Our family continued to live in Philadelphia and then in New Jersey until I left home to attend Wheaton College. By that time, the family had increased to four brothers and one sister. My studies in classical Greek would one day enable me to work in the area of unwritten languages to develop a form of writing.
A year after I went to Ecuador, Jim Elliot, whom I had met at Wheaton, also entered tribal areas with the Quichua Indians. In nineteen fifty three we were married in the city of Quito and continued our work together. Jim had always hoped to have the opportunity to enter the territory of an unreached tribe. The Aucas were in that category – a fierce group whom no one had succeeded in meeting without being killed. After the discovery of their whereabouts, Jim and four other missionaries entered Auca territory. After a friendly contact with three of the tribe, they were speared to death.
Our daughter Valerie was 10 months old when Jim was killed. I continued working with the Quichua Indians when, through a remarkable providence, I met two Auca women who lived with me for one year. They were the key to my going in to live with the tribe that had killed the five missionaries. I remained there for two years.
After having worked for two years with the Aucas, I returned to the Quichua work and remained there until 1963 when Valerie and I returned to the U.S.
Since then, my life has been one of writing and speaking. It also included, in 1969, a marriage to Addison Leitch, professor of theology at Gordon Conwell Seminary in Massachusetts. He died in 1973. After his death I had two lodgers in my home. One of them married my daughter, the other one, Lars Gren, married me. Since then we have worked together." - Elisabeth Elliot
The result of deliberate deception is blindness. The man who, to preserve his own position, deceives himself or another, is a swindler (this is what Paul called Elymas), “rascal, son of the devil, enemy of all goodness” (Acts 13:10 NEB).
God is light and in Him is not any darkness at all.
If we guard some comer of darkness in ourselves, we will soon be drawing someone else into darkness, shutting them out from the light in the face of Jesus Christ.
“Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen” (Book of Common Prayer).
The word “missionary” does not occur in the Bible. But the word “witness” does. I found many passages indicating that I was supposed to be a witness. One in particular arrested me. It stated that to be a witness to God is, above all, to know, believe, and understand Him (Is 43:10). All that He asks us to do is but means to this end. He will go to any lengths to teach us, and His manipulation of the movements of men–Aucas, missionaries, whomever–is never accidental. Those movements may be incidental to the one thing toward which He goads us: the recognition of Christ.
Isa 43:10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.
Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
Jesus made this necessity sharply clear when He said, “If it is your eye that is your undoing, tear it out and fling it away; it is better to enter into life with one eye than to keep both eyes and be thrown into the fires of hell” (Mt 5:29).
To struggle–that is, to allow a “little bit” of sin, to be cautious with ourselves, tolerant of a certain amount of plain disobedience, is to try to keep both eyes.
The result of deliberate deception is blindness. The man who, to preserve his own position, deceives himself or another, is a swindler (this is what Paul called Elymas), “rascal, son of the devil, enemy of all goodness” (Acts 13:10 NEB).
God is light and in Him is not any darkness at all.
If we guard some comer of darkness in ourselves, we will soon be drawing someone else into darkness, shutting them out from the light in the face of Jesus Christ.
“Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen” (Book of Common Prayer).
Have we learned to stand in God’s presence, mouths shut, hearts open? “Lord, what do you want me to do?” We must be quiet in order to know Him and to hear Him and to hear Him answer us.
“If any of you lack wisdom let him ask his friends.” No. That is not the Word of the Lord. “If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God” (Jas 1:5 AV) is his Word to us. There is a place for asking wisdom of godly friends, but let us always go first to God.
“Be still”–that is, shut up–“and know that He is God” (Ps 46:10 AV).
Proverbs 11:13 says, “He who goes abroad as a talebearer reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing hidden."
Jesus sometimes refused to reveal the truth about Himself, even when it would have seemed to us “an opportunity to witness.” He did not always answer questions. He did not always say who He was. He told some of those He healed to tell no one about it.
“For every activity under heaven its time…a time for silence and a time for speech” (Eccl 3:1,7 NEB). “A man of understanding remains silent” (Prv 11:12 RSV).
Lord, deliver me from the urge to open my mouth when I should shut it. Give me the wisdom to keep silence where silence is wise. Remind me that not everything needs to be said, and that there are very few things that need to be said by me.
The Psalms are full of cries to God about enemies–but it was the enemies that drove the psalmist (for example, in Psalm 64) to cry. If he had had no enemies, he would have had no need of a Protector. God will go to any lengths to bring us to Himself.
“Think of him who submitted to such opposition from sinners: that will help you not to lose heart and grow faint….You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood….The Lord disciplines those whom he loves” (Heb 12:3,4,6 NEB).
“Be faithful to Reason!” whispers the Destroyer. “Do not let go!"
“Be faithful to Me,” Christ says, “give up your reasons, give way to Truth."
Reason is one of God’s great gifts. We have intelligence and the faculty of reason, to be employed in the service of God and other people. Faithfulness to Christ (who is Truth) does not negate reason, but purifies it, raises it to a higher level.
“Pure” reason, logical argument, stood between my husband and me, as it stood between Job and his friends, and Jesus and the Pharisees.
“Knowledge gives self-importance–it is love that makes the building grow. A man may imagine that he understands something, but still not understand anything in the way he ought to!” (1 Cor 8:1,2 JB).
There is a marvelously helpful practice that we usually overlook. It is quietness. Notice how often in the gospels we find Jesus going away alone, even when people needed Him. He deliberately chose solitude. The more hectic our lives become, the more necessary is this quietness. When it is impossible to break away physically to a place of solitude for a day or so in order to think and pray over a hard decision, there is one thing which I think helps–do not speak about the decision to anyone but God for forty-eight hours at least. Just hold it before Him alone. Keep your mouth shut for two days. Pray. Listen. Seek his counsel.
Try this, too–sit before Him for fifteen consecutive minutes in silence, focusing your mind on the words of Psalm 86:11 (NEB), “Guide me, O Lord, that I may be true to thee and follow thy path."
© Copyrighted material. All rights reserved by the copyright holder. Used herein by permission.
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. 1 Peter 4:12
© Copyrighted material. All rights reserved by the copyright holder. Used herein by permission.Worry as much as possible.
Pray only about things you can’t manage by yourself.
Refuse to accept what God gives.
Look for peace elsewhere than in Him.
Try to rule your own life.
Doubt God’s word.
Carry all your cares.
If you’d rather not forfeit your peace, here are eight ways to find it (antidotes to the above eight):
“Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them” (Psalm 119:165 KJV). “Circumstances are the expression of God’s will,” wrote Bishop Handley Moule.
“Don’t worry about anything whatever” (Philippians 4:6, PHILLIPS).
“In everything make your requests known to God in prayer and petition with thanksgiving. Then the peace of God… will guard your hearts” (Philippians 4:6,7, NEB).
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me… and you will find rest” (Matthew 11:29, NIV).
“Peace is my parting gift to you, my own peace, such as the world cannot give” (John 14 27, NEB).
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (Colossians 3:15, NIV).
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing” (Romans 15:13, KJV).
“Cast all your cares on him for you are his charge” (1 Peter 5:7, NEB).
Lord, I confess my sin of thoughtlessness and my sin of pride. I pray for a more loving and a purer heart, for Jesus’ sake.
God knows well the heart and made provision for this sin of pride when He instructed the Israelites about appointing a king. He was to make a copy of the law. This would be the antidote, necessary for him and likewise for all of us (for “law” read “Word”). “He shall keep it by him and read from it all his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and keep all the words of this law and observe these statutes.
In this way he shall not become prouder than his fellow countrymen nor shall he turn from these commandments to right or left” (Dt 17:19, 20 NEB). The attempt itself to keep the commandments, one by one and day after day, will be sufficient to humble us, for the “straightedge of the law” (Rom 3:20 JBP) will only show us, as Paul found, how crooked we are. We will find, in fact, that we cannot keep it. “The whole matter is on a different plane–believing instead of achieving” (Rom 3:27 JBP). Pride won’t find much foothold on that plane.
“The way of the Lord gives refuge to the honest man, but dismays those who do evil” (Prv 10:29 NEB).
We can approach God’s word with a will to obey whatever it says to us about our present situation, or we can avoid it and say to anyone who would try to point us to it, “Don’t throw the Book at me.” The latter is an evasion, which supports our suspicion that our problems are, in fact, insoluble. The honest (i.e., humble) heart will indeed find the Lord’s way to be a refuge.
He could because He slept in the calm assurance that His Father was in control. His was a quiet heart. We see Him move serenely through all the events of His life–when He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He knew that He would suffer many things and be killed in Jerusalem, He never deviated from His course. He had set His face like flint. He sat at supper with one who would deny Him and another who would betray Him, yet He was able to eat with them, willing even to wash their feet. Jesus in the unbroken intimacy of His Father’s love, kept a quiet heart.
None of us possesses a heart so perfectly at rest, for none lives in such divine unity, but we can learn a little more each day of what Jesus knew–what one writer called the negligence of that trust which carries God with it. Who would think of using the word negligence in regard to our Lord Jesus? To be negligent is to omit to do what a reasonable man would do. Would Jesus omit that? Yes, on occasion, when faith pierced beyond reason.
This “negligent” trust–is it careless, inattentive, indolent? No, not in His case. Jesus, because His will was one with His Father’s, could be free from care. He had the blessed assurance of knowing that His Father would do the caring, would be attentive to His Son’s need. Was Jesus indolent? No, never lazy, sluggish, or slothful, but He knew when to take action and when to leave things up to His Father. He taught us to work and watch but never to worry, to do gladly whatever we are given to do, and to leave all else with God.
Purity of heart, said Kierkegaard, is to will one thing. The Son willed only one thing: the will of His Father. That’s what He came to earth to do. Nothing else. One whose aim is as pure as that can have a completely quiet heart, knowing what the psalmist knew: “Lord, You have assigned me my portion and my cup, and have made my lot secure” (Psalm 16:5 NIV). I know of no greater simplifier for all of life. Whatever happens is assigned. Does the intellect balk at that? Can we say that there are things which happen to us which do not belong to our lovingly assigned “portion” (This belongs to it, that does not”)? Are some things, then, out of the control of the Almighty?
