Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

It’s been down into the 50s at night and downright nippy a few mornings, and the day time has been quite pleasant and sunny. Here are some fave moments of the last week:

1 A family outing. We hadn’t had one since August, and I was feeling a little cooped up with Jim having been away a little more than usual lately, so I suggested we go visit the Mast General Store downtown and then eat lunch at a little sandwich and gelato shop nearby on Saturday. I had never been to either before and I enjoyed reading some of the history of Mast on the way. It was a fun morning.

2. A new dish towel from the store we visited. I didn’t get it just for the birds, though I like them, but mainly because it is hard to find “fluffy” dish towels any more.

3. A zucchini cookie at the aforementioned shop. I’d had zucchini bread and zucchini cake before, but not a cookie. This was excellent.

4. A football game is not something I had thought I would ever have on any kind of favorite list, but we’ve watched a couple of UT Vols games lately. The first one was their game against Oklahoma, which is where Mittu is from, so she was rooting for the Sooners. 🙂 UT started out well ahead in that game and then lost. We ended up watching last Saturday’s game as well, which they won. I googled a couple of basic things during the game, like “What is a first down” and a “first and ten.” Such was my ignorance. 🙂 But it did help to know those things! Who knows, I may become a fan yet.

5. A few hours with no interruption has gotten to be almost a rarity these days, but I had one such glorious afternoon this week and was able to get several posts ahead on my 31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot series for Write31 Days.

Happy Friday!

Knowing God, Chapters 17 and 18: God’s Jealousy and Propitiation

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Barbara Harper

We’re continuing to read Knowing God by J. I. Packer along with Tim Challies’ Reading Classics Together Series. This week we are in chapters 17 and 18.

The word “jealousy” has a bad connotation: we usually picture a jealous person as one who is short-tempered, unreasonable, unnaturally possessive. But God is sinless and holy, so what does He mean when He proclaims Himself to be a jealous God?

Even among humans there is a right kind of jealousy which is a “zeal to protect a love relationship” and sets safeguards to do so. But “God’s jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy, and spite, as human jealousy so often is, but appears instead as a (literally) praiseworthy zeal to preserve something supremely precious” (p. 170).

Even humans expect loyalty in certain relationships. God certainly does as well, and as absolutely perfect and holy, He “will vindicate his claim by stern action against them if they betray his love by unfaithfulness” (p. 171).

Christians’ proper response, Packer says, should be zealousness for Him and His name. This doesn’t mean we start wars with people who don’t believe as we do. But it does mean we should have “a burning desire to please God, to do His will, and to advance His glory in the world in every possible way” (p. 173).

Chapter 17 ended a section of chapters called “Behold Your God!” which talked about His attributes; Chapter 18 begins the final section of the book called “If God Be For Us.”

The title of this chapter is “The Heart of the Gospel,” and Packer asserts that heart is propitiation. Like many people, I think the average preacher and writer needs to use words accessible to the common man and not lapse into verbiage only a theology student would grasp, but propitiation is a word that we need to understand. Packer defines it as “averting God’s anger by an offering” (p. 180), yet it is different from offerings for the same purpose in pagan religions due to many factors. One is that God initiated the offering of His Son. There is nothing we could offer that would take away our sin.

Some dislike the word and its concept because they don’t like to think of God as angry over sin. But as we have seen in the chapter on God’s wrath, God has a righteous and just anger over sin.

Propitiation was accomplished by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, the OT sacrifices being a picture of that which was to come:

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Galatians 3:13).

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again… To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 19-21).

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus (Romans 3:24-26).

And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).

This was a very long chapter and I am only feebly hitting a few of the highlights here, but Packer gives a very thorough looking into from various angles.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: God’s Help For God’s Assignment

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This taken from a a chapter called “God’s Help For God’s Assignment” from Elisabeth’s book A Lamp For My Feet:

Sometimes a task we have begun takes on seemingly crushing size, and we wonder what ever gave us the notion that we could accomplish it. There is no way out, no way around it, and yet we cannot contemplate actually carrying it through. The rearing of children or the writing of a book are illustrations that come to mind. Let us recall that the task is a divinely appointed one, and divine aid is therefore to be expected. Expect it! Ask for it, wait for it, believe that God gives it. Offer to Him the job itself, along with your fears and misgivings about it. He will not fail or be discouraged. Let his courage encourage you. The day will come when the task will be finished. Trust Him for it.

