Elisabeth Elliot: Acquainted with Loss (Episode 3)

ellen one of my favorite elizabeth elliott books actually records events that took place before she was elizabeth elliott when she was still betty howard it's the book called these strange ashes i know you've read it you're familiar with it that book has so impacted my life as we see some of what elizabeth had dreamed of had thought she was going to do as she was serving the lord and how at a period of time it seemed like it all amounted to nothing we're going to talk about that season of her life today but thank you first for joining us here on revive our hearts again and i'm loving hearing you tell these stories about the early years of elizabeth elliott thank you nancy it's fun to be with you and thank you for writing this book you've poured so much of your life over the last couple of years into the research reading the journals interviewing people who knew elizabeth and even yourself going to the jungle of ecuador to be in some of the places where elizabeth lived and served and the product of all of that labor is now off the press becoming elizabeth elliott congratulations for finishing this work and doing such a great job on it thank you i'd spy god's grace this book is even done so i'm glad to see it well my husband and i have cheered for you you and robert have worked together and as he is a literary agent you've worked together for a number of years and he's been a big fan of yours for a long time and now that i married robert i've become a big fan of yours as well and have so loved seeing the process of this book being written there have been some hard places in that in in that journey for you but it's made it an even better book and we're making it available to our listeners this week i hope that every one of our listeners is going to have a copy of this book in your home and not just in your home but in your heart as the take away lessons from the early years of elizabeth elliot are so powerful so profound so rich and we're making this book available to you today when you make a donation of any amount 30 or more to support the work of revive our hearts this is our way of saying thank you for partnering with us in this ministry we have the same heart that elizabeth did and we actually inherited the baton that became revive our hearts as gateway to joy went off the air on a friday at the end of august in 2001 and then the next monday labor day revive our hearts came on the air and i was so mindful of the fact that all of you elizabeth elliott listeners were wondering where she had gone and what had happened but thank you for sticking with this ministry because you know that the word that she loved the christ that she served is the same word in the same christ that we love here at revive our hearts and i feel like we've grown up together as elizabeth elliott listeners and the lord has done sweet things in our lives in these last nearly 20 years but i'm so thankful as we have inherited a part of that uh mission and life of elizabeth as we've been so influenced by it that we now have this wonderful authorized biography available you may think you know a lot about elizabeth elliott but you're going to find things in this book that you didn't know focusing on the early years so ellen when we left off yesterday elizabeth and jim were in this relationship that was on again and off again kind of they loved each other deeply but they loved christ and they wanted to serve him and so they both end up on the mission field but at two different mission stations and elizabeth walks through a period of her life serving as a single missionary where there's no glamour and where everything she thought she was going to accomplish for christ seems to have come to naught this is a huge part of the underpinnings of the woman who ministered to us so publicly and effectively in later years kind of unpack for us how that journey began and what was and some of the disappointments that she experienced yes it was a period of her life i wasn't as familiar with because we all think of elizabeth elliott as married to jim and and ministering to the wawadani and this was a period when this idealistic young single missionary betty howard at the time sold out to jesus sold out to jesus arrives in ecuador and settles in quito and then oh my goodness what happens jim elliot has also settled in quito with his buddy pete fleming with whom he would later die and all of them are studying spanish and getting ready to minister in the amazonian jungle although in different places and if her life was a movie this would be sort of the idyllic period where the theme music is playing and they were in love and quito and they go to bull fights and they climb mountains and they have time together of really loving each other and being together and so that's a sweet period but it ends with jim is still not ready to go ahead and propose to betty and she feels like well if he is not ready yet does not yet feel led by god in that commitment goes off to the western jungles in ecuador to work among an emit an indigenous people group the colorados okay a tribal group there and jim meanwhile is going to the eastern jungle to work with the kichwas and so they're on two separate assignments if you will and it was during this period that elizabeth elliott to be betty howard at the time really experienced i think one of the most devastating losses of her life now she had been trained as a linguist and her opportunity among the colorados was to learn their impossibly difficult language and to translate the new testament into that language to make it available to them so to do that she settles into a little clearing a little hamlet in the jungle and as only elizabeth