Every assignment is measured and controlled for my eternal good. As I accept the given portion other options are cancelled. Decisions become much easier, directions clearer, and hence my heart becomes inexpressibly quieter.
What do we really want in life? Sometimes I have the chance to ask this question of high school or college students. I am surprised at how few have a ready answer. Oh, they could come up with quite a long list of things, but is there one thing above all others that they desire? “One thing have I desired of the Lord,” said David, “this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life…” (Psalm 27:4 KJV). To the rich young man who wanted eternal life Jesus said, “One thing you lack. Go, sell everything” (Mark 10:21 NIV). In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus tells us that the seed which is choked by thorns has fallen into a heart full of the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things. The apostle Paul said, “One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14 NIV).
A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace. One morning my computer simply would not obey me. What a nuisance. I had my work laid out, my timing figured, my mind all set. My work was delayed, my timing thrown off, my thinking interrupted. Then I remembered. It was not for nothing. This was part of the Plan (not mine, His). “Lord, You have assigned me my portion and my cup.”
Now if the interruption had been a human being instead of an infuriating mechanism, it would not have been so hard to see it as the most important part of the work of the day. But all is under my Father’s control: yes, recalcitrant computers, faulty transmissions, drawbridges which happen to be up when one is in a hurry. My portion. My cup. My lot is secure. My heart can be at peace. My Father is in charge. How simple!
My assignment entails my willing acceptance of my portion-in matters far beyond comparison with the trivialities just mentioned, such as the death of a precious baby. A mother wrote to me of losing her son when he was just one month old. A widow writes of the long agony of watching her husband die. The number of years given them in marriage seemed too few. We can only know that Eternal Love is wiser than we, and we bow in adoration of that loving wisdom.
Response is what matters. Remember that our forefathers were all guided by the pillar of cloud, all passed through the sea, all ate and drank the same spiritual food and drink, but God was not pleased with most of them. Their response was all wrong. Bitter about the portions allotted they indulged in idolatry, gluttony, and sexual sin. And God killed them by snakes and by a destroying angel.
The same almighty God apportioned their experience. All events serve His will. Some responded in faith. Most did not.
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV).
Think of that promise and keep a quiet heart! Our enemy delights in disquieting us. Our Savior and Helper delights in quieting us. “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you” is His promise (Is 66:13, NIV).The choice is ours. It depends on our willingness to see everything in God, receive all from His hand, accept with gratitude just the portion and the cup He offers. Shall I charge Him with a mistake in His measurements or with misjudging the sphere in which I can best learn to trust Him? Has He misplaced me? Is He ignorant of things or people which,in my view, hinder my doing His will?
God came down and lived in this same world as a man. He showed us how to live in this world, subject to its vicissitudes and necessities, that we might be changed-not into an angel or a storybook princess, not wafted into another world, but changed into saints in this world. The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.
He whose heart is kind beyond all measure Gives unto each day what He deems best, Lovingly its part of pain and pleasure, Mingling toil with peace and rest. –Lina Sandell, Swedish
“The Lord is the stronghold of my life–of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps 27:1 RSV).
And yet, Lord, the truth is that I am often afraid. I confess it. All the weight of your promises seems sometimes to be only a feather, and the weight of my fears is lead. Reverse that, Lord, I pray. Give me the healthy fear that will make light of all the others–“The fear of the Lord is life; he who is full of it will rest untouched by evil” (Prv 19:23 NEB).
Our hectic lives involve many changes, and changes require decisions, and decisions must often be made in the midst of a multitude of confusions. We run here and there asking advice. Often we make decisions without sufficient deliberation because we simply haven't time--or so we tell ourselves.
There is a marvelously helpful practice that we usually overlook. It is quietness. Notice how often in the gospels we find Jesus going away alone, even when people needed Him. He deliberately chose solitude. The more hectic our lives become, the more necessary is this quietness. When it is impossible to break away physically to a place of solitude for a day or so in order to think and pray over a hard decision, there is one thing which I think helps–do not speak about the decision to anyone but God for forty-eight hours at least. Just hold it before Him alone. Keep your mouth shut for two days. Pray. Listen. Seek his counsel.
Try this, too–sit before Him for fifteen consecutive minutes in silence, focusing your mind on the words of Psalm 86:11 (NEB), “Guide me, O Lord, that I may be true to thee and follow thy path.”
“You have no love for God in you,” He said to the Pharisees. “I have come accredited by my Father, and you have no welcome for me….How can you have faith so long as you receive honor from one another, and care nothing for the honor that comes from him who alone is God?” (Jn 5:42-44 NEB).
It has helped me to think of John’s words in this manner: To love the world in the wrong way is to love it without knowing the Father’s love. It is when a man knows Him and receives everything from his hand that the world is redeemed for him, no longer a snare and in opposition to the love of God. We must love the world only through and because of the Father, not instead of. Our ultimate concern must be God Himself. He is eternal. His gifts are not always so.
Lord, may no gift of yours ever take your place in my heart. Help me to hold them lightly in an open palm, that the supreme object of my desire may always be You and You alone. Purify my heart–I want to love You purely.
Amy Carmichael wrote of such a feeling when, as a missionary of twenty six, she had to leave Japan because of poor health, then travel to China for recuperation, but then realized God was telling her to go to Ceylon. (All this preceded her going to India, where she stayed for fifty-three years.)
I have on my desk her original handwritten letter of August 25, 1894, as she was en route to Colombo:
“All along, let us remember, we are not asked to understand, but to obey….On July 28, Saturday, I sailed. We had to come on board on Friday night, and just as the tender ( a small boat ) where were the dear friends who had come to say goodbye was moving off, and the chill of loneliness shivered through me, like a warm love-clasp came the long-loved lines- “And only Heaven is better than to walk with Christ at midnight, over moon-less seas.” I couldn’t feel frightened then. Praise Him for the moon-less seas – all the better for the opportunity for proving Him to be indeed the EL Shaddai, “the God who is enough.”Let me add my own word of witness to hers and to that of the tens of thousands who have learned that He is indeed Enough. He is not all we would ask for (if we were honest ), but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency. It is when the sea is moonless that the Lord has become my Light!
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, take away mine.
I take Him at His word indeed, Christ died for sinners–this I read– And in my heart I find a need Of Him to be my Savior.
- (Dora Greenwell)
It was a normal reaction for a carnal mind. It was not normal for a spiritual one. The carnal attitude deals with things on one level only–this world’s. It “sees no further than natural things” (Rom 8:5 JBP).
Is there a telescope that will bring into focus things I would not see with merely “natural” vision? There is.
“The spiritual attitude reaches out after the things of the spirit.” It is a different means of perceiving. It will enable me to see what I could not have seen with the naked–that is, the carnal–eye.
It works. When I looked at that person who had offended me through the “spiritual eye,” I saw in him one of God’s instruments to teach me, instead of one of the devil’s to torment me. I saw something more. I saw a person God loves, and whom He wants to love through me.
Leslie Basham: Elisabeth Elliot takes us back to the moment Eve disobeyed God.
Elisabeth Elliot: Eve showed us the one principle of hell, which is: I AM MY OWN.“I am going to do my own thing. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do.” Probably in our heart of hearts, every one of us, in some form or another, has said that.
Leslie: You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Thursday, June 10.
Nancy DeMoss: We see example of “battle of the sexes” everywhere. So where did all that conflict come from?
Earlier in the week, Bob Lepine explained that conflict originated in the Garden of Eden. Today, Elisabeth Elliot will pick up on that theme and show us how the mindset of Eve still affects all of us.
Leslie: First we’ll hear about some of Elisabeth Elliot’s background. A lot of listeners are familiar with that name because of her dramatic story as a young missionary in Ecuador. So before Elisabeth speaks on manhood, womanhood, and the Bible’s first couple, we’re going to listen to her dramatic story.
Elisabeth: Once upon a time, before you were born, there were in Ecuador a tribe of so-called savages. They were naked, they used stone tools, and they killed strangers.
Leslie: This group has sometimes been called the Auca Indians. They would have preferred to be called the Huaorani people. You’ll hear them referred to both ways.
In the late 1940s, an American oil company tried exploring for oil near the Huaorani, in the jungles of the Andes Mountains. But this oil company had a lot of trouble.
Steve Saint: The Huaorani had killed, I believe, in the early years 20-some employees, and it was getting hard to even get employees to go work in there because everyone was so terribly frightened of the Huaorani who could attack anytime, anyplace.
Leslie: So a young family bought some land from the oil company and moved to Ecuador. They didn’t want to explore for oil. They wanted this group to know the gospel.
Elisabeth: First, there was Nate Saint, from Philadelphia. He inaugurated the program of jungle flying in the eastern jungle of Ecuador.
Steve: I remember him going out every morning, pulling out the airplane, and loading it up. I’d help; or, I thought I helped.
Leslie: This is Nate’s son, Steve.
Steve: And then I’d run up on the little bank and watch him taxi across and take off into the jungle.
Elisabeth: Pilots who have watched film footage of some of Nate’s landings on those canyons of green trees in the jungle have said that it was impossible.
Steve: And then of course I’d wait in the afternoon for him to come back.
Elisabeth: Nate was a genius. He was a rather slightly built blond guy with a terrific sense of humor, a creative imagination, and an almost fanatical discipline and caution as a flyer.
Steve: But there was this one area that everyone knew belonged to the Huaorani, or the Aucas, as they called them, that nobody dared go in. In fact, my dad rarely even flew over it because he knew that if he had a forced landing, if he survived the crash, the Huaorani would probably find him and kill him.
Elisabeth: Nobody had ever gone into their territory and come out alive. Missionaries had been praying that God would enable them someday to take the gospel to these Aucas, but it had never happened. It wasn’t until 1956 that the first Operation Auca was attempted. Five young American men banded together to do this.
Leslie: Nate Saint was joined by Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and Ed McCully.
Elisabeth: Then there was a fifth man, one I got to know pretty well. His name was Jim Elliot.
Leslie: Jim and Elisabeth met in college. Jim wanted to marry her, but he went through a long process asking God if he was called to singleness. The struggle of those years is told in the books Shadow of the Almighty and Passion and Purity. Eventually, he and Elisabeth were married and living in Ecuador.
