Becoming Elisabeth Elliot

by Ellen Vaughn

Just pull-yourself-up by the grace of God, hoist your cross on your shoulder, and follow your Savior down the bloodstained path to Calvary. And don’t complain about it.

“Suffering is never for nothing, Joni.” It’s a different era now. Many young people I know don’t recognize the name of Elisabeth Elliot. They live in an egalitarian culture where everyone’s story is extraordinary, whether it has the stamp of Christ or not. The leaders they look up to lack heroic qualities. Courage is rare. Good character, rarer. Moral purity feels arcane. Suffering should be mitigated at all costs. And if it cannot be avoided, it must be drugged, divorced, escaped from, or prayed away.

It was practicing—through both the high dramas and the low, dull days that constitute any human life—the daily self-death required for one’s soul to flourish.

“All that grieves is but for a moment; All that pleases is but for a moment; Only the eternal is important.”

“Our young men are going into the professional fields because they don’t ‘feel called’ to the mission field. We don’t need a call; we need a kick in the pants. We must begin thinking in terms of ‘going out,’ and stop our weeping because ‘they won’t come in.’ Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the churches. May God send us forth.” —Jim Elliot

“The truth is that none of us knows the will of God for his life. I say for his life—for the promise is ‘as thou goest step by step I will open up the way before thee.’ He gives us enough light for today, enough strength for one day at a time, enough manna, our ‘daily’ bread.”

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”7

Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives . . . and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.” —Nate Saint

Perhaps it will, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. He will meet me there, too.

“I read somewhere that anyone who is not confused is very badly informed.” —Betty Elliot

God does work through hurt. God works in the midst of all things. And certainly Christian history is full of flawed characters and sad cases that might well have turned out differently if not for human failings.