elliott can describe it it's almost a comically bizarre setup and so she is living with several british missionaries and the colorados are polite to the white women but really have no interest in the gospel or in anything else and elizabeth prays earnestly oh lord please give me someone who can serve as an informant an informant is someone who speaks the native language and also the language that the translator speaks to make it possible for the translator to get the unspoken language into writing yeah really important role important role and there were she could find no one who spoke the colorado language as well as spanish and then against all odds god answers her prayer and a man named um don macario appears on the scene he had grown up speaking colorado and spanish all right and so they work together and he is a linguist dream he is patient with her he's working for what she can afford to pay she's making great progress all of her note cards are neatly listed she's going to conquer this colorado language and in her journal at the time you see this exultant tone of a young idealistic missionary thinking oh yes we are doing great things for the kingdom of god and god is with us and certainly of course he was and he is so early one morning the young idealistic missionary elizabeth howard at the time has just had her quiet time and then she hears the sound of hoof beats of horses galloping in the clearing in the jungle and she hears people shouting murdered don macario has been murdered and she had heard gunshots but didn't think in anything unusual there was often hunting in the area but now people are running in they're saying that don macario he's been killed there was a dispute between him and another man who whipped out a gun and shoots him point blank in the forehead and elizabeth is is absolutely shocked crestfallen what is going on there's silence in the in the clearing the missionaries are waiting don't know what to do and then some of the brothers in the christian community bring back the body of macario and betty is just looking at his face and his shattered head and there is a long grisly description which i will spare your listeners right now about an improvised autopsy in which they have to recover the bullets but as betty is looking at at the shattered brains actually of this man who had been appointed by god to help her decipher this difficult difficult language she feels the complete end of her mission as she had understood it that god had given her and a feeling of complete futility what was god up to why would he allow this it's an interesting point in her journey because she had been assuming like many of us do that because she was about the work of the kingdom that god would supply everything that she needed to have great success that it would work yeah and that she would have a finished accomplishment and be able to move on to the next thing and yet here's the death of this vision right and really it was for elizabeth as i've heard you tell it the maybe the first major death not just a literal physical death but the death of something precious to her important to her and she felt important to the lord yes yes it was an experience in in futility and she didn't know what to do with it and so it was really a season of just prostrating yourself basically before god and saying lord what would you have me do and really understanding that an intimacy with christ is not based on kind of working hand in hand with god to accomplish great things for the kingdom but a a a clinging to who god is no matter what yes and i think and it's borne out in her writings over the long years of the rest of her life it was one of the most painful losses of her life so what happened then well being elizabeth elliot she kind of gathers herself together and begins to look for another person with whom she can work to decipher this difficult language there's no one no one but then by god's providence the brother of the chief in the colorados agrees to stay sober on saturdays just long enough to work with elizabeth as a an informant in terms of deciphering the language so his name is samuel she works with samuel and bit by bit just through working working working she reconstructs and finishes almost out her work on the colorado language and so an incredible moment she feels like my goodness i was able to finish this god is good felt like the situation had been redeemed somehow and then the next thing that happens is jim elliott meanwhile is working in a kichwa settlement known as shandia and he has carefully built the buildings hand planed all the boards and made buildings for the settlement there to be used to the glory of god an enormous flood comes and wipes out the whole settlement all of the buildings he's so painstakingly built to the glory of god and for his service are washed into the river jim himself is nearly catapulted into the river and loses his life so here we have these two people sold out to do the work of god for the glory of god both confronting great loss this script doesn't seem to be the unfolding the way it should right right where's the neat story yeah right and all of the great victories serving the lord and it all yeah comes into this great ministry exactly so then we have um elizabeth is sitting at her desk late at night she hears the sound of hoof beats what is it now and it is someone running a message that has come to the nearby town and he's brought it by horseback to elizabeth it's a telegram she rips it open it is from ed mccully jim's closest friend it says jim will be in quito come she knows it can only mean one thing could it be it is the engagement for which she has been waiting waiting waiting anxiously for five long years she