Elisabeth Elliot - A Father's Love (English)

[Music] my topic tonight is a Father's love we're talking about prayer tonight and tomorrow I think back to many many years ago probably pretty close to 60 years ago when our family was spending a week at Belmar New Jersey for a summer vacation and the oldest in the family my brother Phil and i who am ii we're having a wonderful time jumping in those little waves in the shallow part but my brother dave was scared he was 2 or 3 and my father did did his best every day that week to persuade Davey to come into this ocean with him and go out to the part where there were waves that he could jump and my father promised him faithfully that he would make sure that he was held strongly and that the waves would not sweep over him but Davey flatly and vociferously refused and my father didn't force him but on the last day of our vacation Davey gave in and relented and asked to be taken to jump in the waves well he was so ecstatic having more fun than he had ever had in his life that his first reaction was to break into a loud wail of dismay and he said but we're going on this afternoon why didn't you make me go in now what does that have to do with prayer I hope you'll see that it has a very great deal to do with prayer because what I would like to get at tonight is him to whom we pray who is it that we come to is it a father likely to do us in somehow is he a remote patriarch sitting up there somewhere in the ether looking down over the parapets of heaven perhaps trying to find somebody who's having a good time so that he can say cut it out people do have hideous ideas of God and the ordeal of fear which my brother Dave was experiencing prevented him from believing in the love of his father now the only reason my father was interested in getting Dave out there into the waves was because my father loved him and he knew how much fun it would be for a little boy if the little boy could only trust his father but he didn't trust him he was scared to death of the waves and afraid he doubted that his father was really strong enough to preserve him and to keep him from harm in the ocean and a primitive but I'm afraid very widespread idea of prayer is that there is somebody up there who's powerful and who could conceivably maybe possibly do what I want and the great question is can I get him to do what I want can I twist his arm this reluctant deity so far away can I persuade him to change his mind and in our desperation we pray having tried everything else well at least it's worth a try isn't it now I'm sure there many in this room they've gone way beyond that primitive idea and yet and yet there are times when that idea still lurks in the backs of our minds when especially in our situations of greatest desperation when we feel that there really isn't any possibility that God is going to do anything about it how do we view this father do we think of him really as a father at all and in this day and age we have to stop and acknowledge the fact that there are many people who have really never known a true earthly father perhaps they've known a father in the technical sense of the word but he was not a true father he was not a father in the sense that fathers are meant to be and he was not a loving father but CS Lewis has pointed out that even those who have never had any experience of a Father's love have an idea of what a Father's love ought to be and that is why they feel deprived we couldn't possibly feel deprived unless we had some norm some notion of what true fatherly love ought to be now where did we get that notion well we read in Ephesians the 3rd chapter that from him from God all earthly fatherhood is named and when we come to him in prayer we need to learn to come as a little child to a father who loves us beyond the love that any earthly father has ever been able to demonstrate a love which even earthly fathers who adore their children cannot adequately imagine it's way beyond that a deeper love an eternal love an unchangeable love and it is he to whom we come so if there are any who are been trying to follow what I'm saying here and it would would like a few things to put down on paper let me tell you that there are three things that I want to say about the purpose of prayer and the first is that we it is to discover the character of God primarily it is not mainly to get what we want out of God it is to learn who he is to discover his character we have these vague notions very popular misconceptions and sometimes we feel that when we come to God in prayer we have to come feeling very pious and very religious and while I confess to you that you're not looking at a woman who feels very pious ever and certainly not usually in prayer do I feel religious or very spiritual I pray because I know that I need to pray in a sense for the same reason that I sit at my desk and answer letters or go down to the kitchen and wash the dishes or do the laundry I do them because they need to be done and prayer is the Christians vital breath as one hymn writer has put it prayer is a necessity and so when we pray we are learning the more we pray the more we begin to discover the character of God he is not a reluctant deity he is not remote he is not somewhere way out there and inaccessible to us he is closer to us than breathing and nearer than hands and feet to quote another hymn writer now it does take for most of us an ordeal of some sort an ordeal of faith fear doubt before we begin to enter into the deeper aspects of of prayer now my brother Dave's fear was the fear of destruction by this powerful ocean and just last week we had a an unforgettable demonstration of the power of the ocean along the East Coast you may have heard read about the storms my husband and I live right on the ocean in the coast of Massachusetts and the entire coast of our state was declared a disaster area it was the worst storm in more than a hundred years and in our little town we saw sea walls destroyed that have stood for a hundred years and the road where my husband and I normally take our afternoon walk has great chunks taken out of it the macadam was lifted straight out of the road and flowing 