Elisabeth: One day in October of 1955, Nate Saint flew into our station to tell us that he had discovered some Auca houses.
Leslie: The group started lowering gifts to this village from the air.
Elisabeth: You can imagine our excitement, our trembling, the prayers that went up
Leslie: And then these 5 men left to make contact with the Huaorani people.
Elisabeth: they sang together that hymn, “We rest on Thee, our shield and our defender.”
Steve: To the best of my knowledge, nobody had ever gone into the tribe and had face-to face contact with the Huaorani and come out alive. There was no way to resolve differences between people in the tribe except to kill, so I think anthropologists would accept that they are probably the most violent group of people that has ever been studied.
A homicide rate—people within the tribe killing other people in the tribe—of over 60%. That’s in addition to the people in the tribe who were killed by outsiders—either by oil company people or by Quichuas, the tribe living around them. So they were really killing themselves into extinction.
Leslie: Steve Saint says that while the five missionaries were trying to make contact with the Huaorani, a lot was going on within this violent tribe. There had been killings between clans, and more violence expected.
There was also a conflict between two men who each wanted to marry a young woman. She had tried to leave the village to get help from the missionaries.
Steve: So the old man in the group kept pointing their anger at my dad and his four friends so that they wouldn’t kill each other. He said, “Hey, wait a minute, if we’re going to kill anybody, let’s kill the foreigners.”
I remember my mom calling me into her room and telling me that my dad wasn’t coming back. I was just dumbfounded. I couldn’t imagine. This was total nonsense. Of course my dad is coming back!
Elisabeth: Jim Elliot wrote in his diary, when he was 22, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Steve: It might seem like Jim Elliot and Nate Saint and Roger and Pete and Ed were super-Christians, but they weren’t. They were just common, ordinary men, and their five wives were common, ordinary women, who distinguished themselves by their willingness to be used by God.
Elisabeth:There is nothing worth living for unless it’s worth dying for.
Steve: We have way underestimated the key role that the five widows played. I watched them, and you know, they were sad, for sure; I mean, those were very somber days in our home. But I never, ever heard any of them even suggest, quietly, that God may have made a mistake, or even that they had made a mistake.
Elisabeth: There is a mystery here, but it is not unprecedented. Go back to Hebrews 11. Following all those wonderful, triumphant accounts, we read, “Others were tortured.” They faced jeers and flogging, fetters and prison bars. “They were stoned; they weresawed in two” (vv. 35-37 NIV). Talk about endurance!
Is it worth it? How many things can you think of that are worth suffering for?
Leslie: In the meantime, the Huaorani people were feeling regret. They knew that some of the missionaries had guns but chose not to shoot their attackers. On Huaorani woman who was tired of the killing had already escaped and was spending time with Nate’s sister Rachel.
And remember the old man in the village who said, “Let’s kill the foreigners”? His wife and some other women escaped and found their way to Elisabeth Elliot.
These grieving missionary women shared the truth of God’s Word in these new relationships. Eventually they were invited into the village to explain the Bible to this murderous tribe.
Steve: When they got in and started living with the tribe, the tribe wanted to know all about Waengongi [God] and how the world was created. And when Aunt Rachel finally told them about Waengongi, she said, “Waengongi the Creator does not see it well that people should kill other people.”
When they found out that He didn’t want them to kill, it gave them an excuse to stop the killing. Almost immediately, a few of the warriors said, “We’re not going to spear anymore.” Then more, seeing that they had given up their vendettas, decided to do the same.
You have to understand, anyone who said, “I’m not going to kill anymore,” was just a prime target for any of their enemies to come and kill them. So they did that at the risk of their lives. But probably 90% of the killing, at least within the groups that were contacted, virtually stopped.
Leslie: Then many of the people realized that their hearts needed to change. Steve Saint and his family continued to live among the Huaorani for decades, watching God transform lives.
Steve: I have Minkaye, one of the men who killed my dad and the others—in fact, theman that, from the accounts that they’ve told me, actually did, in fact, spear my dad to death—is living at our house now. He’s up from the jungles because we’re going to be doing a short speaking tour together.
We love him; our children love him. Our grandkids absolutely love him. They call him Kaye; his name is Minkaye, but they call him Kaye. They just go right to him, and he carries them around and plays with them.
He is a different man. It is impossible to imagine that he lived with killing as a way of life. That is not just a decision not to kill anymore; that is a change of heart. Minkaye is a wonderful example of that.
Elisabeth: How many things can you think of that are worth living for? I want you to listen, ladies and gentlemen, young men, young women: There is nothing worth living for unless it’s worth dying for. Have you made up your mind?
Nancy: Elisabeth Elliot, the widow who forgave those who killed her husband, has gone on to influence generations of women through her many books and through the radio program that many of you listened to years ago called Gateway to Joy. My friend Kim Wagner describes the influence Elisabeth had in her life:
Kim Wagner: She was one of the first women that I heard that actually combined the truth of the Word of God and living all-out for Christ. I made sure I heard her radio program every day.
Nancy: Author Mary Kassian owes a lot to this missionary as well:
Mary Kassian: I remember actually hearing Elisabeth Elliot on the radio, writing down the quote she said, pasting it in my office . . . and it hung there for ten years, I bet—this little quote. The particular quote that I had was that “It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than resentful over what is withheld. One or the other becomes a way of life.” Cultivating an attitude of gratitude.
Nancy: When Elisabeth stopped producing her program, Gateway to Joy, a new program was needed to take its place. That’s when Revive Our Hearts was launched. So we’ve been deeply affected by the ministry and legacy of Elisabeth Elliot as well.
Today we’re going to listen to a message that Elisabeth delivered at a conference back in 2000 called “Building Strong Families in Your Church.” I was at that conference, and I was privileged to hear Elisabeth speak at a special session for women.
She begins by talking about the need for leaders . . . and followers.
Elisabeth: As Shakespeare says, “If two men ride on a horse, one must ride behind.”
Is there a difference between men and women? Is it merely physiological, or does it go much deeper?
Thirty years ago, women were eager to achieve status with men. Child rearing was no longer a preoccupation but an improvisation. Almost one-half of marriages were divorced (this was thirty years ago; I think things have gotten worse since then). The number women in prison tripled. Drugs increased, so that one in four pregnant women were on drugs.
The senior vice president of J. Walter Thompson said, “There’s not a woman anywhere who made it in business who is not tough, self-centered, and enormously aggressive. One who is nurturing, sacrificing, and peaceable undermines the struggle for equality.”
The feminist movement profaned sexuality. It treated as meaningless that which is loaded with theological meaning, and insisted on perfect equality with men.
Well, we might say, what else is new? But where did this notion of equality come from?
You know the answer. The Garden of Eden is where it started. What was it that happened there?
In the very first chapter of Genesis, we have four things that God did: We are created by God, we are made in His image, we are placed under moral responsibility, and we are equally objects of grace.
But in Genesis 2, we find this elaborated, and it’s very clear that Eve was created to be ahelper. But this “helper” took over, didn’t she? And she thought that God’s rule was certainly not to be listened to, so she decided to take things into her own hands.
She talked with Satan. Satan suggested that God was trying to cheat them out of a very good thing, so she decided to go with what Satan had to say.
In effect, she said to her husband, “You don’t have to listen to what God says. We can do our own thing.” What happened? Well, Adam wimped out.
My father told a story about a preacher who was preaching. He was talking about the difference between Adam and Eve, and what happened in the Garden. At some point in his talk, he said, “Where would man be without woman!” A voice from the back said, “In the Garden of Eden.”
Well, we were meant to be helpers. We were meant to be “sub-ordinant.” And that is a great blessing, that we are not given the requirements which are so stringent on the men. I thank God that the buck stops with Lars Gren; it does not stop with Elisabeth. That gives me freedom and joy.
Dr. Henry Krabbendam said, “The book of Genesis shows an irresponsible tendency in the husband to be irresponsible, and an irresponsible tendency in the wife to be dominating.” I think, in our heart of hearts, we know that that’s true. We do have an itch to dominate—probably all of us.
There me some very godly, sweet, quiet, “shrinking violets” here this morning who would certainly say that you have never been aware of any irrepressible tendency to be dominating. But you’re looking at a woman who has had three husbands, and they were very, very different husbands.
Jim Elliot lasted 27 months. Then 13 years went by. I certainly never expected to be married again. I thought it was a miracle I got married the first time, because I was not a girl who was sought after by the guys. I was tall—way too tall in my class. I was shy. (People have since explained to me that shyness is just one way of thinking about yourself, and that’s not a good thing.)
But miraculously, after 13 years of widowhood, Addison Leitch came along. He was a wonderful man. His wife had died. He had three daughters. He was a professor Tarkio College in Missouri. He and I had four and a half years, and he died of cancer.
So now, you’ve seen Number Three; I do trust that he is the last. He and I have had 22 years.
But these same principles come up again and again. There are typically compliant men who seem to be willing to take a backseat in churches. There are women who are delighted to take positions of leadership in churches.
Well, as Tim Bayley put it, “It’s no secret that the evangelical church has declined in faithfulness to God’s Word the past couple of decades. And it’s my conviction that this area of manhood and womanhood is one of the clearest examples of this decay.”
Eve became powerful in a way that Adam wasn’t. She was what we might call a take-charge woman. And we’ve been in a mess ever since.
She said, in effect, “I AM SOMEBODY. I will not be dependent. I have my rights. I belong in a higher place. I refuse subordination.” And it comes to a grab for power.
C. S. Lewis said, “No man who says, ‘I am as good as you,’ believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept, and therefore resents.”
That’s a perfect description of Eve. She took things into her own hands, and she was going to do it the way it ought to be done, and she was going to drag Adam into it. And Adam said, “If that’s what the little lady wants, that’s what the little lady’s gonna get,” and we’ve been in a mess ever since!
Nancy: Well, if we’re honest, each of us would have to admit that we have some Eve-like tendencies in our own hearts. Elisabeth Elliot has been helping us to recognize those temptations. She’ll be back tomorrow with hope for those who don’t want to act like Eve.