rushes around she pulls things together she takes a 12 hour trip on the back of a pickup truck makes her way to quito and there the long awaited moment occurs and jim elliott kneels before a fire with a ring in his hand and asks for her hand in marriage and this culmination of many years of longing and desiring is realized in that moment right at the same time that they both are at a time of great loss in the midst of of ministry and of course not realizing in that beautiful moment that what she's receiving in gym she's also going to have to give up in god's providence much sooner than anyone would have imagined exactly exactly and right around the same time period and i i tell it in a way that is more easy to follow perhaps in the book she gets a letter from one of her fellow missionaries back among the colorados and when she had left there to come to quito for the joyous engagement she had packed up all of her language notes and everything very carefully into a suitcase so it would be available for the other missionaries to use toward the end that the new testament could be translated into the colorado language this is all the fruit of her work yes heart fought for right pulled out of the fire after mario's death and she gets in keto then she gets a letter from one of her fellow missionaries saying that that suitcase has been stolen off the back of a pickup truck and all of that work is completely lost i remember the first time i read that story years ago it's told in elizabeth's book these strange ashes it's also told beautifully in your book the becoming elizabeth elliott my heart just sank i think especially as a writer you know you know on computers what it is this happened to my sweet husband just recently where some weeks of work were lost never to be recovered but to have all you've poured your heart into mitz trial and tribulation and it's gone i i just i could not fathom what she must have felt and the huge loss this must have been because you've poured your life into this and oh god all gone and there's no tidy explanation yeah right this is so here's the reason god did this and now we can see he was intending to do it doesn't tie up that neatly no never and so this period to me is interesting in her life because many of us have focused understandably on what was to follow as she mentioned the loss of jim and his colleagues this all preceded that yes yes but it was a season of great loss and it was a season where i think the assumptions that that elizabeth had made about if i am faithful and i do the next right thing according to what god would have me do then he will do x and then y will happen and the result will be great things for the kingdom of god her motivations were always about what what will build up the kingdom and isn't that the way we so often think yes if i do this and this i have my devotions i work hard at this i serve the lord i say yes lord i love my husband i love my kids i or i serve the lord faithfully as a single woman and i stay morally pure then the outcome is going to be beautiful right right and in the near term this side of eternity sometimes it is not beautiful it's messy it's painful and there are no explanations right that we can see and so as i say in the book for for elizabeth to confront that head on it was for the first time for her coming up against that which is unexplainable through some tidy christian formula uh and so she had a sense again of almost taking off her shoes she stands on holy grounds that oh god you are up to far more than i can understand and at this point i either turn away or i embrace you who are unknowable and you make it sound like that was a not too hard a process but was it gut-wrenching for her i think so and i think she mourned these types of losses that appeared as futility in some ways for the rest of her life and there were other times as we'll get to in a later program where she experienced the same thing yet again after jim's death and so for me as as her biographer uh watching these stories unfold in the pages of her journals and reading her letters i mourn you know you get involved you think oh how can i help but at any rate you mourn these losses and yet you see is it not the same in our own lives during the period of writing this book i was going through very difficult times and one of the great benefits for me of being immersed in elizabeth's life even as my own life was pretty heavy was that sense of none of us is alone you know even in times of quarantine even in times of isolation we are not alone and that's where i think and where i would hope that this book could be used to encourage people his books are a reminder that we're all on this journey together that god is good even when we can't figure out what's going on and we are not the first people to run into ex inexplicable challenges and i think about how much of elizabeth's later life and ministry her books that have blessed untold numbers of people ourselves included her public speaking ministry her gateway to joy ministry i mean this was such a rich fountain of grace and truth we received from this woman and you look at that and you think wow isn't that beautiful and it impacted our lives the truth the grace that she received and the things she taught us but i think we forget sometimes the price she paid for that message that pure what sweet ministry of the word to be part of who she was i you know you look at joni eareckson tata and you you get around her and you think wow here's a woman who's singing hymns all the time in elevators and ever in airplanes and and who always seems to have the joy of the lord and to have the right word and and we admire that and we we're blessed by it but we don't want to pay the price of