Becoming Elisabeth Elliot

by Ellen Vaughn

We were simply followers of Christ who had plumbed the depths of His joy by tasting His afflictions. Those afflictions had cut deep gashes in our hearts through which grace and joy had poured in, stretching and filling our souls with an abundance of our Lord.

For Elisabeth, as for all of us, the most dramatic chapters may well be less significant than the daily faithfulness that traces the brave trajectory of a human life radically submitted to Christ.

She mourned over her gaffes and errors but didn’t fall into the trap of tiresome self-focus. Alas, she would mourn in her journal, I am ridiculous; God help me! And then she would move on,

But her most noble accomplishment was not weathering that excoriating loss. 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.

if there was one empowering, paradoxical element within Elisabeth Elliot that defined her core, it was a healthy willingness to die. Again and again, if God so willed, always believing in His promise that real, robust, exhilarating life comes out of every death.

For Elisabeth, the central question was not, “How does this make me feel?” but simply, “Is this true?” If so, then the next question was, “What do I need to do about it to obey God?”

“The incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed. All of our inclinations and appetites and capacities and yearnings are purified and gathered up and glorified by Christ. He did not come to thin out human life; He came to set it free. All the dancing and feasting and processing and singing and building and sculpting and baking and merrymaking that belong to us, and that were stolen away into the service of false gods, are returned to us in the gospel.” —Thomas Howard

there is a strange deep joy in being here with Jesus. Praising helps more than anything.

“Missionary life is simply a chance to die.”

“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.” —Andrew Murray

The chief thing is not to listen to yourself, but silently to listen to God. Talk little and do much, without caring to be seen.

You already know a great deal more than you practise. You do not need the acquirement of fresh knowledge half so much as to put in practice that which you already possess.”

Be on guard, my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth!”

How wonderful to know that Christianity is more than a padded pew or a dim cathedral, but that it is a real, living, daily experience which goes from grace to grace.”

She saw her life as a sacrifice to be put on God’s altar, consumed for His purposes. “My life is on Thy Altar, Lord—for Thee to consume. Set the fire, Father! Bind me with cords of love to the Altar. Hold me there. Let me remember the Cross.”

(Betty would later muse that being a missionary, for example, was not a matter of declaring a message. It was a matter of being the gospel, incarnationally, as “Mrs. C.” had done with Betty.)

“It is not what we set ourselves to do that really tells in blessing, so much as what He is doing through us when we least expect it, if only we are in abiding fellowship with Him.”

“God, I pray, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn up for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life but a full one like Yours, Lord Jesus.”

Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts. It is easier to talk oneself into a decision that has no permanence, than to wait patiently.”

“Self-seeking is the gate by which a soul departs from peace; and total abandonment to the will of God, that by which it returns.” —Madame Guyon

“The soul who loves God only for Himself, apart from His gifts, knows indescribable peace.”

As Betty Howard wrote, there is a deeper, more mysterious, more sustaining sense of thankfulness: gratitude to God not for what He gives, but who He is. Edwards denoted this as supernatural gratitude, and said that it is the mark of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. This radical, gracious gratitude can thrive even in the midst of times of pain, trouble, and distress. It is relational, rather than conditional, drawing the human being who knows God into closer intimacy with Him.

She saw God’s unfolding will like a “‘mystery thriller’ (though so far better) . . . One does not have any idea what the next may unfold, and it has something of the adventure spirit in it, though, unlike the connotation of ‘adventure,’ there is no element of uncertainty. The very word ‘faith’ precludes the possibility of doubt.”

“The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.” —Elisabeth Elliot

God’s sovereign will was a mystery that could not be mastered, an experience that could not be classified, a wonder that had no end. It wove together strands of life, death, grace, pain, joy, humility, and awe.

“It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself.

This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart, I may, if I will, accept, and by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. And so I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange gives Himself to me.”

But she began to learn the mystery and secret of her ancient faith . . . it was not about outcomes, inspiring results, personal fulfillment, or even coherent answers. It was about obedience to the One whose stone she carried.

“Teach me never to let the joy of what has been, pale the joy of what is.” —Elisabeth Elliot

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.”

I must refuse each weakening thought.

Yet I find that events do not change souls. It is our response to them which finally affects us.”

But I do not ask to be released. I ask to be made Christ-like, in the inmost part of my being.

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

“Once more I am nearly overwhelmed with the knowledge that this God is the Lord.” After all, the Lord did “strange, terrible things” in the Old Testament to show that He was sovereign. “He is still doing them—and very wonderful things.

students have had terrible fights with hypocrisy and legalism after finishing there, for so many things were imposed from the outside that had not been worked into the heart by the Holy Spirit. For this reason, I am anxious for the people here [new believers], that every move they make comes from the heart and not from a legally imposed set of rules.”

“Preserve me ‘from all harms and hindrances of offensive manners and self-assertion . . . from overwhelming love of our own ideas and blindness to the value of other . . . from all jealousy . . . from the retort of irritation and the taunt of sarcasm . . . from all arrogance in dealings with all men . . . Chiefly, O Lord, we pray Thee, give us knowledge of Thee, to see Thee in all Thy works . . . to hear and know Thy call.’

“If a duty is clear, the dangers surrounding it are irrelevant.” —Elisabeth Elliot

They are delivered from many sins, from the temptation of personal vanity, for the human body is a thing accepted per se, not compared, or pampered, or falsified, or hidden.”

As always, though, God was working in, through, and in spite of His people.

People weren’t at ease with mystery, nor with silence, so they filled the awkward spaces with talk. She had not had a friend who had sat with her, empathetic and silent, at rest within the bruising reality of grief.

He has spent his whole life preaching and studying the Word. He comes out with an entirely different orientation than those who speak so clearly to me. My God, what is Truth?”

Spiritually orphaned

“Obviously, God has chosen to leave certain questions unanswered and certain problems without any solution in this life, in order that in our very struggle to answer and solve we may be shoved back, and back, and eternally back to the contemplation of Himself, and to complete trust in Who He is. I’m glad He’s my Father.

“I find that faith is more vigorously exercised when I can find no satisfying explanation for the way God does things. I have to hope, without any evidence seen, that things will come right in the end—not merely that we shall receive compensation, but that we and all creation will be redeemed.

“Discernment is an unemotional act, judgment is more highly charged. Hence: judge not.”

For decades after her husband was killed, Elisabeth Elliot was constantly asked if the men’s mission on Palm Beach was a “success.” The word was like worthless currency. To her, the only measure of any human action came down to one thing: obedience.

Cause and effect are in God’s hands. Is it not the part of faith simply to let them rest there? God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that He act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice. . . .

“A healthier faith seeks a reference point outside all human experience, the Polestar which marks the course of all human events, not forgetting that impenetrable mystery of the interplay of God’s will and man’s.

“God led Israel to Marah. He could have led them directly to Elim, but He has chosen to lead His people into difficulties in order that they may know Him, and He may know them.”

“We might say, ‘Well, if God is going to save them [unreached people groups] anyway, and my efforts will be useless, why on earth should I endure the hardships, frustration, and humiliation the missionary work means?’ We are commanded. God will not fail to do His part, which is ultimately the only part that matters.”