31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Nothing Is Lost If Offered to Christ

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This comes from the July/August 1987 edition of Elisabeth’s newsletter and is in Keep a Quiet Heart as well:

A pastor’s wife asked, “When one witnesses a work he has poured his life into ‘go up in flames’ (especially if he is not culpable), is it the work of Satan or the hand of God?”

Often it is the former, always it is under the control of the latter. In the biographies of the Bible we find men whose work for God seemed to be a flop at the time–Moses’ repeated efforts to persuade Pharaoh, Jeremiah’s pleas for repentance, the good king Josiah’s reforms, rewarded in the end by his being slain by a pagan king. Sin had plenty to do with the seeming failures, but God was then, as He is now, the “blessed controller of all things” (1 Timothy 6:15, PHILLIPS). He has granted to us human beings responsibility to make choices and to live with the consequences. This means that everybody suffers–sometimes for his or her own sins, sometimes for those of others.

There are paradoxes here which we cannot plumb. But we can always look at the experiences of our own lives in the light of the life of our Lord Jesus. How shall we learn to “abide” (stay put) in Christ, enter into the fellowship of His sufferings, let Him transform our own? There is only one way. It is by living each event, including having things “go up in flames,” as Christ lived: in the peace of the Father’s will. Did His earthly work appear to be a thundering success? He met with argument, unbelief, scorn in Pharisees and others. Crowds followed Him–not because they wanted His Truth, but because they liked handouts such as bread and fish and physical healing. His own disciples were “fools and slow of heart to believe.” (Why didn’t Jesus make them believe? For the reason given above.) These men who had lived intimately with Him, heard His teaching for three years, watched His life and miracles, still had little idea what He was talking about on the evening before His death. Judas betrayed Him, Peter denied Him. The rest of them went to sleep when He asked them to stay awake. In the end they all forsook Him and fled. Peter repented with tears and later saw clearly what had taken place. In his sermon to the Jews of Jerusalem (Acts 2:23, PHILLIPS) he said, “This man, who was put into your power by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed up and murdered…. But God would not allow the bitter pains of death to touch him. He raised him to life again–and there was nothing by which death could hold such a man.”

There is nothing by which death can hold any of His faithful servants, either. Settle it, once and for all–YOU CAN NEVER LOSE WHAT YOU HAVE OFFERED TO CHRIST. It’s the man who tries to save himself (or his reputation or his work or his dreams of success or fulfillment) who loses. Jesus gave us His word that if we’d lose our lives for His sake, we’d find them.

I just learned recently, or was reminded, that all of Elisabeth’s language work that she had spent years on in Ecuador was lost down a mountainside. There was no retrieving it: there were no computer files with back-ups in those days. She knew whereof she spoke. We can trust that whatever we have done for God with a right heart is accepted by Him, even if we have “nothing to show for it.” Elisabeth says in A Lamp For My Feet:

Paul was a man who suffered the loss of everything, according to his own claim. Yet any loss he counted pure gain. The key to this transforming of earthly losses into heavenly gains is love. What do we love? If our hearts are set on people and possessions and position, the loss of those will indeed be irreparable. To the man or woman whose heart is set on Christ no loss on earth can be irreparable.

It may shock us for the moment. We may feel hurt, outraged, desolate, helpless. That is our humanity. But the Lord can show us the “long view,” the incalculable gain in spiritual and eternal terms, if we love Him above all. Everything that belongs to us belongs also to Him. Everything that belongs to Him belongs also to us. What, then, can we finally lose? If we lose not Christ Himself, we have finally lost nothing, for He is our treasure and He has our hearts.

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Do the Next Thing

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Barbara Harper

If you’ve read or listened to Elisabeth Elliot much, you have probably heard her use the phrase “Do the Next Thing.” Here she explains the rationale behind it. I believe this is part of a transcript from one of her “Gateway to Joy” radio programs, the transcripts of which used to be published on the Back to the Bible site, but sadly, are no more. I don’t know if this was included exactly like this in any of her books.

When I went back to my jungle station after the death of my first husband, Jim Elliot, I was faced with many confusions and uncertainties. I had a good many new roles, besides that of being a single parent and a widow. I was alone on a jungle station that Jim and I had manned together. I had to learn to do all kinds of things, which I was not trained or prepared in any way to do. It was a great help to me simply to do the next thing.

