Covenant | Righteousness
This One Knows Her God
A True Story, a book, God reveals a work of righteousness - with insight into covenant. |
GOD SAID,
"This One
KNOWS HER GOD"
We knew her as
Rosie
About this book:
THE LORD SAID,
"You are not
to let Rosie's light go out!"
When the Lord brought our small church group together, He had a specific purpose for us. One
of the things He told us was that He was going to teach us the fundamentals, or the foundational things,
the church has lost through time. Then He made us a promise!
"I will demonstrate to you everything that I've taught you."
The Lord has certainly kept His promise, but we had no idea He would demonstrate what He taught
us concerning Jeremiah 22:13 thru 16
. . . Is this not to know your God?
Rosie
A Modern Day Cornelius!
A True Story
Copyright 1994
A few lines added 2006.
This is a true story, an account of the things which came to pass in my life after seeing Rosie for
the first time. It is written and presented as I saw the events through my eyes. The names of people have
been omitted for the sake of their privacy. The conversations and the information given to me by other
people are as I remember, but in no way will I tell you that they are the exact words of the conversations.
I will tell you that those things revealed to me and the words spoken to me by the Lord are exact. This
writing is dedicated to . . .
Rosemarie Aronsen
And
according to the Lord's instruction
. . . may her light never go out!
We Knew Her as "Rosie"
I remember seeing Rosie for the first time at a Sunday evening church service. I was introduced
to her by a friend and member of our ministry. From a previous conversation with my friend, I knew Rosie
had lost her husband. Rosie had a German accent, which made her somewhat hard for me to understand.
She seemed, in my eyes, to be reserved and a little nervous or skeptical of being in this church. I
understood, as I was nervous the first few times I visited this church also. The reason being, there was a
prophet in charge. It is an awesome thing to experience a word of the Lord delivered through a prophet
for the first time. Little did I know that God had just brought this woman into my life, and that what He was
going to say to her and do for her would have a resounding impact on me and those around me.
Let me interject that I have learned not only to pay close attention to what the Lord is saying to me,
but also to pay attention to what He is saying to others. After all, we are members of one body and
what He tells others most certainly affects you and me. And too, the Lord never does anything without
a purpose; He has one general plan for His body.
Along toward the end of the service the prophet started ministering to individuals in the audience.
When it came Rosie's turn I listened intently, as she was with my friend. The only words I remember are
those words which intrigued me so much and are in the title of this writing.
. . ."THIS ONE KNOWS HER GOD" . . .
Those were words I've never heard spoken to anyone else, before or after that very moment. Rosie
knows her God. She knows her God. This woman knows her God. It was the idea or the thought in those
words which God was burning into my soul. He did not want me to miss the idea that this person knows
her God. It was "sit up and pay attention" time for me.
I was sitting there with thoughts of, "Will she ever be involved in our church or ministry
meetings? What does this lady know that others/we don't?" Rosie was very intriguing to me. As a Jewish child,
during World War II, she was taken in by some Nuns and sheltered in a Catholic convent. Later she
married a soldier and came to the states. The last seven years of her life were spent here in Kansas. Yes,
Rosie has gone on to be with the Lord. And yes, Rosie became connected to us as a group because God
wanted her to be, for His purposes.
Time passed since the night the Lord had said she knew her God. I found myself and those in the
church prayer group traveling to her house and ministering to her. Rosie was a smoker, and by this time
she had cancer. We saw her through a lung operation and prayed with her for her healing
because we knew God heals, as we had seen Him do before.
We kept ministering to her, and one day the Lord told one of our members we were to see her once
a week for seven weeks. We knew the Lord was doing something, but we didn't know what. All we could
do was follow His direction.
At this point I will take up the story at a meeting in her home. We had all come to love Rosie very
much. In prayer the Lord said, "You will get what you expect." I didn't know whether it was for all of
us or just for Rosie. Then the next morning she called to ask me about something concerning her funeral.
My heart sank as I knew what she was doing was not an act of faith. What she was really expecting was
coming out in her actions. She was expecting to die.
Then later one afternoon we were praying with Rosie, and the Lord asked us if we would covenant
with her. We then asked Rosie if she wanted to covenant with us. She said, "Yes." We looked at each
other with no understanding of why the Lord wanted us to do this. One thing we did understand was the
fact that it was the desire of the Lord for us to covenant with her because He had asked us to. Because
of our love for her and the fact that we understood it to be the desire of the Lord for us to do this, we
agreed to covenant with her without understanding why.
By this time Rosie had to have oxygen, which meant she had to walk around the house with a plastic
tube following her. She would laugh as she referred to it as her "ball and chain."
It wasn't too long after this that we took a keyboard to her home and ministered to her in song.