having to deal with horrendous loss and pain and grief to get there we want the fruit we want the outcome we want the sweetness of what it produces but god's word tells us that suffering is vital in our lives not just elizabeth ellie it's in johnny tatas but ours as well that it produces a sweet fruit for those who are willing to be trained by it and i'm thinking as you're unpacking these stories ellen of the book robert and i wrote together you can trust god to write your story subtitle embracing the mysteries of providence when god's ways make no sense what do you do right i jotted down a phrase you said a few minutes ago elizabeth elliott was clinging to god no matter what right but she couldn't see any outcome that was worthy of writing home in a missionary letter home i mean you know you don't raise money off of oh all this work i did over all these months and years is poof it's gone you don't write support letters on that but the determination to cling to god when his ways were something she could not fathom she couldn't understand there was no visible evidence of why god might have done this right and i think that is why elizabeth elliot is very appealing to me and i think will be appealing perhaps to millennials who aren't familiar with her story because she was very impatient if you will with the evangelical subculture that always wanted to tie a bow on things or to have a pat christian answer or to report back to the supporters all these glorious and victorious results and i think one of the key things for us in our day is it is the way that that our faith in jesus has been enculturated by a constant expectation of certain results and i think a results-oriented faith is one that is not faith at all because essentially we're walking by sight if i can see the results my faith is robust and it's sure vulnerable and you want to be flimsy when the storms do come and the losses come what happened to your faith yeah what you were trusting in didn't make it through yeah one of the images i use a lot in the book because it was part of elizabeth's life is she writes very dramatically about traveling down these jungle rivers in a narrow canoe and with indigenous people polling either end and you could be crashed up on the rocks at any moment and there were rapids and there are piranha and there are alligators and and i feel like to use the image that was her expectation of most of life that it's a difficult journey on the river as opposed to many of us in north america today we think oh we're on the lazy river on our inner tube getting tan because we're christians yeah and maybe occasionally there will be a bump you know maybe we'll have a little a little falls or a rapid or something and in fact i think it's a healthier and really a liberating view to see it as the norm is we're going to be in the rapids and anytime that is easy that is a wonderful gift but what i found in elizabeth elliott and i'll change the image again but i don't know if you love the ocean i do yes okay well me too and i love you know the pull of the big waves and there's always that temptation when a giant wave is coming toward you to turn around and run the other way right when in fact the best way to to is to run toward the wave and dive into it but that's scary you won't be pulled down by the undertow and pummeled into the sand right yeah right and i felt i felt that image a lot when i was writing this book that she faced the waves and she dove into them and that can be cold it can be salty it can be painful but that in that there was a purity about her adherence to christ no matter what that i felt i can apply this in my own life i'm not running from the waves but she yes she did that but what i see you pulling out of her journals was that wasn't always easy oh no it wasn't always natural and again we think of the older elizabeth elliott who had seemed to have mastered some of this although when volume 2 comes out we'll see even in her older life there were hard things she faced that you know the hard things weren't all in the early part of her life but she grappled with uh sometimes just clinging to christ with raw naked faith when you couldn't see you couldn't make sense it was totally a walk of faith and not of sight but her view of who god was and that he was god and she wasn't made her willing to trust a god whose way she could not see or understand frequently and in these huge losses there in that ecuadorian jungle i think we see a beautiful powerful lesson for our own lives living in the jungles of life in the 21st century whether it's in a coveted era or facing personal loss or you have faced some very difficult health situations with your own husband we'll maybe talk about that a little later in this series but whatever it is in your life that you're facing today that seems inexplicable it's mysterious it doesn't seem like god to do this you can't see what's the point of this it seems futile it seems unnecessary it seems counterproductive maybe it's with one of your children maybe it's with your mate or your parents or your vocational um life or your health it's it's mystery rather than throw in the towel give up on god decide you've had enough of this christian stuff now is the time to cling in faith to the god who loves you the god who is faithful the god who is good the god who is doing all things to accomplish his purposes in this world and purposes that we will not see many of them this side of heaven

Channel: Revive Our Hearts

Views: 5,441

Rating: 4.909091 out of 5

Keywords: Elisabeth Elliot, Ellen Vaughn, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Jim Elliot

Id: z48s0kik_Dc

Length: 27min 32sec (1652 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020