But even today, would you ask yourself, “Is there some situation right now where I’m trying to take matters into my own hands, rather than humbly and patiently trusting God for the solution?” Would you take that matter to God right now? Recognize that He is in control, and that ultimately He won’t do anything except for your good and His glory.
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.
Elisabeth Elliot: “You are loved with an everlasting love”—that’s what the Bible says—“and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
Leslie: Ten years ago, Elisabeth Elliot introduced her program:
Elisabeth: This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot.
Leslie: Then introduced some guests:
Elisabeth: I’m talking today with my friend Bob Lepine.
Bob Lepine: Also in the studio with us is Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Hello, Nancy.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Hi, Bob, and Elisabeth. It’s good to be with both of you.
Leslie: Nancy, along with Bob and a team of people were developing a new radio program. Gateway To Joy was about to cease production, and this new program was about to inherit its time slot on the radio.
The program that was getting ready to launch ten years ago is the one you’re listening to now. This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday, August 31.
Elisabeth Elliot has encouraged women for decades. She boldly proclaims the truth, and she’s also boldly lived out the truth she proclaims. She’s faithfully served in dangerous jungles as a missionary, and she’s faithfully served in her home as a wife.
Over the next three days, we’ll hear practical wisdom from Elisabeth Elliot. We’ll be listening to parts of interviews recorded for the radio program Gateway To Joy. These aired ten years ago in the final days before the program ceased production.
Elisabeth and her co-host Lisa Barry were introducing their audience to Nancy Leigh DeMoss. You’ll also hear from Bob Lepine, the co-host of FamilyLife Today, and at the time he was getting ready to help Nancy launch a new program called Revive Our Hearts.
So, here’s Bob, Nancy, Elisabeth Elliot, and Lisa Barry recorded ten years ago forGateway To Joy.
Lisa Barry: I’d like to ask both you, Elisabeth and Nancy, why a quiet time is important to you and to your faith?
Elisabeth: My father set the example for us in that he got up at 5:00 in the morning, and I do the same thing when I’m at home. It’s impossible sometimes to keep a schedule when we’re traveling, but when we’re home, we go to bed usually before 9:00. Sometimes we go to bed at 8:30 and just read in bed, but almost always we turn the light off at 9:00.
People would say, “What a boring life you must live! You never go any place, you never do anything.”
Of course, we don’t feel the least bit bored. We feel greatly blessed. My father would always say to people who said to him, “How in the world do you ever get up at 5:00?” He’d say, “You have to start the night before.”
Nancy: That sounds so much like my father!
Elisabeth: It’s that simple. Yes, you have to start the night before.
There is something very wonderful about it. The Bible says that Jesus got up a great while before day, and He went up into the mountain to converse with His Father. Why shouldn’t we imitate Him in that way?
Nancy: We children laugh affectionately about my dad saying to company in our home in the evening, “You all be sure and lock the doors and turn out the lights when you leave,” and he would excuse himself because it was so important to him to get to bed at an hour that he knew he needed to be if he was going to be up and meeting with the Lord.
And he was every single day from the first year he came to know the Lord till the day he went home to be with the Lord 28 years later. It was not something legalistic for him. He had a motto: “No Bible reading, no breakfast,” and no other reading before reading the Scripture. He really reverenced the Word of God.
To this day I have followed his pattern. I find it difficult to put anything on top of the Bible. Not because the physical pages here are anything sacred, but it’s just out of reverence for the Word of God.
What an example for us growing up in that home to know that before we were awake, our dad had been up meeting the Lord. Though he was a very busy businessman, that was the number one priority of his day. He could have sooner skipped meals, which he did not skip—he was a man of great routine. He ate three meals a day, at the same time every day. But he could have sooner skipped all that than not have that appointment with the Lord. It really was the foundational thing in his own life and has become that in my own life.
Lisa: Did your parents share that kind of commitment to devotional time?
Elisabeth: Well, I’ve told you about my father. He was on his knees with his Bible, praying, long before we came down to breakfast.
My mother had her quiet time after breakfast and when we’d left for school. She didn’t get up at 5:00 as my father did. She probably got up at 6:30 or so because we had breakfast usually around 7:00.
Lisa: How do you handle dry times? When you’re reading God’s Word, and you want to get a spiritual blessing from what you’re reading, but it’s just all falling flat, what do you do?
Elisabeth: Well, there certainly are times when I feel as though I’m wasting my time or it’s fallen flat, but the best thing, I guess, is just to lift it up to the Lord.
I do start my quiet time, not with my Bible, but with the ancient praise song. It is a song of praise way back from the third century or something. It begins with, “We praise Thee, O God. We acknowledge Thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting. To Thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein.”
It’s a long prayer, but it sets the tone for the rest of my quiet time. Then I take my Bible reading, and following the Bible reading, I pray. I have lists that I pray for different days of the week, and, of course, special lists for things that have just come in.
Undoubtedly, I would say that it’s because of our father’s constant, perfectly regular quiet time that he had, and he encouraged all of us to do the same.
Nancy: I think there are dry times. Really, that’s not also bad in the sense that it requires us to walk by faith, and faith pleases God. The Christian life, ultimately, is not about feelings. It is about faith.
We cannot see Him face to face now, as we one day will, so we are forced at times to just acknowledge by faith that He is God and He is present in our praise and in our worship and in the Word.
As Elisabeth indicates, she opens her quiet time with that prayer, there’s a prayer that I have prayed for many years before opening the Word in the morning that has helped me be more tuned to the presence of God in the Word. It’s taken from a number of different verses in the Psalms, but I pray:
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in Your Law. Give me understanding, and I will keep Your Law, and I will obey it with all my heart. Show me Your ways, O Lord. Teach me Your paths. Guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long. That which I see not, teach Thou me. If I’ve done iniquity, I will do no more.
It’s interesting. I find that as I pray that prayer from my heart, the Lord really does answer it. My spirit is quickened within me, and I’m really saying in effect, “Lord, You speak to me, and whatever You say, by Your grace, I will obey.”
I’m actually, in effect, handing God a blank sheet of paper, signing my name to it and then asking Him to fill in His will in the details, rather than saying, “Once I see what I see here, if I like it, I will live it out.”
I’m committing myself in advance to say, “Yes, Lord,” to whatever He says. And then He does come and meet with me through His Word.
But I will say that even in the days when I find myself trudging through, maybe the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles, which is just lots of lists of names—and I do believe, by the way, that all those passages are valuable and important and inspired and necessary in our walk with God. But with some of them it’s a little harder to see what all the significance is. But even in those times, I liken it to our physical eating habits.
Not every meal is a great feast. When I’m home, I eat a cereal mixture for breakfast. It’s just not the most wonderful meal, but I know that over the course of time a balanced, nutritious diet is going to leave me in better physical condition. I know that over the course of time, the regular habit of intake of the Word into my life, of setting aside that time to be quiet and still before the Lord, is going to reap spiritual benefits in my relationship with the Lord.
And I might add, the purpose of the quiet time, ultimately, is not for how it benefits me anyway. Ultimately, it’s for my allegiance and my loyalty, surrender, and submission to God and for His glory.
He says in the Word that He wants to see our face, and He wants to hear our voice. So really, whether we feel like it or not, whether it’s meaningful to us or not, in taking that quiet time, we’re obeying God and saying, “I will let You see my face, and I will let You hear my voice.”
Lisa: Elisabeth, there are many young mothers out there who have not a clue about how to raise godly children. Can you give some insight on where they might begin the process?
Elisabeth: I had a wonderful father and mother, and they raised (I think I can honestly say) godly children. In as much as there’s a whole lot of things to start learning when you’re small children, I think we pretty much did learn the things that they agonized over and taught us to do, but the example is the most important thing of all.
The children are very keen watchers of what parents do, and any slightest deviation or any slip, the child is going to recognize that and think, “Well, this may be a place where I can get away with something or do something without being caught.”
We were seldom caught. We were seldom bold enough to go against our parents’ wishes about anything. We knew what the rules of the house were. When we got to be teenagers, it was very clear that we had to be home at a certain time. If we were not home at that time, then there would be consequences.
I think our parents were very gentle generally and very strict at the same time. We knew that what they said, they meant, and they didn’t have to say it twice.
Lisa: Is that not true now? Do you think parents nowadays are not calling their children to accountability?
Elisabeth: Yes. I hear an awful lot of young parents who just throw up their hands and say, “Well, they’re just kids.” Well, what does that mean—“just kids”? Kids can learn. They can learn from day one practically.
I can remember being with Val when her first child was born, and it was very clear the first day that that boy was determined to run his parents. He was making a tremendous racket about everything. My brother Tom says that when his son was born, he went in there, and his son was thrusting his fists at heaven in defiance of what his father was about to do.
Well, we had lunch just last Sunday, I guess. It was at a military base, and there was a family sitting near our table, and they had absolutely no control over the children. The kids were racing around, going up to the table where the sweets were and helping themselves, and the parents were completely occupied with talking to other people, just paying no attention.
The attitude just seems to be hunched shoulders and rolled eyes, and, “Well, they’re just kids.” What do you mean, “Just kids”?
Lisa: Isn’t it interesting, we talk about how amazing it is that children can learn the English language, that they learn so much at school, yet sometimes when it comes to obedience to parents, they suddenly can’t learn apparently as well as what we had just given them credit for in academics.
Nancy: I think, too, for parents to realize that the way they handle these issues of authority is teaching their children a view of God. For parents to allow their children to be in control and not to lovingly make the children understand that the parents are the ones who have been given by God this responsibility, it creates a view of God that means we can run God. Ultimately, parents are really the first ones who can and ought to teach children the fear of the Lord in a sense of a reverential awe.
It was unthinkable, growing up in my family, to willfully disobey my parents. Our parents dealt also with attitudes. I can remember my dad having quite a conversation with me at one point about my attitude as a teenager toward my mother in a particular instance. I’m so thankful now that they said, in effect—this was not harsh; it was not in any way abusive, but firm and loving, as Elisabeth has said—saying, “This is not how it will be in our home. You cannot have that attitude. You cannot respond that way.”
That gave boundaries. I think the human heart craves boundaries. Wherever the boundaries are, we’re going to push against them, but the human heart needs boundaries because we are born rebels and need to be restrained until the Holy Spirit comes to live within us and provides that internal restraint.