It was then that she heard angels singing with us. Later she sat and played a little on the keyboard. We laughed and joked together as she played because
she had no training. On the way home my wife made the comment that she felt we had just had a church
service with Rosie. She had never come to our services because of her health and the distance she would
have had to drive. As it turned out, it was the last time we ministered to her in music.
My Dilemma
We were doing what the Lord had said with no visible results concerning her healing and Rosie had
asked me to do her funeral. Besides this, it would be my first funeral as a pastor because the Lord had just
recently told me He wanted me to pastor for a while. The time came for me to talk with her about her
funeral but she didn't want to talk about it because she was nervous (as a result of her background).
Let me share something so you can understand more about Rosie's character. She was the type
who would lunge across the top of a desk to get at the throat of someone who wasn't doing things right.
She was straightforward, she called a spade a spade, and she was very particular about certain things.
For instance, once she went into a cafe and ordered soup. It came without a soup spoon and she became
quite upset about having to eat soup with a regular spoon. So, because I had never conducted a funeral
before, she called in a Hospice minister to help do her funeral. I thought that was all right and even
wondered if he were to do the whole service without me. He met with her concerning the funeral and
received all the information needed. Rosie was one who didn't want her friends to see her in an "unstrong"
state.
One day we were getting ready to go see Rosie when we received the call that we were too late.
My wife and I and all the prayer group expressed a different feeling about her death than we'd ever
experienced before. I told them that it was possible we felt this way because of our covenant with her, but
at this point we still had no understanding of it.
I was starting to relax, thinking I was not going to have a part in her funeral. It was welcomed
because Rosie had become a very special person to me, much more than the average pastor-parishioner-relationship. I knew I would have trouble getting through the funeral as an observer, let alone delivering
the message. Then I learned I was to give the eulogy, which seemed no problem, as I knew the other
minister had obtained all the information from her.
A day passed and I received a call from another lady who was a Hospice minister. She informed
me that the original minister was out of town because of something which had happened in his family and
she was going to be the one doing the service. The kicker was that there was no way to get the
information from the original minister. She asked me what I wanted to do? I told her I understood I was
to do the eulogy, but I would do whatever she wanted because I had told Rosie I would do it. She then
suggested that I do the preaching as I could do it easily going on from the eulogy. I knew this lady had
not even spoken to Rosie when she was alive, and it would be tough for her to say much under those
circumstances. I was then in a dilemma of what exactly to do. There was no information as to what Rosie
wanted in her funeral, nor was there any real good information for her eulogy.
A Sovereign God
Little did I know that God was in all of this. He was getting ready to give the greatest gift of love possible
to Rosie. He was getting ready to reveal why He had asked us to covenant with her; why He said ". . .
This One Knows Her God!"
When Rosie neared death she talked about having seen a light which she said was warm, not cold.
She didn't want to go to the light and was asked if she were afraid of it? Rosie said that she wasn't afraid
of it, but she still didn't want to go.
The night after I learned of all these things I sat and tried to put some things together for her
funeral with no success. I finally went to bed telling the Lord that He was going to have to help me as I
wasn't sure what I was to present. I know now that I didn't have to pray for help and instruction as the
Lord already had a plan for Rosie's funeral. I would have been told anyway because of the Lord's desire
to fulfill Rosie's heart's desire.
The Lord started to deal with me about Rosie's funeral. He showed that I was to minister to the
people. I was being somewhat rebellious and asked how I was to do that under this situation? He replied, "By telling the truth." The Lord said, "You are the only one who knows the desire of Rosie's heart." I was
then shown, in a vision, the light and the feeling of Rosie not wanting to go to it. Her head was turned, not
wanting to even look at the light. She was ashamed. Then He showed me some conversations which I'd had with Rosie. The
first one was about smoking. The second was about her desire to witness for the Lord. The third was
about some friends who troubled her concerning their relationship with the Lord. Then the Lord said, "Tell
it like she would, now." In a vision I was looking at her spirit standing by her coffin. I knew it was her
spirit because I could see through her. The Lord ended by saying, "You are not to let Rosie's light go
out." The words the Lord spoke were so commanding, in a tone I have never heard again.
I knew the Lord was right about my knowing Rosie's heart's desire because of all our conversations.
I started to understand why some events had happened and in general what I was to do and say.
Understanding
I finally understood why the Lord wanted us to covenant with Rosie. We were to finish what she
couldn't do. In a covenant agreement both parties are in a relationship or contract in which one party will do or
provide a service to the other party. In our business world a company will enter an agreement with another
to build something the other company can't. In a true covenant between people, there is a more complete
situation. If you were in blood covenant with your neighbor and he was building his house, you would be helping
him all the way through it. If he died you would finish the house for him and go on to take care of his
family, still doing what He couldn't. It's the same way with God. He set a blood covenant through His Son. If we enter into it He will perform the part we can't do, like protecting our back sides from the enemy. That covenant is set, so all we have to do is enter into the covenant by doing what is required.
