Elisabeth Elliot Session 2: Giving Your Life Away in Every Season of Life, Part 1

thank you for inviting us let's pray may the words of my mouth lord the meditations of each heart be acceptable in your sight oh lord our strength and our redeemer amen you know what my topic is it's give your life away give your life away in every season and i've been very excited and happy to see how many young people there are here of course all of you look young to me but those of you who are mothers of young children you may have you may find some things which i have to say here which will be helpful in your training of them but we're all children in god's sight and we're all desperately in need of constant reiteration aren't we the lord is re reviewing over and over and over again in my life things which i feel as though i learned 60 years ago or so and i'm still in the process some of us are old some of us need that review some of you are very young and are very blessed to have christian surroundings a church like this christian friends and yet we all need constantly to go back to the word of god some of you are mature in the ways of the world and very young in the ways of the christian life thank god that he has in his mercy brought you into the fold and there may be some here who are not yet in the fold you have been perhaps dragged here against your will i remember what c.s lewis said about his conversion he said never was anyone dragged so unwillingly into the christian life eyes looking right and left for some escape route and there may be some people here this morning who are feeling exactly the same how in the world did i ever get into this if i'd known what i was getting into i wouldn't have come well i'm convinced that everything that happens fits into a pattern for good and you know why i'm convinced of that well it's not an elizabeth elliott notion it comes straight out of romans 8 28 it says everything that happens fits into a pattern for good to them that love god to them that are called according to his purpose and verse 29 tells us what that purpose is that we might be conformed or shaped to the image of christ shaped to the image of christ and that is not going to happen unless we are prepared to give our lives our lives away give your life away now it may seem a strange topic for you who are just beginning to learn who you are and there's no better way to learn it than by offering that self to jesus christ please don't listen to modern psychology that tells you you've got to find out who you are the great the great german philosopher goethe said only god knows who i am and may god preserve me from ever finding out and that is exactly my sentiments it's a colossal waste of time to be trying to find out who we are and working on our self-esteem and building up our self-image and all that sort of thing don't bother with that just give your life away and you don't have to bother with it god has made you and he has assigned you a portion which i quoted last night psalm 16 5 lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup and have made my lot secure what does that word lot mean it means circumstances means the things that happen this is your lot whatever my lot thou has taught me to say what it is well with my soul i'm so glad that you know some hymns i was glad to see that you sang some hymns this morning i don't know if anybody put a bug in somebody's ear that elizabeth elliott wants to hear hymns but i grew up in a family where we sang hymns every day some of you are longing to know jesus christ in a way that you have not known him before and you're willing and eager to do what he asks and i'm so grateful for that john 10 10 says i have to find it i have come [Music] that they may have life and have it to the full this is jesus representing himself as the shepherd of a sheep and he says i am come that they might have life and have it to the full the notion that so many people in the world who do not know jesus have is that all god wants to do is spoil our fun he just wants to ruin everything with giving us all those commandments who wants to put themselves under that kind of authority but they've got it far from the truth haven't they because his his purpose is that we might have an abundant life a wonderful life a far more glorious life than we could possibly have unless we put ourselves under his authority in verse 17 and 18 he says the reason my father loves me is that i lay down my life only to take it up again no one takes it from me but i lay it down of my own accord i have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again and you and i have this the right to lay down our lives or not to you know god is not going to invade the freedom of your will to choose he stands at the door and knocks what gentle courtesy the lord of the universe who created us made the heart and the hands and everything about us is willing to stand outside the door and knock if anyone hears my voice and opens the door then he says i will come in and i don't think that's just a verse for salvation that's a verse for you and me every day in every experience of life the lord is standing at the door and knocking and saying will you trust me in this will you allow me to come in and sit down and have supper with you over this problem that you're dealing with or whatever it may be if you hear his voice and open the door he will come in and that's what he wants to do for