Another area related to this whole thing of children developing a heart for God that my parents felt was so important—I would be interested, Elisabeth, in knowing how this took place in your home—but they really believed in the importance of protecting and determining the environment to which your children are exposed. So there were many aspects of culture around us, even in those days (which I realize there are different issues we’re facing today) but they determined what books we were going to be exposed to, what entertainment we’d be exposed to.
We didn’t have a television in our home. We didn’t carry a newspaper. You could think this was a very narrow, legalistic home. To the contrary; there was a lot of activity, a lot of joy, a lot of energy and exchange and dialogue. Amazingly, we read, and we talked, and we did things so many families don’t do because they’re glued to the television set and going in all different directions at the same time.
There was a conscious, determined effort to control what we would be exposed to, believing that children ought to be raised in a greenhouse. They’re not to be put outside to be thrown to the elements, to the world’s philosophies and behaviors.
My parents did allow me to go off to a secular university on the other side of the country when I was in my late teens. I lived with a Christian family, but I was now on my own and could do a lot of things I wanted to do.
My parents knew by that time there was a sense of the fear of the Lord that even though they weren’t there, I had a consciousness of the presence of God that was going to take me through those experiences.
Lisa: Getting back to the sheltered home that you thought was so important, when I tell people that I home school, one of the objections they immediately come up with is that I’m doing harm to my children by sheltering them from what they call “the real world.” You’re talking about that protective state at home. Is that really what’s happening?
Nancy: Yes, you are sheltering your children from the world that is out there, that is not thinking and living God’s way. Now, the question is: Is that wrong? Well, it all depends on what your objective is for your children.
Do you want your children to be like the world? Children are great mimics. Do you want them to adopt the world’s heart and philosophy?
I see these parents with teenage children throwing up their hands in the air saying, “My child loves all this awful music, has these wrong friends, has these wrong values, is not committed to moral purity, is into addictive behavior. What can I do?”
My thinking is: “Now is not the time to be asking that question.” Obviously, there can be grace that can restore at whatever point parents come to faith, but from the earliest infancy is the time to create in those children an appetite for that which is holy and righteous and good.
The goal is not to equip the children to fit into this world. Your goal for your children, Lisa, is, I’m sure, as I know Elisabeth’s was for Valeria, and my parents’ goal was for me: that we would go out into the world to be reflectors of the heart and the spirit of Jesus. Not to be like the world. Not to fit into it. Not to survive in it. But to change it.
Bob Lepine: Nancy, I was thinking about the fact that young girls growing up today . . . My daughter was born in 1981. All she’s ever known is a culture that says, “You should find your self-worth and your satisfaction outside the home.” That’s been the dominant message, and for her to hear anything else sounds completely counter-cultural.
Nancy: I do think the revolution has been very pervasive. In fact, we really have had something very precious stolen from us. Think of Elisabeth’s book years ago, Let Me Be a Woman. That has been such a wonderful watch cry, I think, for women who are now growing up and want just the privilege of being a woman—not to have to be something that God didn’t make them to be.
So God really has used Elisabeth as an older woman to minister to those of us in the next generation who are now ministering to the next generation, saying, “It’s okay, and it’s not only okay. It’s precious; it’s beautiful; it’s wonderful to embrace your womanhood and your call to the home.”
Bob Lepine: I have to tell you, I spent a little time recently as a homemaker. My wife had the opportunity to go with her mother on an extended trip, and I said, “I’d love for you to do that, honey. I’ll stay home with the children.”
Well, after I had twelve days of being a homemaker, I can understand where somebody could come along at the end of the twelve days and say, “Find fulfillment somewhere else.” Because, as you said, Elisabeth, the chores, the tedium of ironing and washing clothes doesn’t take long before you go, “Is this all there is to life?”
Elisabeth: I really do believe that every experience, if offered to Jesus, is our gateway to joy. The experience may be taking care of a sick grandfather or taking care of the child who is perhaps going to be lame for life, washing the dishes, and, of course, every now and then the dishwasher or stove or something else goes on the blink. You just want to throw your hands up and think, “How did I ever get into this mess?”
There’s something about laundry and godliness, the willingness to do the humble, ordinary thing, which needs to be done. Why shouldn’t it be done by me?
The older I get, the more I appreciate the privilege of having laundry to do, dishes to wash, houses to clean. If we could only realize that all of these which are incumbent upon us and required, when they’re offered to Jesus, they really are transformed. There’s something totally transforming about it.
When you think of that little Mary—I always think of her as being somewhere between 12 and 14 years old—she didn’t have any quibble. She said, “Behold, I’m the handmaiden of the Lord. Let it happen as you say, or be it done to me according to thy Word.”
In modern English, “Anything You say, Lord, here I am. Do anything You want with me.”
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.
Leslie Basham: Elisabeth Elliot sometimes receives letters from women that say something like this.
Elisabeth Elliot: “I submit to my husband as long as he’s being nice to me,” or, “as long as he’s right.” Of course, women 99% of the time think he’s not right. There’s something askew somewhere.
Leslie: You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, June 11.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Yesterday we heard Part One of a message from a woman who has been greatly used of God. Through her books, her radio program, and her life itself, she has influenced thousands of women over a span of fifty years. For one example, here’s speaker and author Jennifer Rothschild:
Jennifer Rothschild: I’m so appreciative of Elisabeth Elliot because as a woman in ministry, though I never have met her personally, she has been a far-off mentor to me. Though I have read most of her books, the one book that impacted me the most is calledThese Strange Ashes. I found it at a used bookstore on audio cassette tape, and she read it herself.
I remember listening to her voice as she told her story. I believe it was just a year that she was there in the jungle before she married her husband. She was just very honest. She was really honest about the struggles she was having, being a little disappointed with other co-workers, being a little disappointed with herself, struggling maybe even with some disappointment toward God.
Listening to that woman of God tell her story, and of course with such beautiful, eloquent language, has always been an encouragement to me. It is the rattiest, most torn-up cassette case, and I will treasure it until my dying day because Elisabeth Elliot—a woman of faith, a woman of integrity, a woman of consistency—has encouraged me to follow behind her in ministry and to be a woman of faith, a woman of consistency, and a woman of integrity. I will always be grateful for her.
Nancy: We’re all about to learn from Elisabeth Elliot. Yesterday she explored the sin of Eve: the desire to do things my way rather than God’s way. We’re going to pick back up on that message today, contrasting Eve with a New Testament woman who said, “Yes, Lord.”
Elisabeth: There are some very sharp contrasts here—an aggressive woman, and a little village maiden to whom an angel appeared. So I have two columns here—this aggressive woman on one side, and then on the other side, this little village maiden.
I love to think about Mary [see Matthew 1 and Luke 1-2 for her story], wondering what exactly she might have been doing in that very humble home in Nazareth. Maybe sweeping the floor, maybe weaving, maybe making bread or something.
Scholars tell us that she would not have been older than fourteen years old, probably between twelve and fourteen, because that was the time at which most Jewish girls would be betrothed. Of course we know that she was at that time betrothed to Joseph.
Suddenly there’s this dazzling visitor who has a staggering piece of news: that she was to become the mother of the Son of God. She had one simple, obvious question: How can this be? I’m not even married.
Then, of course, the angel gives her the statement that she would be “overshadowed,” and she would bear a child by the Holy Spirit. I’ve often wondered if she was tempted to talk to Joseph about that, to say anything at all. Because we know that Joseph naturally took it for granted that she had been unfaithful to him
The Bible tells us that he was an honorable man, but he had to do the one thing that a Jewish man would have to do in a case like that—he was going to put her away quietly. But the Lord took care of that too. He gave Joseph another message, that he was to take Mary as his wife.
Someone suggested that the angel Gabriel might have had to knock on several different doors there in Nazareth before he found somebody that would say yes. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it happen as You say. Beautiful, total self-abandonment to the will of God.
So we have these sharp contrasts—Eve refusing what is given; Mary’s response one of pure receptivity and acceptance.
Eve usurped the not-given. Mary relinquished her own plans.
Eve said, “Be it unto me according to my word,” in effect. It’s not written that way in the book of Genesis, but that really was what she was saying, wasn’t it? Be it unto me according to my word.
Mary said, “Be it unto me according to thy word.”
Eve said, “My will be done, and I’m going to drag Adam into it.” Mary said, “Thy will be done.”
Eve was acting on her lower nature, which leads to death. Mary was acting on her spiritual nature, which brought life to the world.
Eve was independent. She was going to do her own thing. She was going to do it her way.
Mary was dependent. “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.” Here I am, Lord—all of me for You forever. Do anything You want with me. Do anything You want with me.
Eve was going to do “my thing.” Mary was given to God’s thing.
Eve was ambitious. Mary surrendered.
Eve had a spirit of opposition. Mary’s was a spirit of cooperation.
Eve showed us the one principle of hell, which is: I AM MY OWN. I am going to do my own thing. Nobody is going to tell me what to do.
And probably in our heart of hearts, every one of us in some form or other has said that, just like Eve. One principle of hell: I am my own.
But Mary’s was total self-abandonment. She couldn’t possibly know all it was going to entail because of this staggering piece of news. But we do know that just a week later [after Jesus’ birth], when she and Joseph went to take the baby up to the temple, old Simeon pointed out that she was going to have a sword pierce her heart.
When you read carefully the story of Mary, there’s very little about her; but the more you plumb the depths of what she had to face, the more I’m convinced that there were many more than just one great sorrow.
When you have that wonderful little package of your first child, it’s so thrilling, so marvelous. It doesn’t take very long to be suddenly smitten with the tremendous responsibility that is placed upon us.
So she had given herself completely. She said, “Be it unto me according to thy word.” She bore, deep down in her womanliness, the mystery of charity.
There’s a beautiful hymn—I wish I could remember the title of the hymn—that has a line in it which we sing in our church at least once a year or so. “Let my soul, like Mary, be Thine earthly sanctuary.”
That applies to every single one of us. I do believe that God gives us the privilege of being His earthly sanctuary when He comes to live in our hearts.
The more you think about it, the more incredible it is, isn’t it? The Lord of the universe, the One who created the stars and everything else, becoming a helpless baby and growing up like a little boy. He must have skinned His knee many a time.