God wanted us
to covenant with Rosie so we could learn covenant first hand. The Lord spoke to me in such a commanding voice because He wanted us to finish what she couldn't do that God wanted done! He wanted
us to help Him fulfill her heart's desire and therefore His promise found in scripture. I think it best to take things in the order the Lord showed
them to me.
It wasn't Her time!
The first thing about which the Lord dealt with me was ministering to the people. I knew this had
to do with all the people, but in a specific way to the few who were so concerned about Rosie's funeral.
The Lord had said the only way was to tell the truth. I knew I had to tell the truth concerning all the
conversations and what He had revealed. To those specifically concerned about doing everything just right for Rosie, I was to say "Relax, Rosie's heart's desire is being fulfilled. What she really wanted is being
done. So relax." One must understand that these people knew Rosie's character and that was
contributing to their desire to have everything just right.
The Lord had shown me the light and Rosie's reaction to going to it. Rosie knew it wasn't her
time to go. This had to do with her conversation with me about smoking.
Rosie,"Nobody told me to quit."
I said, "They did, it's all over the television."
Rosie, "Nobody told me, nobody came and told me!"
I said, "Rosie, it was on TV."
Rosie, "You bring them to me, I'll tell them!"
I said, "You didn't quit when you were told."
I was referring to her being told on television. Now, all of this conversation was in a raised, very
emphatic voice, almost an argument type conversation. Please remember that we were dealing with a
broken English thought pattern and language on her part. I was having trouble getting a hold of what she
was really saying. Rosie ended the conversation by saying, "But I quit when I had to!"
Rosie finally got across to me what her thoughts were. I understood she wasn't really saying she
hadn't heard the television commercials telling smokers to quit. She had said earlier in her conversations
that she never thought cancer could happen to her. When she had tried to quit, it was the old "I can't
quit" excuse. What she was saying in all this was, "You bring those to me that say, 'I can't quit, I don't
want to quit,' and I will get boldly strong with them. I will tell them, 'don't feed me that junk that you can't
quit.' I said the same thing and I quit when I had to, but then it was too late! If I could quit when I had
to, I could have quit earlier. Don't tell me (Rosie) you can't quit. Don't go to meet the Lord prematurely
before your job on earth is done, especially because of smoking!" That's why Rosie blurted, "I quit when
I had to."
That is why the Lord showed me the incident with the light and Rosie's reluctance to go, even after
feeling the warmth of the light. She was a particular person and was ashamed to go early. She knew it
wasn't her time.
The thing we must realize is the fact that the Lord wants everything to be known about Rosie's light because he said, "You are not to let Rosie's light go out!" Light concerning God is truth, and there is a truth
revealed here which is the fact that you can go home to be with the Lord before your appointed time
(prematurely). In later years God revealed to me that my mother went home before her time. God didn't need her or
Rosie in heaven, and in fact their God-given purposes were not finished when they passed on. In both cases
this was revealed by the Spirit of God.
Now let's go on to the second conversation shown to me by the Lord, which had to do with her
desire to be a witness to people and especially to her friends as indicated by the third conversation.
Remember the Lord said, "Tell it like she would, now," while I was looking at her spirit standing by her
coffin.
I knew that she knew more truth and would not be inhibited if she could stand there in her spirit
and say all those things she had wanted to say but couldn't in this life. At this point I knew I was to stand
in her place and do what she couldn't do while she was alive in the flesh. I was to be her witness or let her
witness flow through me by telling the truth. I knew she wanted to bring her friends to Jesus and couldn't
because of her background. So I prepared the best I could to be her witness by telling the truth to those
who would be in front of me at the funeral. Little did I know I still didn't have all of the story.
The day of her funeral came and I arrived with my wife and son at the funeral home. We were early
and I went to look at the room in which the service was to be conducted. I looked in and saw that the
podium, from which I was to speak, placed me exactly on the spot the Lord had shown Rosie's spirit
standing in the vision! The coffin was even the same color, identical. I felt a great responsibility both to
the Lord, because of His command, and to Rosie, because I knew her heart's desire. The Lord had said
I was the only one who knew her heart's desire, so he had to use me to fulfill His word.
Psalms 21: 2
Thou hast given him his heart' desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips. Selah...
He had set up everything that had happened concerning her funeral, including the unavailability of
information and the switch of pastors.
At this point I was still trying to gather information concerning her eulogy. I was called into the
office to meet the other pastor to whom I had talked over the phone. We talked a bit in which she
encouraged me, and I thanked her for that. I knew Rosie's funeral wouldn't be very big since all her relatives
were overseas and none were coming. It would just be her acquaintances here in the state of Kansas.