all of us i spoke some years ago in arizona on this subject of giving your life away and i was rather dismayed to notice that there were a number of small children in the audience i really wasn't expecting that i wasn't prepared for that and right on the very front row it was a whole family of homeschooling children you know you can pick them out and uh they were very well behaved they were very nicely dressed and i sort of thought oh dear these poor children what are they going to get out of what i had prepared to say to these adults well i did my best to add a few words that might make a little bit simpler the things that i was going to say but giving your life away that's a tough one it's a very tough one who wants to hear that we want to hang on to our lives i hear these little kids looking up there so eagerly and believe it or not i had a letter from a little boy six years old who had been sitting there on that front row and he told me that he had been there that that night and heard what i said and he said i want you to know mrs elliot that i'm learning to lay down my life he said my little sister has to take a nap when she's in the afternoon she's only two years old he said she doesn't like to take a nap he said i don't have to take a nap anymore i'm too big for that but she does not want to take a nap unless i lie unless i lay down with her he said now i hope you know the difference between laying live but this little boy didn't so he said every afternoon i lay down my life by laying down with my little sister until she goes to sleep now is that sweet or what but ladies that is application do not bother to come to listen to anybody that's up here on this platform in this church unless you are prepared to make application in your life a w tozer said by far the greater portion of the bible is devoted to an urgent effort to persuade people to alter their ways and bring their lives into harmony with the will of god as set forth in its pages alter your ways all of us need to alter our ways in some ways we may perhaps alter them in many ways but every day there comes a point where the lord is saying will you give in on this will you let me do this to you or for you or in you or on you theological truth is useless unless unless it is obeyed when you're singing so loudly and exuberantly here are you thinking about the words that you're singing theological truth is in those words but it's not going to do you one bit of good if all you do is enjoy the music you got to do something about it so this little boy laid down his life for his sister and ladies that is the principle of sacrifice and it is the basic principle of the cross jesus was saying in effect my life for yours and he's asking you and me to follow him in this and there are three conditions to discipleship clearly articulated to the multitudes jesus said if you want to be my disciple you must and this is point one give up your right to yourself that has got to be the most difficult thing that jesus could ask of any of us especially in today's climate when the world is telling us you gotta write to yourself you it's your body you can do anything you want with it don't let anybody tell you what to do if it's feels good do it if it doesn't feel good forget it we get these messages bombarding our ears it's almost impossible to avoid them isn't it and yet we heard that still a small voice if you want to be my disciple yeah you don't have to you can go follow any other rabbi there are plenty of them around jesus was one of them and he said do you want to be my disciple okay give up your right to yourself let it go give me all the rights over you have you done that have you ratified it today are you prepared to validate it when you go out of this place and go home ready then to give up your right to yourself well that is the first condition of discipleship give up your rights all of them and salvation comes from the latin word to mean meaning to save and the salvation that jesus christ offers us means that he wants to save us not primarily from hell that's really a triviality by comparison he wants to save us from our selves and i went to a bible school up in alberta canada way back in 1948 and one of the greatest teachers that i've ever had the privilege of sitting under was the principle of that school his name was mr ellie maxwell mr l e maxwell and he had a tremendous sense of humor and he put up with an awful lot of nonsense with these 1500 students in the bible school but we loved him dearly and i remember his getting up one time to pray after there had been a whole bunch of people coming up to the microphone and confessing their sins and they were allowed to do this but he was always trying to urge us to just talk to jesus about it unless it's something that everybody needs to hear well of course the kids weren't too good at figuring out what everybody needed to hear it was what they wanted to talk about of course to get a mic in front of your face is uh rather exciting for some people so after all this boring parade of people coming up to the mic and telling us these ridiculous little things that they wanted to ask forgiveness for mr maxwell got up and said oh lord deliver us from our sad sweet stinking selves and we need to be delivered from our sad sweet stinking selves quite often don't we in that same passage john 14 john 10 verses 14 to 18 i've already read you 17 and 18 i'll skip that i'm