We know that when He was twelve years old, He was very wise. He had been given wisdom then by His Father. But you know that that was a situation which was very hard for Mary and Joseph.
They said, “We sought you sorrowing. Where have you been?” Of course, He had been staggering the experts in the law when he was only twelve.
Now, number three, let men be men and women be women for the glory of God. Are we competitive with our husbands?
Well, you’re looking at a woman who was born competitive. I was a debater in high school, a debater in college. I won the championship with Elizabeth Rice Hanfdord, that woman who wrote that wonderful little book called Me? Obey Him?
Elizabeth and I were debate colleagues together, and her husband was in the same class with Jim Elliot. Elizabeth and I won the championship of the northwest.
I look back and think, “Lord, I don’t know why You let me do things like that.” It was wonderful. It was fun. But this idea of competition is very strong in me. I have four brothers and one sister, and I’ve always been trying to best my brothers.
But when I think about my mother, I think of what a lovely example of the opposite she was. There was never any pulling and hauling between my mother and my father.
My father absolutely adored my mother. Every evening as he would come back from work, we would hear the squeak of the front door, and then we would hear my father’s little chickadee call. He was a bird man, and he could imitate to perfection sixty different bird calls. But the one he had chosen for my mother was the chickadee.
So we would hear the scrape of the door, and then we would hear his little whistle of the chickadee. Then we would hear my mother’s much-less-than-perfect answer from the kitchen.
My father’s was sort of like this [whistles], and my mother would answer [whistle]. We knew he was home and that he had gone to the kitchen and undoubtedly taken her into his arms and given her a big kiss.
But I don’t think my mother thought about these things. I’ve often thought, “Why didn’t I ask my mother a few questions about these things?”
I was so independent that I don’t think it ever crossed my mind to ask her what her relationship was like with my father. But I know that my father absolutely adored the ground that she walked on.
And she was willing—there wasn’t any question in her mind, I’m sure, that she was to be a helper and a lover and a giver and a bearer and a vessel unto honor for her husband.The central call of our femininity, ladies, is mothering. That applies whether we are mothers in the biological sense or not.
I’m assuming that there are undoubtedly a lot of single women here today. We are all meant to be mothers—spiritual mothers. I am so greatly blessed by a good many spiritual mothers in my own life, and I wish I had time to tell you more about those.
One of those dear, spiritual women was an old, humpbacked, completely deaf, absolutely penniless lady. Her name was Mrs. Kershaw. Somehow or other my mother found her and discovered that Mrs. Kershaw would love to come and live in our house and just do any menial task that needed to be done.
I wonder, where are these old women now? Well, you’re looking at one of them. I’m a very old woman. Mrs. Kershaw was probably just about the age that I am now. I happen to be 73. She had this great humpback and she was totally deaf.
When Mrs. Kershaw arrived at the Howard home every morning—one of us would have to go in the car and pick her up and bring her back—she had one thing in mind: How can I bless the Howard family? And she never stopped smiling.
She would bend over the kitchen sink—back in those days the sink was low, and she had this big humped back. And she had this old-fashioned contraption that was supposed to help her with her hearing, but she had to unscrew the thing, and then she had to stick it in our mouth, practically, in order for us to shout to her.
But she never, ever stopped smiling. She made thousands of brown sugar cookies, and she made thousands of gallons of applesauce, and she ironed and she cleaned and she cooked.
I just think, “If old women would be willing to do something like that for the younger women who are so harried and so helpless, wouldn’t it be marvelous?” Well, I hope there will be somebody here whose heart God may have touched. She loved God, and she loved us. Dear Mrs. Kershaw.
When we play down or obscure or devaluate or in any other way ignore the God-given distinctions between the sexes, we violate our real glory as vehicles of the glory of God. We should be thankful that we have a subordinate position, because the buck stops with the men, not with you and me. All we have to do is submit and obey.
You can imagine that there are a great many women who have written me letters saying, “I submit to my husband as long as he’s being nice to me,” or, “as long as he’s right.” Of course, women 99% of the time think he’s not right. There’s something askew somewhere.
And then I think of some of the other godly women. Ruth Ritchie was my next-door neighbor when I was nine years old. We moved from Philadelphia to New Jersey, and I was very homesick and didn’t have any friends.
Ruth Ritchie lived next door. She was about fifteen. She became a spiritual mother to me.
Of course, Ruth never in her wildest dreams would have used those words. She would never have dreamed that’s what she was to me, and I didn’t think of it at that time. But years later I thought back over what that woman did in my life—a fifteen-year-old, sweet Christian girl who saw that this lonely nine-year-old, skinny, helpless child needed to be cheered up.
I saw her years and years later, probably fifty years later. She came to hear me speak, and someone told me that she was in the audience. So I had the opportunity to see her again, and I said, “Ruth, I’ve been talking about you all over the country.” She didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, but she had been a spiritual mother.
I think of my dear Aunt Anne. My father had two sisters, both of them spinsters. Our family was blessed by Aunts Anne and Alice. We loved having them come to us, and we loved going to their house. I don’t remember a word of self-pity from either one of them, wishing that they had had husbands.
Then, when I was a student at Wheaton College, it just so happened that I was in the dormitory of which Miss Cumming was the dorm mother. I got to know Miss Cumming partly because she taught our Sunday school class, and she and I used to walk to Sunday school together. As I got to know her better, I would go in and pour out my troubles and trials and tribulations to her.
She was a short little dumpy lady from Georgia. She had come from a very, very wealthy family that had white columns in the front of the house and servants in the back. But she was completely taken out of the family’s legacy.
She would have received an enormous amount of money, but because she became a Christian, they cut her out. I never did find out what in the world she did for a living before she came to Wheaton College; she was in her late fifties at least when she came to Wheaton.
But I knew that this lady had had a very different kind of background. I used to come and pour out my troubles and tribulations to her every once in a while, and once in a while she would give me a little hint as to something that she was dealing with.
She told me one day, “Oh, Betty, I came to Wheaton to be a spiritual counselor, but here I am carrying mops and toilet paper across the campus.” You know, that had a tremendous influence in my life, because she was indeed a spiritual counselor; but she was also willing, in spite of her background, to carry mops and toilet paper across the campus, which was certainly not her job description.
People didn’t have job descriptions in those days anyway, but it was somebody else, certainly, who was supposed to carry the mops and toilet paper but had not done it. That made a deep impression on me because I knew the kind of background she came from, and I knew that this woman had humbled herself.
Years later, when I went to visit her with my second husband, in her retirement home in Florida, I reminded her of what she had said to me that day. She looked up at me again and said, “Oh, Betty, did I really say that?”
I said, “Yes, that’s exactly what you said.”
She said, “Oh, Betty, just think of the mercy of God, that He allowed me to carry mops and toilet paper for His glory.”
Of course, I told her what that had meant in my life. Servanthood—the willingness to play second fiddle; the willingness to do whatever needs to be done at any time.Of course, that’s what mothers are for isn’t it?
Any mother—married or single, with children or not with children—we are meant to be mothers in the world. We are meant to be spiritual mothers, as well as biological mothers if God gives us that privilege.
I have one more person I want to tell you about. Dr. Virginia Blakesley was a missionary in Africa years ago. I heard her speak when I was a teenager at a conference. She told some hair-raising stories about the escapes she’d had from various tribal groups.
The thing that never left my mind was the intensity with which she quoted the verse from Isaiah: “The Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (Isa. 50:7 KJV).
I can still see her leaning over that pulpit, with tears running down her face, a single woman for God. When I went to Ecuador, there were over seventy single women missionaries in Ecuador, which is a small country, and there were two single men. One of them married a national. The other one is still not married. So, that’s just the way things are nowadays.
I want to close with a passage from Philippians: “[Let us remember the attitude of the Lord Jesus]: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place” (Phil. 2:5-9 NIV).
Nancy: Amen. Elisabeth Elliot has been pointing us to the humble, self-sacrificing example of Jesus. As women, we’re called to live out those Christlike qualities in some uniquely feminine ways. Elisabeth Elliot has been showing us some of those.
She’s shown us what it looks like to serve God by following the leaders He’s put in place. She’s also shown us what it means to mother the next generation, whether we’re married or single, whether we have biological children or not.
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.
Elisabeth Elliot: . . . sinful person. There isn’t anything else to marry. I say that to women all the time. You’ve got to remember, whomever you marry, he’s a sinner. There isn’t anything else to marry.
Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Thursday, September 1.
Are women really any different from men? You’re about to hear an answer from someone who has courageously lived as a true woman of God for decades. When Elisabeth Elliot talks about embracing God’s calling on her life, you can know that she has lived it out in some tough circumstances.
The conversation you are about to hear originally aired 10 years ago on Elisabeth’s radio program, Gateway to Joy. Elisabeth Elliot was passing a baton to Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Along with Elisabeth and Nancy we’ll also hear from the announcer on Gateway to Joy, Lisa Barry. Also, Bob Lepine from FamilyLife Today was helping with this transition. We’ll begin with a question he posed to Elisabeth.
Bob Lepine: Your granddaughter is your name sake, right? Elisabeth: Yes. Bob: Your granddaughter Elisabeth is about to become a young wife. When your daughter Valerie was about to become a young wife, you sat down and . . . Did you start writing a letter and it just turned into a book, or did you plan it would be a book all along?
Elisabeth: Well, I’m sure I wrote her a number of letters, but I felt very strongly that I needed to write a book because I had been reading so much junk that I thought was really useless stuff. Maybe as Valerie’s mother I needed to write a book for her specifically. That was my wedding present to my daughter, and my publisher was kind enough to make a leather bound copy of that for my wedding present for her.
It was really just putting down on paper what undoubtedly I had learned mostly from my own mother. My mother had come from a very wealthy family, actually. They had two maids and a butler, so she never had to do any housework until she married my father who was relatively poor by comparison and they became missionaries in Belgium.
They lived in a fifth floor walk-up, and my father had to lug all the water up the stairs and all the water back down the stairs after it had been used. Things were very, very tight when they were missionaries, and that is where I was born. So it was always in my mind that we didn’t have anything, and I very much remember the Depression. All of you people here in the studio are way too young to know about that, but I am very aware of how tight things were.