Have you had the experience of feeling as if you’ve got far too many burdens to bear, far too many people to take care of, far too many things on your list to do? You just can’t possibly do it, and you get in a panic and you just want to sit down and collapse in a pile and feel sorry for yourself.

Well, I’ve felt that way a good many times in my life, and I go back over and over again to an old Saxon legend, which I’m told is carved in an old English parson somewhere by the sea. I don’t know where this is. But this is a poem which was written about that legend. The legend is “Do the next thing.” And it’s spelled in what I suppose is Saxon spelling. “D-O-E” for “do,” “the,” and then next, “N-E-X-T.” “Thing”-“T-H-Y-N-G-E.”

The poem says, “Do it immediately, do it with prayer, do it reliantly, casting all care. Do it with reverence, tracing His hand who placed it before thee with earnest command. Stayed on omnipotence, safe ‘neath His wing, leave all resultings, do the next thing.” That is a wonderfully saving truth. Just do the next thing.

She goes on to tell about applying this in her missionary work, and then asks the listener:

What is the next thing for you to do? Small duties, perhaps? Jobs that nobody will notice as long as you do them? A dirty job that you would get out of if you could have your own preferences? Are you asked to take some great responsibility, which you really don’t feel qualified to do? You don’t have to do the whole thing right this minute, do you? I can tell you one thing that you do have to do right this minute. It’s the one thing that is required of all of us every minute of every day. Trust in the living God.

Now what is the next thing? Well, perhaps it’s to get yourself organized. Maybe you need to clean off your desk, if you have a desk job that needs to be done. Maybe you need to clean out your kitchen drawers, if you’re going to do your kitchen work more efficiently. Maybe you need to organize the children’s clothes.

Then she tells about baby-sitting her grandchildren for a few days and finding the constant demands and needs of multiple children daunting. When she asked her daughter how she managed, especially with a nursing baby, “She laughed and she said, “Well, Mama, I’ll tell you how. I do what you told me years ago to do. Do the next thing. Don’t sit down and think of all the things you have to do. That will kill you. It’s overwhelming. It’s daunting if you think of all the things that are involved in a task. Just pick up the next thing.”

Wise advice, indeed. We don’t often know the whole big picture, but we can tend to the immediate needs of the moment, and God will sustain and guide those individual moments as He leads us along the path of His will.

You can see the full transcript here.

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Imperfections

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This comes from Elisabeth’s book Keep a Quiet Heart:

The leader of a women’s conference asked me if I would be able to talk privately with a young woman who was in deep sorrow. This woman didn’t want to “bother” me, the leader said, didn’t feel she ought to take my time when there were hundreds of others who needed it. In fact, she was scared of me. Of course I said I’d be very glad to talk with her, and please to tell her I was not fierce.

After the talk, the young woman went to report to the leader.

“Oh, it wasn’t bad after all! I walked in–I was shaking. I looked into her eyes, and I knew that she, too, had suffered. Then she gave me this beautiful smile. When I saw that huge space between her front teeth, I said to myself, ‘it’s OK–she’s not perfect!'”

My daughter Valerie once taught a women’s Bible class in Laurel, Mississippi. It happened that she lost her place in her notes as she was speaking. She tried to find it while continuing to speak, realized she couldn’t, apologized and paused to search the page. The pause grew agonizingly long. At last she gave up and adlibbed through the rest of the lesson. She couldn’t find the application, couldn’t find the conclusion. Leaving the platform afterwards, she was on the point of tears because of what seemed an abysmal failure. A lady came to her to say it was the best class so far. Later someone called to thank Val for things which had helped her.

“Mama,” she told me on the phone, “I couldn’t understand why this had happened. I had prepared faithfully, done the best I could. But then I remembered a prayer I’d prayed that week (Walt told me it was a ridiculous prayer!)–asking the Lord to make those women know that I’m just an ordinary woman like the rest of them and I need His help. I guess this was His answer, don’t you think?”

I think so. It helps to know that others are “only human,” and yet to see how God uses them inspires us that He can use with all our imperfections as well.