“For 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” (Is 50:7 AV).

This is one I have come back to many times and found true. I tend to resist those tasks that I know are beyond me (and really, everything would be without His aid), but that’s where we really see God’s enabling power at work.

See all the posts in this series here.

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Book Review: I Dared to Call Him Father

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I Dared to Call Him Father: The Miraculous Story of a Muslim Woman’s Encounter with God by Bilquis Sheikh is, as the subtitle indicates, the story of how an aristocratic Pakistani woman, a lifelong Muslim, became a Christian in her fifties.

Bilquis’ family was well-known, hosting people from all over the world and often visiting London or Paris. Her husband was the Minister of the Interior, but they had divorced five years before, and feeling “the shame of rejection,” she secluded herself in her family’s ancestral home in the village of Wah. She lived with her servants and four-year-old grandson, and for the most part only visited with other family members.

After her grandson recovered from an illness, she started reading the Quran, not out of duty or obligation this time, but to see if it “would help explain the events and at the same time fill the emptiness within me.” She was “impressed by its many references to Jewish and Christian writings that preceded it” and wondered if it would be helpful to read them. Muslims believed that “the early Christians had falsified…much of” the Bible, but she felt compelled to obtain one and to read it. One of the first verses she came across was Romans 9:25-26: “I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.” Somehow that passage gripped her heart and stayed with her for days. As she continued to read more, particularly about Jesus and His claims to be God and the way of salvation through Him, she was confused, because the Muslims believed that Jesus was only a prophet, not God. After more reading and two vivid dreams, Bilquis decided to visit Christian missionaries in the village to get more information. One of her questions was, “What has Jesus done for you?” After sharing and praying, the missionary, Synnove Mitchell, kept in touch with Bilquis.

Bilquis continued reading “the Quran because of the loyalty of a lifetime, delving into the Bible because of a strange inner hunger.” She knew “God couldn’t be in both books…because their messages were so different.” When her grandson experienced pain in his ear to the point that he needed to be hospitalized, someone at the hospital asked Bilquis about the Bible she was carrying. Bilquis answered that she was “earnestly searching for God,” told about her experience so far, and admitted, “I must find God, but I am confused about your faith.” This person suggested, “Why don’t you pray to the God you are searching for? Ask Him to show you His way. Talk to Him as if He were your friend. Talk to Him as if He were your father.”

“The thought shook my soul in the peculiar way truth has of being at once starling and comforting…No Muslim, I felt certain, ever thought of Allah as his father.” But thoughts of her loving earthly father encouraged her to think of God in the same way, so she prayed to Him. In part of her prayer, she confessed her confusion and asked whether the Bible or the Quran was His book. He seemed to answer in her heart, “In which book do you meet Me as your Father?” And “that’s all it took” to convince her. She shut herself in her room with the Bible, read, thought about the consequences to herself and her family if she became a Christian, and finally opened her heart to Him.

The rest of the book details her growth and experiences, including those consequences.

There were several things that impressed me about this book and Bilquis’ story: the power of the gospel to change a heart, the love and courage He gave her to withstand persecution, her reaching out to family members during times of grief, even though they had shunned her.

When I reviewed Nabeel Qureshi’s biography, I mentioned that at first I was troubled by the mention of God speaking to him through dreams, believing that God speaks primarily through His Word. As I said there, I do still believe that, but I have come to understand that many Muslims experience dreams that aid them along the way to the gospel. In an afterward, it is said of Bilquis that when others who had experienced dreams and visions came to her, she “carefully brought attention to Jesus by praying for them and claiming the promises He Himself had made, and applying those promises in simple faith to their specific needs. She was concerned not only to give her visitors truths about God, but to bring them into the presence of Jesus, the Truth.”