There was never a word of complaint from my mother, even though she’d had to step way down from where she had been and my father absolutely adored her. So I am blessed beyond anything anyone could be blessed.
Bob: Her example was the model for you not only in being a wife and a mom but also then in what you passed on to Valerie. Would you change anything today in what you would say to Elisabeth as she heads toward the altar, or would you just hand her another leather bound copy of Let Me Be a Woman and say, “Here, I still believe all of this and more.”
Elisabeth: Yes, Bob. I think that is exactly what I would be inclined to do. To say, “I think I’ve told you everything that I would want to say if you and I could sit down as grandmother and granddaughter. You will find it in my book Let Me Be a Womanbecause I tried to put down all that I had learned from my mother and all that I wanted to pass on to your mother, Elisabeth.” I would hope that she would read it eagerly; I think she will.
Bob: Nancy, you speak to women all across the country. It doesn’t take many women long after they’ve gotten married before they are dissatisfied with what they thought was going to bring them great hope, great joy. Now all of a sudden, it is a source of pain for them. What happens, and what can women do to be back where they want to be in a marriage relationship.
Nancy: I think, Bob, the fact is that whether we’re married or single, with children or childless, at every season of life if we are trying to find fulfillment and contentment and joy through anything or anyone other than Christ Himself, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. So many women today are trying to find joy through their circumstances, but as Elisabeth has taught so many of us as women, joy is a choice, contentment is a choice, and it comes as a result of obedience. It comes through abandon to Christ and surrender to Him.
Our natural flesh tells us if you let go, if you abandon yourself to the will of God you are going to be destined to this life that is too rigorous, too hard, and unbearable. But the truth is, when we hold onto our lives, when we try to pursue our own happiness as our ultimate objective, we’re going to have a truly hard life. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Come to me, take My yoke upon you. Learn from Me. I am meek and humble in spirit” (Matt. 11:29 paraphrased). That is how you find rest for your soul.
Bob: Do you think young women expect too much from marriage today? Nancy: I don’t think it is just young women; I think it is all women and maybe men too. I can’t speak for them, but the fact is that we expect too much from life. We expect it to make me happy. We expect it to satisfy me. The fact is, as believers, it is not about us. It is not about my happiness, my joy, my wellbeing. It is about the glory of God and the kingdom of Christ. The only means to real joy and contentment is to make His glory the supreme objective in my life.
Bob: Elisabeth, I’ve heard you say that it didn’t take long after you were first married to Jim Elliot before you realized that it wasn’t going to be the perfect experience that maybe you had thought it was going to be for the 5 ½ years you corresponded with him and courted with him. What was the wake-up call in the first 24 hours for you?
Elisabeth: Well, I don’t know about the 24 hours. We went to a very fancy hotel in Panama, and we had a wonderful seven days there. I think, then, we went to visit my brother who was living in Costa Rica at that time. I do remember our first home was a tent. A leaky, 16’ x 16’ tent that some well meaning person back in Oregon had given to Jim to take to the wild yonder in South America.
It rained and rained and rained. I will never forget one night when we had tried to patch all the places that needed to be patched. It was pitch dark, and the rain was pouring down, and Jim had gotten so ill with malaria almost as soon as we got there, that he had not even had time to dig the trench around the tent so the water was coming in onto the floor. The bed was sinking down into the mud, and I dropped my pillow into the mud. Jim had used up his battery in his flashlight, and we were trying to find the holes in the roof that were dripping. Well, you can’t use a flashlight in a pitch dark tent to find the holes. This is just not possible; we thought it would be, but it wasn’t.
After he had used up his batteries in his flashlight, he grabbed mine. At that point I just . . . everything fell apart. I screamed at him. I said, “Would you give me back my flashlight!” And he said, “Would you shut your mouth!” And we both burst out laughing, and we just laughed and laughed and laughed. Of course, the bed was sinking down further and further into the mud, and the pillows were falling off. It was a very miserable night I can assure you, and it went on for a long time after that because he continued to have malaria for—I’ve forgotten how long.
I am sure I am not talking to very many people today who have had that exact situation, but maybe you’ve had something much worse. All your childhood and girlhood dreams have burst their bubbles, and it just isn’t anything like what you’ve expected it to be.
I’ve had a lot of letters from young women like that who thought they had learned everything, and they find out they are stuck with a plain, old human being, a sinful person. There isn’t anything else to marry, and I say that to women all the time. You’ve got to remember, whomever you marry, he’s a sinner. There isn’t anything else to marry.
Bob: I’ve also heard you say . . . I think you’ve used the picture of a white shirt with a spot on it. We focus in on the spot when it stands out on the white shirt rather than focusing on the white part. A lot of women need to get their eyes off the spot and onto the white part of their husband, don’t they?
Elisabeth: Yes, and as my second husband had said, maybe 80% is a good number to thank the Lord for. You can spend the rest of your life picking away at the other 20%, and you’re not going to reduce it by very much.
Bob: I find these wonderful quotes from your book, The Music of His Promises, just a real simple statement. You say, “We need to look up and look away from ourselves.” And Nancy, that is part of what women, and men for that matter, need to be called to and need to be reminded of. If our focus is on us it will lead us to misery, won’t it?
Nancy: That is right, Bob. And Elisabeth has so reminded us of the importance of examining what is my goal in life. I love that quote I’ve heard you use a number of times about the wine drunk versus the wine poured out, and we need to examine and see what is it that we are really living for and what matters most to us. Is it for my own personal pleasure and wellbeing or is it to be poured out, to be spent for the sake of the glory of God and the sake of others.
That is the pathway of love. It is a pathway of the cross, the pathway of sacrifice, but it is the pathway to ultimate joy as you have reminded us so many times.
Bob: Can you help us understand what it means to be a woman and how that makes us different from men or should make us different?
Elisabeth: It says in Titus 2, “Teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good” (2:3). Paul goes on to say the older women can train the “younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure” (vv. 4-5). If you’ve been hurt or feel as if your husband has been ignoring you or something like that, where do you take it? Directly to your husband and tear into him? Or do you just take it to the cross and lift it up to the Lord and say, “Lord, You understand this. Help me to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home”? That is where women belong.
My heart goes out to the women who can’t be home. The single women who, of course, have to make their own living, and the women whose husbands require they get a job. I think it is very sad. Why are the husbands not willing to scale way down, get a smaller house, fewer cars, whatever, in order to enable their wives to stay home and take care of their children?
So Paul is talking about being busy at home, to be kind and to be subject to their husbands so that no one will malign the Word of God.
Nancy: As you’re reading that passage from Titus 2, Elisabeth, I am thinking about a very different passage in the Old Testament, Proverbs 7, which describes much more, I think, the contemporary woman. It is talking in that context about an immoral, adulterous woman, but it is interesting how many of the characteristics in Proverbs 7 are much more typical of women today.
I think of that one verse in Proverbs 7 that says “she is loud and boisterous and her feet never stay at home,” (v. 7) which really is the contrast to the kind of role that Paul is giving to us in Titus 2. In a parallel passage in 1 Timothy 5 . . . You remember that passage where Paul is describing what will qualify a widow to be cared for by the church? It gives a number of things that must be true of her life, which seems to me to be the things that we as women ought to be aspiring to in our younger life.
It says, “She has been faithful to her husband. She is well known for her good deeds such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the saints, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds” (vv. 9-10 paraphrased).
Let me back up by saying something else about Proverbs 7. I just quoted one verse out of that passage, but there are many that describe more typical women today. There is a picture in that passage of this woman being the aggressor, the initiator in the relationship with this foolish, simple young man.
There are so many different ways we have this foolish woman described in Proverbs 7. So much not only in our streets today but in our churches even. You ask why it is, and I guess I have two thoughts in relation to that.
First of all, I do believe there is nothing new since the Garden of Eden. That is where we have our first classic role reversal with Eve, with the devil singling out the woman and ignoring her husband who is there with her. But the woman letting this happen and being the one to lead her husband and to feed her husband the forbidden fruit when it was God’s design that the man should be the one doing the leading and the feeding. So in that sense, nothing is new.
In another sense, we have grown up in our generation, at least the women of your age and mine, who have not known anything else other than an environment that has been shaped and determined by feminist thinking. Even those of us in the church today who would not consider ourselves feminist, it is in the air we breathe. The feminist really, when I was being born about that time in the 50s, set out with an agenda with the intent to eradicate the distinctions between men and women.
The shame of it is that we have let them. In the process I believe we’ve had something very precious and beautiful and a gift from God stolen from us. One of my real burdens for my lifetime is that God would allow me to be a part of a counter-Revolution that would take back that which has been taken from us.
Now this isn’t a revolution that means we go and march in the streets or we write letters to Congress. This is a kind of revolution that is going to take place, I believe, by women saying, “I’m willing to be different. I don’t have to fit into the culture. I don’t have to look like all the other women around me. I am willing to let God give to me that quiet and gentle and subordinate spirit.” For us to say, “I am willing to be a different kind of woman,” and in that sense to glorify God.
The passage Elisabeth read in Titus 2 tells us if we don’t, then the Word of God will be blasphemed. People will not know the heart and the character and the ways of God if we don’t take back that true biblical womanhood.
Lisa Barry: Elisabeth, when two people get married, at first they are blind to each other’s flaws. But not long after those flaws are exposed and unfortunately even magnified. Should a wife try to change her husband? Elisabeth: Well, I just happen to have here a wonderful letter from a woman who tried for a long time without much success. She said,
The Lord is penetrating my marriage specifically through my heart attitude towards my husband. I now can have a heart of submission because I can trust God.I have struggled, wondering how to submit when it seems he does not lead. God has shown me how to quiet down, and especially how to notice my husband’s unspoken leadership and my surrender to it. God now lavishes me with blessings by giving my husband thoughts and decisions that are amazingly not his own.
Like his out-of-the-blue desire to go camping as a family this summer. This was something I longed to do, tried to get him to agree to, but gave up trying. My husband is not a gift giver, but on Easter he gave me a very sweet gift that was not just chocolate. It was a thoughtful gift, a particular thing that he knew I would enjoy—very special.