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Treading Alone

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Barbara Harper

The Savage My Kinsman by Elisabeth Elliot tells of her time with the Auca (now known as Waorani) Indians after they had speared to death her husband and four of his missionary friends. It picks up just after the men’s deaths but before the invitation to Elisabeth and Rachel, sister of one of the other men, to come and live with the Aucas. Elisabeth writes:

I knew that if life was to go on, it must go on meaningfully. I was forced back to the real reasons for missionary work–indeed, the real reasons for living at all. My husband Jim and the four men who had gone into Auca territory had one reason: they believed it was what God wanted them to do. They took quite literally the words “the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” It is only in obeying God that we may know Him. Obedience, if it is a good reason for dying, is just as good a reason for living. I knew that there was no other answer for me. The “whys” that screamed themselves at me ay and night could not be silenced, but I could live with them if I simply went on and did the next thing.

Jim and I had been working among the Quichua Indians in a place called Shandia. I returned to Shandia. I did the things that presented themselves as duties to me each day, and in the doing of these I learned to know God a little better. To obey is to know. To know is to be at peace. I had know idea what the future might hold. It seemed impossible that I could continue the entire mangemnet of the Quichua station alone, but there was no use concerning myself with the next day. I was confident that, as in the case of the waterfowl,

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,–
The desert and illimitable air,–
Lone wandering, but not lost….

He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

The poem she quoted from is “To a Waterfowl” by William Cullen Bryant. I think probably nearly every wife fears at some time the prospect of widowhood, and single people can fear being alone. Elisabeth’s words and experience helped assure me that if that time ever came, though it would be painful and difficult, I could trust God to be with me and guide me “In the long way that I must tread alone.” These thought also helped a great deal in the years when my husband had to travel more frequently than I liked, which I shared a bit about in Coping when husband is away, one of my most oft-viewed posts.

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Writing By Faith

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Today I am just taking excerpts from a chapter titled “One Difference Between Me and Sparrows” from Elisabeth’s book Love Has a Price Tag. It has always meant a lot to me as an aspiring writer:

The Bible says the just shall live by faith. The “just” is not a special category of specially gifted or inspired saints. It is the people whose hearts are turned toward God. The people who know that their own righteousness doesn’t count for much and who therefore have accepted God’s. I belong in that category. Therefore the rule for me is the rule for all the rest: live by faith. So I have been pondering, up here in this quiet room, what it means for a writer to live by faith. It was easy enough to come up with some things it doesn’t mean. It does not mean that my intellect need not be hard at work. It does not mean that I trust God to do my work for me, any more than for a housewife to live by faith means she expects God to do her dishes or make her beds. It does not mean that I have a corner on inspiration that Norman Mailer, say, or Truman Capote don’t claim. (I don’t know whether Mr. Mailer or Mr. Capote live by faith–I haven’t come across any comments by either on the subject.)

The great prophets of the Old Testament lived by faith, but they were certainly divinely inspired. Does this mean that God alone and not they, too–was responsible for the work they did? Even though they were acted upon in a special sense by the Spirit of God as I don’t ever expect to be acted upon, they had to pay a price. Each of them had to make the individual commitment when he was called, and to offer up then and there his own plans and hopes (and surely his reputation) in order that his personality, his temperament, his intellect, his peculiar gifts and experience might be the instruments through which the Spirit did his work, or the console upon which he played. All this, even though I am no prophet, I must take seriously.

But there is one other thing that living by faith does not mean. This is the thing that makes me furrow my brow and sigh, because I can’t help wishing that it did mean this. If in fact I have sided with the “just,” if I am willing to work as hard as I can, if I arrange things physically to contribute to the highest concentration and if I discipline myself to sit down at the typewriter for X number of hours per day (even when the fresh perfume of the balsams comes through the windows, calling me to the woods; even when the lake glitters in the sunshine and says, “Come on!”), may I then expect that what I turn out will stop the world, bring the public panting to the bookstores, shine as the brightness of the firmament?

I may not. There are no promises to cover anything of the kind.

…And here’s comfort. Abel’s name is listed in the Hall of Fame of Hebrews 11. Like the others in that list (and a motley assortment it is), he is there for one thing, and only one thing: the exercise of faith. The demonstration of his faith was his offering. The thing that made his offering acceptable while Cain’s was unacceptable was faith. Faith did not guarantee the “success” of the sacrifice. In human terms it was no help at all. Abel ended up dead as a result of it. But the manner in which he offered his gift–“by faith”–made it, the Bible says, “a more excellent sacrifice” than Cain’s, and qualified him for the roster of Hebrews.