One aspect of Bilquis’ testimony that troubled me was her frequent reference to experiencing or losing God’s presence depending on what she did. Sometimes she said “the sense of His presence,” and that I would not have had as much of a problem with. But she goes so far as to say that “the Spirit left” or “His Presence would disappear” if she disobeyed in some way. God is omnipresent and He is with His children always: He doesn’t leave us ever. And He deals with us on the basis of His grace. Yet He does still require obedience, and, just as we experience an uneasiness and lack of peace when there is trouble in any of our relationships until we talk about it, confess whatever we need to confess, and make things right, so we can experience that with God. Yet one can be walking in perfect step with Him and not sense His presence (see Job and many of the Psalms.) In Evidence Not Seen, Darlene Deibler Rose wrote of the comforting sense of God’s presence when she was a POW. But one day that sense was gone, and she searched her heart and couldn’t find any offense she needed to confess, prayed for it to return, but it didn’t for a long time.She finally realized it was something she needed to take by faith even if she didn’t always “feel” it. Bilquis doesn’t sound like she understood this truth. Perhaps what she meant is what we would call today “feeling peace” about a decision or action (although that’s not a foolproof indication of God’s will, either).

Nevertheless, God clearly worked in and through her, and it warmed my heart to see how He did and how she responded. Her obedience to what she determined to be the will of God at any given time was a rebuke to me, and the way He sustained her through many trials encouraged and blessed me. I like what someone shared with her: “God is always stretching us…until we don’t have a safe handhold left except Him.”

This book was originally published in Bilquis’ lifetime in 1978. The version I read was a 2003 reprint, and I am very thankful it contains an epilogue in the back, telling about the end of Bilquis’ life, along with a couple of afterwards by Synnove Mitchell, one of the missionaries Bilquis became friends with. In one, she tells of Bilquis coming to see her from her vantage point, which was neat to read. Then in the final one, titled “Enriched by the East,” she shares some of the differences between Eastern and Western ways of thinking (group culture vs. individuality, hospitality vs. punctuality, indirectness vs. bluntness, etc.) and talks about how we need each other and how we can enrich each other instead of clashing with each other.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: A Devious Repentance

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from a chapter titled “A Devious Repentance” in Elisabeth’s book A Lamp For My Feet:

Recently I committed a sin of what seemed to me unpardonable thoughtlessness. For days I wanted to kick myself around the block. What is the matter with me? I thought. How could I have acted so? “Fret not thyself because of evildoers” came to mind. In this case the evildoer was myself, and I was fretting. My fretting, I discovered, was a subtle kind of pride. “I’m really not that sort of person,” I was saying. I did not want to be thought of as that sort of person. I was very sorry for what I had done, not primarily because I had failed someone I loved, but because my reputation would be smudged. When my reputation becomes my chief concern, my repentance has a hollow ring. No wonder Satan is called the deceiver. He has a thousand tricks, and we fall for them.

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.

I have wrestled with this. “I don’t understand, I am not really like this!” Oh, but I am, and that’s what I need to confess to Him. Thankfully, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9). A former pastor taught that to “confess” in this text means to say the same thing about it that God does. No dressing it up, no excuses. Just the bald truth. It’s humbling, but necessary.

God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. James 4:6

To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word. Isaiah 66:2b

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.
Proverbs 28:13

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: On Asking God Why

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is from Elisabeth’s book On Asking God Why:

I seek the lessons God wants to teach me, and that means that I ask why. There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, “Why?” is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for his meaning, or whether it is a challenge of unbelief and rebellion. The psalmist often questioned God and so did Job. God did not answer the questions, but he answered the man–with the mystery of himself.

