of unanswered prayer
A God of deliverances

Chapter 5: Our Deliverance from the Boxers (1900)
A clear answer to prayers in the home church
Led on through dangers and trials
Safely brought through

<p>Chapter 6: Proving God's Faithfulness (1902-1908)</p> God must come first
A hard proposition
In the furnace
Made willing in the day of God's power
Testimony to God's abundant faithfulness
A Bible woman of exceptional power given
God meeting the home message -- "Retrench"
Abundant funds provided
A beautiful instance of "God's wireless"
A case of "While they are yet speaking I will hear"
The life made easier
A child's fever restrained
Blessing in the work, converts given
A God-suggested remedy
Chinese prevailing prayer for Mr. Goforth
Women sent to us
Doors for preaching opened
Workers supplied abundantly
Kept from smallpox
We may trust Him wholly</p></p> <p><b>Chapter 7: The Story of One Furlough (1908-1910)
Meeting a condition of petition -- obedience
Six difficult doors opened
Trusting for everything
Apples sent in abundance
Fruit, the best, in abundance
A telephone supplied
A fur coat
God's wonderful keeping power, a blessed experience
Help for the children's sewing
Another case of "God's wireless"
A timely offer
A daughter's guardian provided
A case of the Lord's lovingkindness -- a red cloth ulster!
Too many to record

Chapter 8: Our God of the Impossible</p> A blessed incident from Keswick
A verse of a hymn given
A governess provided
Rain withheld in answer to prayer
Five pounds sent
Sewing and prayer
A gracious leading, and a great need supplied
An incident in Tientsin
More help with the sewing
A sewing machine supplied
A case of tuberculosis healed
Two incidents of prayer and revival
Fifty dollars sent for friends in need
Another case of spiritual "wireless"
Led to a lost key</p></p> <p><b>Chapter 9: "To His Praise"</p></p> Trusting God to supply needs
His faithfulness
Prayer and dress
The restraining power of prayer -- my son in World War I
A prayer answered abundantly for one at home
Our God-given site
Closing words
All in "abide"
Bible study on prayer</p></p> <p><b>Chapter 10: Victory Found
Childhood yearnings for the presence of Christ
Halfhearted conflict with sin in early years in China
Pride and bad temper
Secretly criticized by Chinese women
How to live Christ as well as preach Him
Heights and depths of spiritual experience
Lifelong prayer for the fullness of the Spirit
The conference at Niagara-on-the-Lake, June, 1916
Christ accepted as Saviour from the power of sin as well as from its penalty
The joy of realizing His indwelling presence
All summed up in one word, Resting
Bible study on "The Life of Victory in Christ"