For me, then, for whom writing happens to be the task, living by faith means several things.

It means accepting the task from God…Here is a thing to be done. It appears to be a thing to be done by me, so I’ll do it, and I’ll do it for God.

It means coming at the task trustingly. That’s the way Abel brought his sacrifice, I’m sure. Not with fear, not with a false humility that it wasn’t “good enough.” What would ever be good enough, when it comes right down to it? “All things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” All that distinguishes one thing from another is the manner of its offering. I must remember that the God to whom I bring it has promised to receive. That’s all I need to know.

It means doing the job with courage to face the consequences. I might, of course, write a bestseller. Most of us feel we could handle that kind of consequence. (God knows we couldn’t, and doesn’t suffer us to be tempted above that we are able.) On the other hand, I might fail. Abel was murdered. Jeremiah was dropped into a pit of slime. John the Baptist got his head chopped off. These were much worse fates than being delivered into the hands of one’s literary critics… Is the faith that gives me the courage I need based on former literary success? Not for a moment. For each time I sit down to begin a new book I’m aware that I may have used up my allotment of creativity. It’s another kind of faith I need, faith in God.

It means giving it everything I’ve got. Now I have to acknowledge that I’ve never done this. I’ve never finished any job in my life and been able to survey it proudly and say, “Look at that! I certainly did my best that time!” I look at the job and say, “Why didn’t I do such and such? This really ought to be done over.” But “giving it everything I’ve got” is my goal. I cannot claim to be living by faith unless I’m living in obedience. Even the miracles Jesus performed were contingent on somebody’s obedience, on somebody’s doing some little thing such as filling up water pots, stretching out a hand, giving up a lunch. The work I do needs to be transformed. I know that very well. But there has to be something there to be transformed. It’s my responsibility to see that it’s there.

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: How to Do the Job You Don’t Really Want To Do

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This has helped me many times. There are some things we joy in doing, but a great many of life’s responsibilities are things we wouldn’t do if we didn’t have to and things we might come to resent. We hear a lot about assessing our personality and finding what our spiritual gifts are, but even in a dream job or ministry situation, there are always going to be aspects of it we wish we could avoid. This has helped me to face those with the right attitude – or at least working on it. 🙂

How to Do the Job You Don’t Really Want To Do

Certain aspects of the job the Lord has given me to do are very easy to postpone. I make excuses, find other things that take precedence, and, when I finally get down to business to do it, it is not always with much grace. A new perspective has helped me recently:

The job has been given to me to do.
Therefore it is a gift.
Therefore it is a privilege.
Therefore it is an offering I may make to God.
Therefore it is to be done gladly, if it is done for Him.
Therefore it is the route to sanctity.

Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God’s way. In this job, not in some other, God looks for faithfulness. The discipline of this job is, in fact, the chisel God has chosen to shape me with–into the image of Christ.

Thank you, Lord, for the work You have assigned me. I take it as your gift; I offer it back to you. With your help I will do it gladly, faithfully, and I will trust You to make me holy.

From A Lamp For My Feet

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Enjoying the 80%

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I’ve always thought this was quite poignant for marriage, and in many ways applicable in other relationships as well. How we need to build up rather than tear down.

My second husband once said that a wife, if she is very generous, may allow that her husband lives up to eighty percent of her expectations. There is always the other twenty percent that she would like to change, and she may chip away at it for the whole of their married life without reducing it very much. She may, on the other hand, simply decide to enjoy the eighty percent, and both of them will be happy ( From Love Has a Price Tag).

Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another. Romans 14:19

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. Ephesians 4:29

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: The Rupture of Self

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is a hard one, but the last few lines help put it into perspective:

Sometimes our prayers are for deliverance from conditions which are morally indispensable–that is, conditions which are absolutely necessary to our redemption. God does not grant us those requests. He will not because He loves us with a pure and implacable purpose: that Christ be formed in us. If Christ is to live in my heart, if his life is to be lived in me, I will not be able to contain Him. The self, small and hard and resisting as a nut, will have to be ruptured. My own purposes and desires and hopes will have to at times be exploded. The rupture of the self is death, but out of death comes life. The acorn must rupture if an oak tree is to grow.