going to be going over my time here if i put in all these things i've got in my notes but the first condition of discipleship is a scary word deny and modern psychologists are telling us oh you're in denial you know so we get all twitchy wondering worrying about that well you're going to have to deny yourself if you're going to be a disciple of jesus christ means to abandon yourself let go of yourself give up yourself let go and the first lessons are going to be at home not in church not in some wonderful conference that you get to go to but the test is going to be at home where part of the time nobody's looking nobody knows what you're doing have you taught your children courtesy simple humble glad giving up of their right to themselves pass the butter to daddy first well why should a little child of four years old have to pass the butter to daddy first because you have to start as early as possible to teach a child give up your right yourself you want the butter maybe daddy hasn't had the butter yet offer it to him first or offer to mommy first or to your bigger brother or your sister or whatever just don't grab it and if there are six cookies on the plate and seven children what's going to happen tiny seemingly insignificant but very basic principles of the christian life courtesy is my life for yours and emerson said that courtesy is many small sacrifices petty sacrifices of little things as you've all realized already if you've had any contact at all with my husband lars grin you know that he's a gentleman he is a southern gentleman and he actually helps me in with my chair at the table when there isn't any company to be impressed if it's raining he jumps out of the car puts up the umbrella goes all the way around in the rain holds the umbrella for me gets me into the building petty sacrifices but that's what courtesy is about that is what giving up your right to yourself is about give yourself away now there's a wonderful little story that i came across in a book about watchmen knee whose name may be familiar to some of you an amazing chinese man who probably died in prison there was never any way of knowing exactly what happened to him but he disappeared for 20 years and he was in prison and perhaps was executed or perhaps died of starvation who knows but he was an amazing man and he told this story there was a chinese farmer who was a brand new believer and very early in his christian life he had a major crisis of faith and god is very good at giving us crises of faith right immediately after we decide we're going to follow him something happens we wonder why did god let this happen he found out that his neighbor was breaching the retaining bank and running water onto his own land now these were farmers who had steps on the hillside and they had to pump they had to pump water and carry it up and pour it into their garden so here was this neighbor breaching the wall and taking the christian farmer's water into his own garden so he went to the elders of the church and he said it is not righteous what shall i do what does a christian do and the elders knelt in prayer and they said you have to go the second mile referring to jesus words if somebody wants you to go one mile with them go with them too if somebody wants to take your coat give them your cloak so guess what the farmer did the next morning he spent the whole morning pumping water for his neighbor's garden and of course had to spend the whole afternoon pumping water for his own garden and after this had gone on for a couple of days you can imagine the other man was just amazed and he came to the christian farmer and he said why did you do this he couldn't understand it he'd never heard of anybody doing a thing like that but that christian was giving up his right to himself he had a right to justice in the court of law didn't he he could have taken the man to court could have sued him instead of that he laid down his life gave up his right to be vindicated so he pumped water for the neighbor's two strips of wetland the neighbor was dumbfounded and when he questioned the christian it wasn't very long before the neighbor was drinking the water of life he became a christian you never know what a small sacrifice made it mean to someone else jesus was subject to his parents jesus the lord of the universe came into the world as a helpless baby dependent upon his mother's breast a little boy who skinned his knee undoubtedly like every other little boy who cried but who when he was 12 years old confounded the experts in the law with his knowledge of scripture undoubtedly taught him by mary and his foster father joseph but when he was found there in the temple confounding the elders his mother said to him why have you treated us like this we have sought you sorrowing for three days you know they thought that jesus was in the company on their way home and discovered he wasn't took him three days to find him and there he was in the temple but even though he had this amazing grasp of scripture he was still subject to his parents until he became an adult and of course we know nothing at all about his adult life between the ages of 12 and 30. we only know those last three years but he did the works of the father and he told the people over and over i do always the things that please my father so that's what he's telling you and me lay down your life let go in matthew 16 21 he tells the disciples that he must go