Lisa: A transformed marriage.
Elisabeth: Totally transformed.Lisa: How does transformation take place? If somebody is listening and their marriage they feel is beyond hope . . . You just read that, and they get a glimmer, “Yes, maybe God can transform my marriage.” Where do you start?
Elisabeth: Where to start, I would say, is down on your knees. Golda Meir said, “When you’re at work you think of the children you left at home. At home you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself, your heart is rent.” I am sure that is one of the big problems with so many women who are obliged to go to work. But I have had a number of letters from people, from women who have laid it all before the Lord, and the Lord has changed their husband’s hearts. Their husbands have agreed to scale down in the way they live in order to allow their wives to stay home and take care of the children.
It may mean a very drastic sacrifice, but many letters that have come to me have revealed the joy and the peace that has come through the willingness to forget about the world’s notions of what you have to do, what you have to have, and where you have to go. Nancy: And Elisabeth, aren’t you really talking about the need for a woman to wait on the Lord and to trust in God to do in her husband’s heart what she can’t do. Now the Scripture says that “The king’s heart is in the Lord’s hand. He turns it as the rivers of water whithersoever he will.” (Prov. 21:1 paraphrased).
A wonderful illustration from the Scripture that comes to mind is that of Mary of Nazareth who had this remarkable, never-to-be-repeated visitation from the angel telling her that she was to bear the child, the Son of God. Joseph didn’t have that experience when she did. He didn’t see the angel; he didn’t hear the angel speak. It appears from the passage that he may not have believed her story initially.
He was minded to put her away, to divorce her. He wanted to save her from embarrassment and shame. There is no evidence that Mary took it upon herself to try and convince him that what God had said to her was true.
I think so many times, as women being more sensitive perhaps, we do believe that we may have an insight from the Scripture or a spiritual sense about a matter before the men around us. The dangerous thing is when we make it our job, take it upon ourselves to tell the husband, to tell the pastor, to tell the men in leadership in our churches, “This is the way it is to be. This is what God has told me.” We feel it is our responsibility to get them to see this great truth. Invariably, my observation is that pushes the men further away from wanting to respond to the Lord. Because Mary knew how to ponder things in her heart, to keep them there, to treasure them, to be quiet and to wait on the Lord, in God’s time He sent an angel to Joseph to give the same word. Then Joseph was faithful to believe and to act on what God had shown him. I think it is so hard for us to just wait. We are natural fixers, controllers, manipulators, and we have to fix everything and make it right. God is saying to us, “Wait on Me, and give Me a chance to act in the heart and life of that man.”
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.
Prayer is like incense. It costs a great deal. Sometimes it seems to accomplish little (as we mortals assess things). It soon dissipates. But God likes the fragrance. It was God’s idea to arrange the work of the tabernacle to include a special altar for incense. We can be pretty sure He included all that was necessary and nothing that was unnecessary.
Jesus prayed: He offered thanksgiving, He interceded for others, He made petitions. That the Son—coequal, coeternal, consubstantial with theFather—should come to the Father in prayer is amystery. That we, God’s children, should be notonly permitted but commanded also to come is a mystery. How can we change things by prayer? How can we “move” a sovereign and omnipotent God? We do not understand. We simply obey because it is a law of the universe, as we obey other laws of the universe, knowing only that this is how things have been arranged: the book falls to the floor in obedience to the law of gravity if I let go of it; spiritual power is released through prayer.
I could say, “God can make my hands clean if He wants to,” or I could wash them myself. Chances are God won’t make my hands clean. That’s a job He leaves up to me. His omnipotence is not impaired by His having ordained my participation, whether it be in the washing of hands with soap or the helping of a friend with prayer. Jesus Christ redeemed the world by the laying down of His life, a perfect sacrifice, once for all. Yet He is in the business, as David Redding says, of “maintenance and repair.” He lets us participate with Him in that business by the laying down of our own lives.
One way of laying down our lives is by praying for somebody. In prayer I am saying, in effect, “my life for yours.” My time, my energy, my thought,my concern, my concentration, my faith—here they are, for you. So it is that I participate in thework of Christ. So it is that no work of faith, no labor of love, no smallest prayer is ever lost, but, like the smoke of the incense on the golden altar, rises from the hand of the angel before God.
From the “Notes on Prayer” booklet by Elisabeth Elliot
- Count your troubles, name them one by one–at the breakfast table, if anybody will listen, or as soon as possible thereafter.
- Worry every day about something. Don’t let yourself get out of practice. It won’t add a cubit to your stature but it might burn a few calories.
- Pity yourself. If you do enough of this, nobody else will have to do it for you.
- Devise clever but decent ways to serve God and mammon. After all, a man’s gotta live.
- Make it your business to find out what the Joneses are buying this year and where they’re going. Try to do them at least one better even if you have to take out another loan to do it.
- Stay away from absolutes. It’s what’s right for you that matters. Be your own person and don’t allow yourself to get hung up on what others expect of you.
- Make sure you get your rights. Never mind other people’s. You have your life to live, they have theirs.
- Don’t fall into any compassion traps–the sort of situation where people can walk all over you. If you get too involved in other people’s troubles, you may neglect your own.
- Don’t let Bible reading and prayer get in the way of what’s really relevant–things like TV and newspapers. Invisible things are eternal. You want to stick with the visible ones–they’re where it’s at now.
No other voice than Thine has ever spoken, O Lord, to me– No other words but Thine the stillness broken Of life’s lone sea.
There openeth the spirit’s silent chamber No other hand– No other lips can speak the language tender, Speech of the Fatherland.
- (T.S.M., from Hymns of Ter Steegen and Others, Frances Bevan)
When the Lord punished Israel, Isaiah wrote: “Only then can the fruit of his forgiveness be shown: they must smash their stone altars into pounded chalk” (Is 27:9 JBP).
When I acknowledge a specific sin, it is a good thing to do something specific to demonstrate my determination to forsake it. Smash an altar, sacrifice an hour of sleep or a meal (if the sin has been, e.g., failure to do what I want to do “because I haven’t time”), write a note of apology to one sinned against, make restitution in some way for a wrong. To arise and obey in such a particular act is an appropriate sign of the genuineness of my repentance–the fruit of forgiveness.
“Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity” (1 Cor 13:6 AV). Let us be willing to call iniquity what is really iniquity, rather than to call it weakness, temperament, failure, hangups, or to fall back on the tired excuse, “It’s just the way I am.”
Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a right spirit within me. (Ps 51:10 AV)
It was in prison that Joseph knew the presence of the Lord.
It was in the lion’s den that Daniel’s faith was proved.
It was in the furnace that Daniel’s three friends found themselves accompanied by a fourth.
We have plenty of “proof texts”–but in order to experience their truth we have to be placed in “proof contexts.” The prison, the lion’s den, the furnace are where we are shown the realities, incontestably and forever.
Do you feel nothing of the kind? When did the validity of the Eternal Word rest on the mood of one of His poor children?
Let the promise be the song you sing. He will hear it and make it true for you.
Proverbs 11:13 says, “He who goes abroad as a talebearer reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing hidden."
Jesus sometimes refused to reveal the truth about Himself, even when it would have seemed to us “an opportunity to witness.” He did not always answer questions. He did not always say who He was. He told some of those He healed to tell no one about it.
“For every activity under heaven its time…a time for silence and a time for speech” (Eccl 3:1,7 NEB). “A man of understanding remains silent” (Prv 11:12 RSV).
Lord, deliver me from the urge to open my mouth when I should shut it. Give me the wisdom to keep silence where silence is wise. Remind me that not everything needs to be said, and that there are very few things that need to be said by me.
Have we learned to stand in God’s presence, mouths shut, hearts open? “Lord, what do you want me to do?” We must be quiet in order to know Him and to hear Him and to hear Him answer us.
“If any of you lack wisdom let him ask his friends.” No. That is not the Word of the Lord. “If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God” (Jas 1:5 AV) is his Word to us. There is a place for asking wisdom of godly friends, but let us always go first to God.
“Be still”–that is, shut up–“and know that He is God” (Ps 46:10 AV).
We “get at” God by getting at those He has made, especially those whom his providence has placed close to us. We cannot bear the image of God in them, for we cannot bear the ineradicability of that image in our own being. It is a constant reminder of our own sin, which is the violation of the divine image. Without the consciousness of a legitimate claim on our lives, we could not know sin.
To recognize and submit to that claim is to return to peace and fellowship.
“If we claim to be sharing in his life while we walk in the dark, our words and our lives are a lie; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, then we share together a common life, and we are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus His Son” (l Jn 1:6,7 NEB).
Let us not be “weary in well-doing,” or discouraged in the pursuit of holiness. Let us, like Moses, go to the Rock of Horeb–and God says to us what He said to him, “You will find me waiting for you there” (Ex 17:6 NEB).
Beside the Well of Aram of Two Rivers he halted his camels and was praying silently when a beautiful young woman appeared with her water jar on her shoulder. She responded to his request as he had prayed she would, and he watched quietly to see whether the Lord had made his journey successful (Gn 24:21).
Very possibly we often miss what God wants to show us because we don’t take time to pray silently and watch quietly. It was by doing those two things, along with the obvious practical things (let us not leave those undone) that the servant was able to say, “I have been guided by the Lord” (Gn 24:27 NEB).
When Jesus lived on earth, He lived in an ordinary man’s body, carrying in that body both life and death. His thirty-three years of life were lived that He might die and through death forever destroy the power of death. He doesn’t live here anymore. We do. We who believe are his Body, assigned to carry in our bodies the death He died. Paul said it (2 Cor 4:10 NEB). Insofar as we are willing to die, to ‘cross out the self,’ we carry the death Jesus died. But that isn’t all! We carry also the life Jesus lived–the life that brings life to all, that will never end, that mysteriously is at work in the world because we who love Him are in the world. O Life Eternal, purify this vessel of my body, that it may purely bear the death and life of Jesus for the life of the world.
There is nothing conspicuous about those requirements. It is not a “special” service for which one would be likely to be decorated or even particularly remembered. But it is worth more to God than any sacrifice.
Lord, deliver me from the delusion of imagining that my desire is to serve You, when my real desire is the distinction of serving in some way which others admire.