It will help us to remember, when we do not receive the answer we hoped for, that it is morally necessary, morally indispensable, that some of our prayers be denied, “that the life of Jesus may be plainly seen in these bodies of ours” (2 Cor 4:11 JBP). Then think of this: the agonized prayer of Jesus in the garden went unanswered, too. Why? In order that life–our life–might spring forth from death–his death.

~ Elisabeth Elliot, A Lamp For My Feet

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
John 12:24

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31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Irritants As God’s Messengers

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Today’s quote is short but quite convicting. Yet is is also reassuring as a reminder that God truly does work all things together for our good – little irritations as well as great trials. Elisabeth speaks of other people, but I like to expand this to apply to any kind of irritant or annoyance. As I have written before, I tend to get tripped up by those more often than the big things.

How can this person who so annoys or offends me be God’s messenger? Is God so unkind as to send that sort across my path? Insofar as his treatment of me requires more kindness than I can find in my own heart, demands love of a quality I do not possess, asks of me patience which only the Spirit of God can produce in me, he is God’s messenger. God sends him in order that he may send me running to God for help.

From A Lamp For My Feet

To see all the posts in this series, see the bottom of this post.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: Limitations

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It might seem odd to start off this series with this quote, but it is one that has ministered to me often. We are all under limitations of some kind: season of life, physical abilities, obligations, etc. And it seems whatever situation we are in, we find ourselves wishing we could do something that we can’t. Sometimes God does reveal His power and grace by overriding whatever the limitations are, or seem to be, as was the case with Moses telling God that he couldn’t speak, so it is important to pray and consider whether the issue is really a limitation or an obstacle God wants to remove. But other times the limitations are from His hand for His purposes.

The following is from Elisabeth’s book A Lamp For My Feet:

Yesterday as I was reading my brother Tom’s book, The Achievement of C.S. Lewis, I was admiring again the scope of his knowledge, his ability to comprehend another’s genius, and his wonderful command of English. By contrast my own limitations seemed severe indeed. They are of many kinds–analytical, critical, articulatory, not to mention educational. But my limitations, placing me in a different category from Tom Howard’s or anyone else’s, become, in the sovereignty of God, gifts. For it is with the equipment that I have been given that I am to glorify God. It is this job, not that one, that He gave me.

For some, the limitations are not intellectual but physical. The same truth applies. Within the context of their suffering, with whatever strength they have, be it ever so small, they are to glorify God. The apostle Paul actually claimed that he “gloried” in infirmities, because it was there that the power of Christ was made known to him.

If we regard each limitation which we are conscious of today as a gift–that is, as one of the terms of our particular service to the Master–we won’t complain or pity or excuse ourselves. We will rather offer up those gifts as a sacrifice, with thanksgiving.

And this is from a section titled “Apportioned Limitations” from the same book:

The God who determined the measurements of the foundations of the earth sets limitations to the scope of our work. It is always tempting to measure ourselves by one another, but this easily leads to boasting or despair. It is our business to find the sphere of service allotted to us, and do all that He has appointed us to do within that sphere, not “commending ourselves.”

Paul said, “We will keep to the limits God has apportioned us” (2 Cor. 10:13 RSV). Jesus did that–willing to become a helpless, newborn baby, to be a growing child, an adolescent, a man, each stage bounded by its peculiar strictures, yet each offering adequate scope in which to glorify his Father.

Lord, glorify yourself through me and in the place You’ve set me. Let me not covet another’s place or work or glory.

I have thought often in regard to dealing with the after-effects of transverse myelitis, “Lord, I could serve you so much better without this.” But it’s as if He were saying, “No, this is what I am using to shape your service for Me.” Most people who have gone through any type of trial or affliction in life would say that, although they didn’t welcome the trial itself, they were drawn closer to the Lord, and the lessons learned were invaluable.

Our current circumstances may be temporary or permanent. We need not lament what we can’t do. We can seek God’s will for what to do now. As long as the Lord has left us here on earth, He has some way for us to bless others, perhaps by prayer, perhaps by being willing for others to minister to us. Sometimes we can be dismayed by our limitations, but as Elisabeth said, limitations just define our ministry: “For it is with the equipment that I have been given that I am to glorify God. It is this job, not that one, that He gave me.”

“God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (I Cor. 1:27) and to showcase His strength (II Cor. 12:8-10).