to jerusalem and he's going to suffer many things at the hands of the elders and the priests and he's going to be killed what would your reaction be if you were in that company probably exactly what peter's was i can imagine peter grabbing him by the arm it doesn't say that in the bible but i think peter probably did grabbed him by the arm and the bible does say that he said to him no lord that must never happen to you peter was trying to persuade jesus to avoid suffering to avoid the cross and jesus had set his face like a flint and he knew that he would not be ashamed you know that's a prophecy in isaiah isaiah 50 verse 7 the lord god will help me therefore shall i not be confounded therefore have i set my face like a flint and i know that i shall not be ashamed i have never forgotten that verse because when i was about 12 or 14 years old i sat in an audience in a conference when a woman by the name of dr virginia blakeslee was on the platform speaking she was a missionary to africa and she told us hair-raising stories about the things that she had experienced in africa near death many times working with savage people and i can still see her i was sitting right there on the front row drinking in every word i'm sure she couldn't have imagined if she looked over her audience as i often do and wonder is there anybody in this room that is actually going to hear what i say and is going to go home and do something about it i always wonder which one there might be well if she wondered that too i'm sure the last person she would have picked out would be the skinny kid on the front row that was i but i can still see her with the tears just pouring down her cheeks as she's quoted that verse the lord god will help me therefore shall i not be confounded therefore have i set my face like a flint and i know that i shall not be ashamed she was following her master wasn't she who set his face to calvary and he would not be dissuaded and what peter was trying to do was to make jesus pity himself now be very very careful ladies how you try to sympathize with your friend who is in a deep swamp of self-pity something terrible has happened you're her closest friend she comes to you she's just in a pile of utter helplessness don't encourage self-pity it is satanic when peter said that to jesus jesus reply was get behind me satan you are thinking as man thinks and not as god thinks and he would not be dissuaded from walking straight into suffering you know we are so namby pamby we are so sentimental and sweet and sickening in the way we expect everybody to surround us and hover over us and prop us up and say oh yeah you really had a tough time that same mr maxwell told us about a lady that came up to him with tears pouring down her face she said oh mr maxwell she said i don't know why the lord has blessed me as much as he has and he said well i can certainly see that you needed it give up your life lay down your life let it go forget about rights and justice and self-image and the second thing a second condition of discipleship and this is point two take up the cross jesus had to go to jerusalem he had to be killed he had to take up the cross and so giving up his right to himself means if you want it in one word relinquishment doesn't it so after your first title give up your rights you can put in parenthesis relinquishment what is it that jesus may be asking you today to open your hands and let go of something you've been clutching very possessively now once you've opened your hands and surrendered your life and said lord i'm all yours do anything you want with me say what mary said behold the handmaiden of the lord let it happen as you say then you're in a position with those open hands to take up the cross to receive that instrument of torture and what else is the cross but an instrument of torture you expect it to be comfortable it's not going to be comfortable john h newman said it is no great action done once for all but it is the continual daily practice of small duties which are distasteful to us the taking up of the cross is no great action done once for all but the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us that brings it right down where we live doesn't it we can often look at the cross we can get very sentimental about it and we can think of the great saints throughout the christian history who have been crucified literally or executed in some way betty scott stam was one of those great missionaries back in the 1930s she was one of my heroes she had been in our home when i was a child she visited us on when she was on her way to china to marry her fiance john stam i was about four years old she went to china she married john stam and when i was eight years old my father came home with a newspaper one day with a shocking piece of news which was that john and betty had been captured by chinese communists stripped half naked chained together marched through the streets of the village and beheaded betty had to watch when they cut her husband's head off and then she had to put her neck on the block now do you think that made an impression on this child who was eight years old it made an indelible impression that lady had sat at our dinner table take up the cross now it's not very likely is it god is going to ask you and me to do something very dramatic that the whole world is going to hear about not very likely at all the taking up of the cross is not going to