Then the lady taking care of Rosie's business came into the office and sat down. She was telling
me that "we" didn't really know Rosie! She was crying, which got me started crying too. She said she
had been going over Rosie's books and had found that Rosie was a giver, a big, big giver! She had given and was always giving to someone in need. She said Rosie had never reported the gifts
to the government because Rosie had indicated that if you did that it ruined the act! I then
remembered back to when Rosie had become house ridden, so to speak. She had asked me to let her
know if there was someone in need, and that she would help if she could. She knew what our church had
been taught concerning the tithes to God. I failed Rosie in this request because of her condition. I hadn't
realized how important this was to her. I now had another aspect of Rosie to talk about in her funeral.
The time for the service came and I stood where Rosie stood in the vision, being her witness. I
simply revealed the conversations, as the Lord had shown me. I told them the truth of Rosie's generosity
to the oppressed and her desire to bring someone to the Lord. A time was made for people to be saved
by making a profession of their faith to another person. Yes, Rosie's life became a witness to other people
because of the Lord's intervention in her funeral. Toward the end of the service I remember talking about
the fact that it was Rosie's heart that was so right, and I ended my part with my young son's request,
a poem.
Goodbye, goodbye, now you're free
Goodbye, goodbye, farewell Rosie
On the way home that day I knew there had been more than one reason the Lord had intervened
so much in this situation. When God moves He works all things together for His purpose. He does a
multiple of things and accomplishes His purposes. As I was replaying in my
mind everything that had happened I became both excited and amazed at what the Lord had done
because I knew He had kept His word to us!
"I will demonstrate to you everything I've taught you."
God had taught us more about covenant and how Rosie's works of righteousness produced
favor with Him!
Psalms 11: 7
For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.
Rosie worked righteousness.
I John 2: 29
If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.
Up until now He had demonstrated righteousness to us in many ways but never to the extreme of
Cornelius' story. The Lord wanted to show us the results of working righteousness in a way we could not
deny.
That's why God caused events we could see that paralleled Cornelius's story: to prove to us and
demonstrate what He had taught us! He wanted to fulfill the desire of Rosie's heart. He wanted to fulfill
His promise to us. He demonstrated to us the extremes He will go to in a person's life who works
righteousness. Rosie really didn't know too much about the Bible but she worked righteousness. Let's look at the parallels of Rosie's story and Cornelius's.
Rosie
worked righteousness by giving alms!
...The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous
man availeth much. James 5:16
KJV
It moved God to fulfill the desire of her heart!
One time Rosie heard angels singing at a prayer
meeting!
A vision was given to God's servant to learn
something and to accomplish what needed to be
done!
Was Rosie saved before meeting us? There's a 48% chance she wasn't but we had made sure by drawing a
profession of faith from her! |
Cornelius
...Thy prayers and thine alms are come up
for a memorial before God.
Acts 10:4 KJV
Peter explains,
But in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him.
Acts 10:35 KJV
Cornelius encountered an angel of God.
He (Peter) saw in a vision evidently about the
ninth hour of the day an angel of God....
Acts 10:3 KJV
Peter (God's servant) had a vision which caused
Peter to learn something and the result was to
get Cornelius saved, something that needed to
be done! |
He moved people in the time of Cornelius to accomplish what needed to be done! He moved
people to accomplish what needed to be done in Rosie's life! And it was all because of her acts of
righteousness! Wow!! God had once again demonstrated to us what He had taught us!
Does the Church have a memorial built before God? Do you have a memorial built up before God? Cornelius's story is New Testament. Rosie's story is New Testament! God performed something that
was impossible for Rosie, and He taught us in the process. Does Rosie have a Crown of Righteousness in heaven?
1. A person who didn't really know much of what the Bible says.
2. A person who didn't even go to church on a regular basis.
3. A person who didn't appear spiritual or religious in any way.
4. A person who in some ways was a rough talker.
Yes, maybe it's possible! There is a very good chance that you have to
practice righteousness in a big way to have a Crown of Righteousness! Rosie did just that. Perhaps we can all
learn from her?
Why did the Lord say,
"This one knows her God,"
and where is it found in the Bible?
Jeremiah 22:13 thru 16 KJV
Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by
wrong; that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his
work; That saith, I will build me a wide house and large chambers, and cutteth him
out windows; and it is ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion. Shalt thou
reign, because thou closest thyself in cedar? did not thy father eat and drink, and
do judgement and justice, and then it was well with him? He judged the cause of the
poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me: saith the Lord.
Rosie judged the cause of the poor and the needy continually.
That's why God said through the prophet,
"This one knows her God"
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