Title: Give Me This Mountain
Author: Helen Roseveare
Publisher: Christian Focus, 2006; 159 pp. $12.99
Recommendation (4-star scale): 
A good biography doesn’t just tell a story.
A good biography will stimulate and encourage the believer in Christ to a closer walk with Christ. “I want to live like that…” will be a common response to a God-centered biography.
Give Me This Mountain is just such a biography.
Helen Roseveare was a British missionary doctor who began working in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 1950s, and remained there for over 20 years, including a 5-month period when she was held hostage by rebel terrorists in 1964. (She recently gave a message at a Desiring God conference, addressing the topic of perseverance.)
What is interesting about this book is not so much the story itself but how she was progressing in her faith in the midst of various discouragements and trials. She is very open about her tendencies to engage in self-pity, depression, and pride. Her honest about her own spiritual condition is the most compelling part of the book — and the reason I will look forward to reading the second volume of her story, He Gave Us a Valley.
So many times my spirit rebelled. I was quick and impulsive, where my colleague was slow and methodical. Our African fellow-workers were quick to spot the lack of cooperation and failure in agreement on many matters, and some would have played us off the one against the other.…I was so often irritable, and there were even occasions when temper flared up inside me as I felt that a faithful African fellow-worker had been misjudged or wrongly treated. My heart seemed so hard. I was so often critical and proud in my outlook. Along with this my communion with the Lord shrivelled, prayer became a formality, Bible reading a burden. I longed for liberation and peace and joy.
Such honest abounds in the book and she also offers some insight as to her steps back to intimacy with and joy in Christ. This is the kind of writing that led Noel Piper to write in the Foreword:
The main reason I keep coming back to Helen’s books is her unembarrassed forthrightness in portraying her normal, weak, and self-centered seasons. I can hardly imagine letting the world into my life as she does. Her experience…helps me realize that, as she says about herself, I cannot “escape from myself by going to Congo [or whatever my escape route might be]. Rather, I came to know myself better, perhaps more as others had already seen me.” Each time I read one of her accounts, I want to be like her, I want to know God as she does.
This is a good reason for reading this book. You won’t read it for captivating writing or intriguing stories. (Even her captivity is downplayed — comprising only about 10 pages in the book with only very sketchy details.) You won’t read it for sound theology — she tends towards mysticism (does this play a part in her battles with depression?). But you will read it to be encouraged to stimulate your own heart towards a passion for Christ.
And that’s a good reason to read Give Me This Mountain.
Words of Grace 