100 yard up onto people's lawns and steel guardrails were yanked right out of their sockets twisted like a piece of tinfoil and thrown 50 yards or so one house was demolished on that same road and our next-door neighbors had their stairs eaten away by the ocean and two houses over a poor man that had spent most of the summer carrying wheelbarrow loads of dirt to fill in some of the rocks between his lawn and and the lower rocks and this was quite high above the ocean he had also had a retaining wall built the retaining wall went very quickly and of course not only all his wheelbarrow loads but about 20 more feet of his lawn went to so it was absolutely spectacular to watch that storm waves the like of which I've never seen about 40 to 50 feet high and the thundering the roaring the shuddering of our house was wonderful and I read in Psalm 93 it just happened to be in my reading last week and it said the Seas have lifted up the Seas have lifted up Oh Lord their voice the Seas have lifted up their pounding waves mightier than the thunder of the great water is mightier than the breakers of the sea the Lord on high as mighty and as long as we've lived on the ocean we could not have imagined the power of the breakers of the sea when we saw rocks that weighed as much as a ton flung by the water up onto the road now that it's the Lord who's in charge of all that who with one word could have calmed those waves and it's he who holds us in his arms in the ever lasting arms and you and I are loved with an everlasting love that's what the Bible says and underneath are the everlasting arms in my brother's refusal to surrender to his father's arms and thus find the joy that my father wanted him to find he was miserable for the whole week watching his brother and sister having a great time in the waves wishing with all his heart that he had the courage to do that not trusting his father and trusting that the waves would destroy him and so it is with our loving father in heaven he reaches out his arms to us and he says trust me I will hold you I do know what I'm doing trust me and when we come to him in prayer we've got to believe that he is trustworthy and we learn more and more as we pray that he does love us that he never breaks his word we need to discover his character and of course it was a great lesson for that little boy 2 or 3 years old he learned a lesson in trust of his father's word but it had to be through the ordeal of doubt and fair fear now you remember the story in Exodus 14 of the children of Israel facing the sea in front of them and the thundering chariots of Egypt closing in from behind and they were terrified it was a situation of desperation and you remember that God asked Moses cooperation as he did in virtually every miracle he performs and in all the Bible there's almost invariably something that some human being has to do in order for God to work and he tells Moses to raise his staff and stretch out his hand over the sea now can anything be more feeble and useless than one human hand over the sea but another lesson in prayer is that when we're praying we're asking God to do what we can't do and very often God puts his finger on something we can do and he says you take care of that I'll take care of the rest and Here I am an old lady still learning the lesson that God will always do what needs to be done if I can't do it but he always expects me to do what I can do and so he gives me the privilege to work in cooperation with him and I don't know any more significant and important aspect of that cooperation between a man or a woman and God than the work of prayer and we'll be looking into that a little bit more but anyway this wonderful story the he stretches out his hand and raises the staff and the waters roll back and the children of Israel go through on dry ground and the Egyptians attempt to follow them and they are all swamped and drowned and in the song of victory that they sing in Exodus 15 it is a recognition of the character of God this miracle that was performed for their salvation and their rescue opened their eyes to who God was and they sing of the Lord as their strength salvation my god a warrior majestic in power in the greatness of your men just to you threw down those who opposed you you unleashed your burning anger it consumed them like stubble you blew with your breath of the sea covered them they sank like LED in the mighty waters who among the gods is like you O Lord who is like you majestic and holiness awesome in glory it's working wonders you stretched out your hand and the earth swallowed them in your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed I had entrusted him very much before this they are declaring that they're going to trust him a little bit more now they didn't do too well at that either did they so much like us but God wants us to learn that he is trustworthy that he does love us well the second lesson of Prayer important lesson is to surrender myself to that love now my father could have forced my little brother to go into the water with him that much he could have done he certainly could have very easily carried him out there screaming and kicking but he could not force the child to relax and find the joy that he really wanted to give him so it was not to his purposes to force the child to do the thing that wasn't what he was after he was after giving the child joy do you get the lesson does it ring any bells how many of us could testify I'm sure there are dozens hundreds perhaps tonight who could testify to a time when you absolutely were going through an ordeal of doubt about God you could not imagine what God could possibly do about something that you were in desperation about and God did exceedingly abundantly above all that you asked or thought and you look back and you think why didn't I surrender long before what stupidity what thick-headed miss and what else is new Jesus said to the disciples fools and slow of heart to believe have I been so long time with you and yet you have not known me I need to learn to surrender myself to that love now Adam and Eve made a choice way back in the Garden of Eden it was between God's Word and