Becoming Elisabeth Elliot

by Ellen Vaughn

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. It is this theme of death that gives the narrative arc of her life.

“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

“If I die here in Glasgow, I shall be eaten by worms; if I can but live and die serving the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms; for in the Great Day my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.” —John Gibson Paton

“Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, All my own desires and hopes, And accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all, Utterly to Thee, to be Thine forever! Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou will, Send me where Thou will, And work out Thy whole will in my life, At any cost, now and forever!”

“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

“People cannot become perfect by dint of hearing or reading about perfection. 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. God will teach you more than all the most experienced persons or the most spiritual books can do. 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.” —François de la Mothe-Fénelon

“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.”

“The stages of their journey, dull and eventless as most of them were, were each a necessary part of the movement toward the fulfillment of the promise.”1

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

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

For me, He has not chosen to give signs that may be shown to others. He has not led in any spectacular way, or by steps which could be proved to another.

Rather, my Father has quietly opened the way, often after much ‘sitting still’ on the part of His daughter; repeated disappointments; ‘hope deferred’; and finally, a revealing of some plan which does not at all fit my expectations.”

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

“For the special thrilling quality of their friendship was in their complete surrender. Like two open cities in the midst of some vast plain their two minds lay open to each other. And it wasn’t as if he rode into hers like a conqueror, armed to the eyebrows and seeing nothing but a gay silken flutter—nor did she enter his like a queen walking on soft petals. No, they were eager, serious travellers, absorbed in understanding what was to

be seen and discovering what was hidden–making the most of this extraordinary absolute chance which made it possible for him to be utterly truthful to her and for her to be utterly sincere with him.” —Katherine Mansfield

She struggled with how to articulate the missionary calling in real terms, rather than just using familiar Christian clichés. What did it really mean to be a “witness” for Christ? “There

Faith’s most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain.

“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. Even the Son of God had to learn obedience by the things that He suffered. . . . And His reward was desolation, crucifixion.”13

“But these strange ashes, Lord, this nothingness/This baffling sense of loss?” to which the Lord asks, in return, “was the anguish of my stripping less/Upon the torturing cross?”14

“. . . 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.”

It was about obedience to the One whose stone she carried.

“As we have a high old time this Christmas, may we who know Christ hear the cry of the damned as they hurtle headlong into the Christless night without ever a chance. May

we be moved with compassion as our Lord was.13

“. . . though the flesh conspire,” he wrote, “. . . Let spirit conquer.” The Spirit would.

They had gained what they could not lose.

“Oh, how I pray for conforming to the acceptable will of God. I do not want to miss one lesson. Yet I find that events do not change souls. It is our response to them which finally affects us.”

“1/1/57, 1:15 a.m. Nineteen fifty-six, the year in which dear Jim met Jesus Christ face to face, is now history. I was reluctant to relinquish it, for I was with him one day of 1956. Lord, I bless the hand that guided.”

“To take you to His end by the way that you know would profit you little. He chooses for you a way you know not, that you may be compelled into a thousand intercourses with Himself which will make the journey forever memorable to Him and to you.” —C. G. Moore

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

from Psalm 27:13–14: “I believe that I shall see The goodness of the Lord In the land of the living Wait for the Lord.”

She grew up in a black-and-white world where the wages of sloth was dust and a poorly sharpened pencil badly missed the point.

Betty chafed at the disparity between what she saw in the gospel and what she saw in the organized church. She wasn’t afraid to ask real questions. She was quick to pick up the scent of hypocrisy and legalism, but she always applied such analysis to herself first. She wasn’t a cynic, hardened into denying the existence of truth. She was, if you will, a realist. She believed in the Real, the absolute of the God who is. She questioned what was done in His name, the fake trappings

she saw, all too plentifully, in the missionary world in which she lived. She would continue to ask questions, seeking to discern the Real from the false fluff, for decades to come . . . until such questions were crushed by the heavy yoke she had chosen for herself to bear.

“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.’

However odd, futile, glorious or untidy the story might have felt for those who were living it at the time, the invasion had come. In God’s mysterious plan, where five men had been thwarted and killed, two American women and a child had been accepted by a murderous people who had been isolated for centuries. The wind of the Spirit was blowing gently through that muddy Waodani clearing. God was drawing people to Himself

there, and He would continue to do so for generations to come.

On the other hand there are those who possess the sense of mystery, who are conscious of the gaps in their knowledge and of its limits.”

“[Jesus] carried our sorrows. He suffered . . . not that we might not suffer, but that our sufferings might be like His. To hell, then, with self-pity . . . Every stage on the pilgrimage is a chance to know Him, to be brought to Him. Loneliness is a stage (and, thank God, only a stage) when we are terribly aware of our own helplessness . . . We may accept this, thankful that it brings us to the Very Present Help.”

“There is plenty in the average Sunday School which is of the world—it is going to have to be destroyed. . . . But we do not therefore quit Sunday School—we try at least to get the good and ignore the corruption.

“One ought to be careful that he does not confuse what he calls ‘the will of God’ with his own image of the role he is playing, which is an obligation to illusion only. Deliver me from this, Lord!” —Betty Elliot journal, July 3, 1962

“He leads us right on, right through, right up to the threshold of Heaven. He does not say to us, ever, ‘Here it is.’ He says only, ‘Here am I. Fear not.’”

He was both the journey and the destination.

the Lord have called thee, And will hold thine hand, And will keep thee . . . When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee.’ Lord, You have kept Your word.”

“It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God’s and the call is God’s and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses. The God who could take a murderer like Moses and adulterer like David and a traitor like Peter and make of them strong servants of His is a God who can also redeem savage Indians, using as the instruments of His peace a conglomeration of sinners who sometimes look like heroes and sometimes like villains, for ‘we are no better than pots of earthenware to contain this treasure [the revelation of the glory of God in the face of

Jesus Christ], and this proves that such transcendent power does not come from us, but is God’s alone.’ (2 Cor. 4:7 neb)”

The second that any of us starts to get preoccupied with our power, platform, image, or identity is the moment that we run into trouble.

“The search for recognition hinders faith. We cannot believe so long as we are concerned with the ‘image’ we present to others. When we think in terms of ‘roles’ for ourselves and others, instead of simply doing the task given us to do, we are thinking as the world thinks, not as God thinks. The thought of Jesus was always and only for the Father. He did what He saw the Father do. He spoke what He heard the Father say. His will was submitted to the Father’s will.”

Who am I? They often tell me, I come out of my cell Calmly, cheerfully, resolutely, Like a lord from his palace. . . . Who am I? They also tell me, I carried the days of misfortune Equably, smilingly, proudly, like one who is used to winning. Am I really then what others say of me?

Or am I only what I know of myself? Restless, melancholic, and ill, like a caged bird, Struggling for breath, as if hands clasped my throat, Hungry for colors, for flowers, for the songs of birds, Thirsty for friendly words and human kindness, Shaking with anger at fate and at the smallest sickness, Trembling for friends at an infinite distance, Tired and empty at praying, at thinking, at doing, Drained and ready to say goodbye to it all. Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today and another tomorrow? Am I both at once? In front of others, a hypocrite, And to myself a contemptible, fretting weakling? . . . Who am I? These lonely questions mock me. Whoever I am, You know me, I am yours, O God.4