He has not left us entirely in the dark. We know a great deal more about his purposes than poor old Job did, yet Job trusted him. He is not only the Almighty–Job’s favorite name for him. He is also our Father, and what a father does is not by any means always understood by the child. If he loves the child, however, the child trusts him. It is the child’s ultimate good that the father has in mind. Terribly elementary. Yet I have to be reminded of this when, for example, my friend suffers, when a book I think I can’t possibly do without is lost, when a manuscript is worthless.

Elsewhere (I am not sure of the source) she writes:

Now is it a sin to ask God why? It’s always best to go first for our answers to Jesus Himself. He cried out on the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ It was a human cry; a cry of desperation springing from His heart’s agony at the prospect of being put into the hands of wicked men and actually becoming sin for you and me. We can never suffer anything like that, yet we do at times feel forsaken, don’t we? It’s quite natural for us to cry, ‘Why, Lord?’

The psalmist asked why. Job, a blameless man suffering horrible torments on an ash heap, asked why. It doesn’t seem to me to be sinful to ask the question. What is sinful is resentment against God and His dealings with us. When we begin to doubt His love and imagine that He is cheating us of something we have a right to, we are guilty as Adam and Eve were guilty. They took the snake at his word rather than God.

The same snake comes to us repeatedly with the same suggestions. ‘Does God love you? Does He really want the best for you? Is His Word trustworthy? Isn’t He cheating you? Forget His promises. You’d be better off if you’d do it your way.’

I’ve often asked why. Many things have happened which I didn’t plan and which human rationality could not explain. In the darkness of my perplexity and sorrow, I have heard God say quietly, ‘Trust Me.’ He knew that my question was not the challenge of unbelief or of resentment.

I don’t understand Him, but then I’m not asked to understand, only to trust. Bitterness dissolves when I remember the kind of love with which He has loved me–He gave Himself for me. He gave Himself for me. He gave Himself for me. Whatever He is doing now, therefore, is not cause for bitterness. It has to be designed for good, because He loved me and gave Himself for me.

I agree. It’s not a sin to ask, at least not unless the attitude is one of defiance or resentment. He may not answer, or may answer in a way we hadn’t at first wanted, but the more we learn to know Him, the more we can trust Him with those questions, no matter the answer or lack thereof.

See all the posts in this series here.

31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot: A Quiet Heart

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Barbara Harper

This is an excerpt from Elisabeth Elliot’s book Keep A Quiet Heart:

A Quiet Heart

Jesus slept on a pillow in the midst of a raging storm. How could He? The terrified disciples, sure that the next wave would send them straight to the bottom, shook Him awake with rebuke. How could He be so careless of their fate?

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…

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

I seem to be able to trust in the Lord’s wisdom and control more for the major trials of life than for the little everyday irritations like getting stuck in traffic or dealing with malfunctioning technology. Even though on one level I know the Lord is in control and has a reason for everything He does and allows, there is still part of me that chafes under certain circumstances that seem like such a waste of time and energy. But even those He allows, and I need to rest and trust in Him. “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”

See all the posts in this series here.

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.

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

Here are some highlights of the past week or so:

1. Sunny days after nearly a week of rainy ones.

2. Cracker Barrel take out. I love their sampler platter, with smaller portions of meat loaf, chicken and dumplings, and ham. The first two are my favorite entrees there, so it is nice to get a bit of both. And, of course, a slice of Coca Cola cake nicely rounds it off. 🙂

3. Winning two books, one from Susan Braun which I forgot to mention a couple of weeks ago, and one from author Deborah Raney’s Facebook page. I haven’t read any of Deborah’s books yet, so I am excited to have one in hand.

4. Grace. I think we all have people whose personalities just rub us the wrong way. After one encounter with such a person (one of Great-Grandma’s new hospice people) on the phone where I came off as ~~somewhat~~ harsh, I was really praying that I would respond better when she actually came to the house, and, God helping me, we ended up having a nice visit.

5. Safe travels and wellness. Jim had to go out of town again this week, driving this time, and made it there and back safely, and Jason and Timothy had a stomach bug which seems to be pretty much over now. Hopefully it won’t spread to anyone else – it hasn’t seemed to so far.

Happy Friday!