Satan's word God's Word says do this and you will live but if you do that one thing which you had forbidden you will die and Satan comes along and says in effect exactly the opposite if you eat the forbidden fruit you will live you'll do better you can upgrade your lifestyle God is trying to cheat you out of the one thing that is really gonna make you happy and so they chose to believe Satan now what is evil what is the essence of evil it is the repudiation of our dependence upon God and the insistence upon becoming like God we were not made to be gods we were made to be men and women but when we refuse that we are doing exactly what Adam and Eve did believing the great lie did God say do you really think God loves you God is trying to cheat you and in one form or another Satan comes to us every day with the same old lie and when we believe him then we are repudiating our dependence upon God in other words sin is a declaration of independence I am my own I'm gonna do my thing I gotta be me and that's what they did and the result of course was disaster death destruction and sin and the only way in which that essential evil can be overcome is by reversing that movement and instead of repudiating God and refusing his way surrendering ourselves to it and so we're back to the little boy in the ocean with the father the joy will come only through surrender one of my favorite verses in the Old Testament is in second chronicles 229 27 and I'm not really sure whether it's first a second chronicles at this point but the verse is when the burnt offering began the song of the Lord began also and that puts sacrifice and joy together surrender the utter giving over of my life my will my self my all to God that is what brings joy and that was what barred my brother from having the fun that the rest of us were having throughout that week's vacation the only escape from misery and self-love is self giving surrender now you know this is a hard saying in today's world because we live in an atmosphere totally preoccupied with the self aren't you just about up to here with self esteem and self image and self actualization and self fulfillment and self this and self that itself the other thing I couldn't tell you how many letters I get in the mail telling me that telling me all about these problems and then of course the last page says but I've always had such a poor self-image and it all goes back to that well in one sense I want to write back to that person and say well if you have a poor self-image that is an accurate assessment because the Bible tells us that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags and we are poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked and we certainly ought to have a poor self-image I mean it ought to be to use a crude word lousy but that's not the end of God's story why should we have a poor self-image well it's an accurate assessment because we are not true men and women God wants us to be true men and women and the true man and the true woman is one who has declared his or her dependence on the God who made them and returned back in surrender to him so we need to accept the fact that there's plenty of room for improvement if we compare ourselves with other people we're likely to come up with a very inaccurate assessment because there will be a lot of people that we think are much worse than we are and therefore we're open to pride that feeds our pride and then there are a whole lot of people that we think are a whole lot better than we are and that also feeds our pride because we feel that we got a poor hand at cards and we really deserved better than that and that person really didn't deserve it as well as I did and so poor little me I was behind the door when they gave out all the gifts the one principle of hell is as CS lewis puts it i and my own and the principle of heaven is i am dying thy will be done so prayer teaches me as I begin to receive God's refusals and God's refusals maybe his greatest mercies it teaches me to give over more and more my will to his to surrender myself to his love knowing that his will is always loved his will is always loved sometimes when I tell some of the stories of my own life and my experiences on the mission field and various things that happened which were certainly not according to my tastes and preferences not on my blueprint of the way things were supposed to work in a missionaries life I have young people come up to me and say but mrs. Elliot you know when you talk about the will of God I mean really it's it's just really kind of you know I mean like scary and I say well why is it scary no but what if God did to me what he did to you and I can only say to them everything God ever did to me he did for me and I can look back now and say thank you Lord you would have loved me with an everlasting love and the only way that I can perceive the truth of that love is through surrender and so my prayer is an opportunity daily to surrender myself which brings me to the theme that really is going to run through all three of these talks which is the Lord's Prayer and I trust that at least the Presbyterians here would be able to say the Lord's Prayer from memory and probably many more of you too but the first few phrases in the Lord's Prayer put us in the proper relationship with God we start with the Our Father accepting the fact that I am a child just a little ignorant silly child like that poor little ignorant boy on the beach I don't know anymore about the fun that I'm missing then that little kid I don't know shall we say beans about the joy that God wants to give me because I don't trust but I come now and I say our father my father Here I am your child coming to you in prayer and what a privilege what a thrill what isn't it a wonderful thing that I can come I can just come to him and then it says our Father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name and I won't go into all that's involved there obviously we haven't got nearly enough time but let's think about those two phrases thy kingdom come and I will be done which fit very neatly under my third the thing that I want to mention about learning the Father's love prayer is number one to discover the character of God number two to surrender myself to his love and number three to participate in His redemptive work prayer is participation in God's redemptive work here in this world and that's what we're here for you know we're really worth absolutely nothing except to God and to other people we are worthless and I was glad that we sang that beautiful hymn that I love so much beneath the cross of Jesus but it always just kills me when I find that these modern hymn books have watered it down and this is one of them the my favorite stanza of the four and there were only three in this book was left out Oh safe and happy shelter or refuge tried and sweet oh try sting place where Heaven's love and heaven's justice meet as to the holy patriarch a wondrous dream was given so seems my saviors cross to me a ladder up to heaven and then the last word in the hymn in the original version is my own worthlessness this hymn book has made it my unworthiness which is not nearly as bad as my own worthlessness but ladies and gentlemen we really are worthless except to God and to other people we're here not for ourselves we are not our own we're here for the sake of the world and one of the things that God has called us to do is to pray to pray for the world to pray for anybody whose paths we cross we're not talking in vague generalities now for years I rattled off the Lord's Prayer because this was what my father ended our family prayers with every morning he herded all of us children together after breakfast and saddest town in the living room and we sang a hymn together and then he read the Bible to us and then we knelt and he led us in prayer and then we prayed the Lord's Prayer and it didn't mean anything we just rattled it off the way your children can rattle off those commercials that they see on TV they haven't the slightest idea what the product is and they couldn't care less but they can tell you every word and I remember we learned all the commercials on the radio back in those days I can remember use Ajax the foaming cleanser folk floats the dirt buh-buh-buh-buh-buh modem right down the drain go back up up up the problem is there anybody here old enough to have her ever heard that no nobody hears old as I am but we knew all those commercials and she keep the banana and I come to say bananas have to ripen in that certain way well the Lord's Prayer was like that to us and I can remember my brother Phil always said premises instead of trespasses and I used to puzzle over the word trespasses because I remembered seeing a little sign on somebody's grass that said no trespassing and I thought the trespassing meant walking on people's grass and I never walked on anybody's grass so I didn't see why to say that everyday but the older I get the more I see that that prayer includes everything remember it was the disciples who had been walking and talking most intimately with Jesus for those three years they were the ones who walked with him day and night and ate with him and slept with him and heard his words firsthand and surely heard him pray because we have some of his prayers recorded in the Gospels and yet they were the ones that they they must have recognized a tremendous difference between the way he prayed and the way they were used to praying so they said Lord teach us to pray and what did he do he didn't give him a sermon he didn't give him a treatise on prayer he gave them a very simple prayer these very words thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven and it as I say the older I get the more I see that this just embraces everything that I can possibly want to pray about and I can fill those words with whatever meaning happens to be the things that I'm praying about at the time and they are generalities aren't they I think one of the things that I found difficult in my early years of using that prayer when I did become a teenager and began thinking seriously about the words I thought but there's such vague generalities how in the world am I ever going to know whether God's kingdom is coming and what do I have to do with it and what how can I know whether his will is being done on earth as it is in heaven earth is too vast and of course in the later phrases it gets down to very very personal things but I was thinking just this week thy kingdom come that involves many more things than could possibly fit into our imagination the ocean with its tides the storms the waves the winds the birds that we see from our windows the leaves the moonlight the moonlight on the sea is such a beautiful sight all of these things are a part of God's earth a part of his kingdom I don't know what the redemption of all this creation is going to mean but we know that creation is going to be redeemed and it waits on tip-toe Romans 8 tells us for the fulfillment the adoption of sons and creation groans and I think about this when I see animals suffer and I see a dead bird or something I think of how creation groans waiting for the adoption of us who are the sons of God and just this last week apropos of the storm I heard on TV some fascinating stuff and I wished I'd written some of it down because I've forgotten most of it now but the man was talking about how volcanoes and earthquakes and storms and hurricanes are absolutely necessary to the survival of the planet we feel as though they are disasters and of course human beings die and suffer losses of all kinds but he said that the volcanoes have a great deal to do with keeping the temperature even on the earth and the storms and earthquakes actually have something to do with the balance of carbon dioxide and so I thought here's a perfect spiritual illustration storms are necessary to our lives so when I pray thy kingdom come I don't know what volcanoes figurative or literate literal might might be it might be necessary in God's answer to my prayer it's infinitely greater and yet in my individual life and in the lives lives of the people for whom I pray I can say thy kingdom come and I can be in a very profound and beyond my understanding sense participating the work of God that's what prayer is about I am participating and given that privilege in Exodus back to that passage in Exodus 14 the story of Israel going through the sea in verse 20 verse 19 it says the angel of God who had been traveling in front of Israel's army withdrew and went behind them the pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them coming between the armies of Egypt in Israel throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other a picture of God's dealings so often they bring darkness to one side and light to the other and when we happen to be on the dark side we're saying I don't see how Romans 8:28 has anything to do with this I don't see how in the world this could possibly fit into God's pattern for good well we don't have to see it we just have to believe it and the scripture has told us that this is true we know that it is true we don't know how it is true I don't know what storms and volcanoes you may be suffering in your personal life tonight I don't know anybody in this room except my husband and Nancy but there may be storms on one side or dark on one side but just remember that God is bringing about an answer to the prayers of his holy church throughout all the world since 2,000 years ago he's bringing about the coming of his kingdom and the church has been praying that prayer and to me it's a thrilling thing to realize that when I pray that prayer I am simply adding my voice to the tremendous chorus of prayer all over the world every minute of every hour of every day people are praying and I believe they're probably praying that very prayer there's never a time when they're not another great hymn the day thou gavest Lord has ended has Estanza as or each continent an island the dawn brings on another day the voice of prayer is never silent nor die the strains of praise away isn't that marvelous to think of that participation in the work of God and His redemptive work I pray thy will be done and I understand why the college student says to be but that's scary because there are times when I tremble sometimes it causes me to tremble when I pray that prayer for my grandchildren it will cost them a great deal eventually if the will of God is to be perfected in them because it takes the path of suffering for us to learn to know what sacrificial love is about but what do I want for the child more than anything else in the world his joy his fulfillment and I know that there is no other way but the will of God there is no other way and so I pray thy will be done and it may cost me something and I continue to pray that I will be done because I believe with all my heart that God's will is purest love he is loved that is his nature and so his power his wisdom his strength his justice these are all attributes but every one of them is synonymous with his love that his power is shown in his love his love is shown in his power whether we see it or not whether we understand it or not and his justice is absolutely one with his love they are not standing in opposition to each other so my life can be rightly ordered only when my paramount objective is beyond this life up there when my paramount objective is an eternal one then I can pray with all my heart thy will be done because then I know that I'll never have to worry about self-image and self-esteem and self actualization it will be total fulfillment and I read in my Bible that God's ultimate purpose for all of us is fulfillment in Christ all creation finds its perfection and fulfilment we read in the book of Ephesians and the result is joy and peace in the first chapter of Ephesians we have cause one of Paul's great prayers he says ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus in your love for all the saints I have not stopped giving thanks for you remembering you in my prayers now what does Paul pray for the Ephesian Christians I keep asking that the god of our Lord Jesus Christ the glorious father may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you the riches of the glorious inheritance in the Saints and his incomparable great powers just as if Paul is desperately casting about for the greatest superlatives that he can think of here his incomparable great power for us who believe that that power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in heavenly realms far above all rule authority power and Dominion and every title that can be given not only in the present age but also in the one to come and God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church which is his body the fullness of him who fills everything in every way and there's that wonderful prayer in the 3rd chapter I haven't got time to read all that either but he prays specifically that they may know the measure of the love of God that you may be able to grasp how wide and long and deep and high is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge now that's a prayer to pray for anybody for whom you don't know what to pray and most of the people on my list I don't know what to pray for I really I don't know what Lars is greatest need is I always know one or two things to pray for specifically for Lars but I don't know what his greatest need is only God knows that and so my responsibility as a wife to pray for my husband is to participate in the work of God in this man participate in the work of God in all those for whom God has given us perfectly legitimate concern be they neighbors friends or people we've never seen before the the result of surrender is peace God's ultimate purpose for us is joy in psalm 119 verse 124 we read deal with your servant according to your love now there's another expression of that wonderful phrase thy will be done why should we be afraid if his will is done he will deal with me according to his love and who can ask for anything more the great lesson of prayer is that God loves us and he waits for us to come to him as a trusting child god bless you

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Keywords: elisabeth elliot, elliot, jim elliot, elliot missionary, jim elliot ecuador, jesus, bible, Love Has a Price Tag, elisabeth jim elliot

Id: 5I8hw3Dqeq0

Length: 44min 23sec (2663 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 14 2013