be something heroic or dramatic or enviable is going to be the daily practice of acceptance of small duties which you don't really like may be your duty to be nice to some neighbor who's been very nasty to you like the chinese farmer are you willing to take up that cross that particular cross but why why does the lord give me this one i think i could handle what she has but you don't know what she has really you may think you do i see some people here who are handicapped we can all see that they have a major difficulty in their lives that you and i can't even imagine what it's like to be in a wheelchair to be on crutches or to have some disease that makes things difficult for you but most of us have things that nobody else is likely to see except jesus and he's asking us and of course i don't say that those people who whose disabilities are visible to us are not also required to take up the cross in many other forms all of us are i'm just pointing out that some of us think we know what another person suffers but none of us really does none of us knows except jesus what a friend we have in jesus all our sins and griefs to bear what a privilege to carry everything to god in prayer oh what peace we often forfeit oh what needless pain we bear all because we do not carry everything to god in prayer okay to bring it right down to the mundane things the screen door in our house we had a screen door with a very strong spring and we were taught that we were never to slam the screen door when my friends were standing out on the sidewalk yelling at me to come on out and play i would race out the screen door slam it behind me and be all the way down to the street when my mother would come and call me and say bets come back into the house and go out properly i was embarrassed i was angry the last thing in the world i wanted to do was go back and close the screen door quietly has that got anything to do with spiritual life you bet your life it has the spiritual life is going to be revealed in the small things of life your willingness to be courteous your child wants to watch his favorite video but his brother doesn't want to watch that one and so there's a big argument which one will be the one who says my life for yours pretty heavy stuff isn't it to lay on children don't be afraid to i heard about a teenage boy who came in came to supper one night and he said oh spaghetti he said i'm tired of spaghetti i don't want spaghetti so the next time they had spaghetti he came to the table he said where's my place his mother had not set a plate for him on the table and she said well honey we know that you don't like spaghetti but we're having spaghetti tonight so we'll see you at breakfast wonderful idea i heard a woman say that her 16 year old son if she asked him to take out the garbage would say i will take out the garbage when i want to and a woman in the audience this was on a tv program i saw it a woman in the audience leaped to her feet you know it's always the people in the audience that have the common sense it's those experts up there that are giving you a load of garbage anyway a woman in the audience jumped up and she said if my son said that to me he would be wearing that garbage [Music] we're talking about tremendous spiritual truths here but it has got to come down to where you live a mother wrote to me and she said i have three girls and one boy and i think my boy ought to learn to wash dishes but i don't know why can you tell me what to say well of course the boy was saying boys don't wash dishes i've got three sisters they can wash the dishes and do the kitchen work and the mother was at a loss to know what to say to him and of course i just simply wrote back and said i cook the meals you're all going to take turns washing the dishes simple as that but he's going to have to learn a lesson in accepting a small duty which is what distasteful to him four of you got it thank you teen age kids so tempted to conform to the world you know they don't want to wear anything that everybody else is not wearing thank you lords they don't want all these stupid rules you know how come they can do it and we can't my parents were very adamant about that and very calm and friendly about it and they just simply gave us the same answer every time these are the rules of our home they're responsible their parents are responsible for making the rules of their home we don't do this because we are christians or we do do this because we are christians you don't have to listen to what the world says dating what about that well i think there's some people here that understand that there are a lot of ways besides dating that god knows how to bring the right man together with the right woman at the right time and you know that i've written two books on the subject one is passion and purity the other is quest for love and i'm just delighted with josh harris's new book i kissed dating goodbye i'm going to say here here the taking up of the cross was expressed in betty scott stam's own words when she was about 18 years old she did not know of course what god had in store for her but this is what she wrote and i copied it into my bible when i was 12 years old and made it the prayer of my life lord i give up all my own plans and purposes all my own desires and hopes and accept thy will for my life that is the taking up of the cross 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 wilt send me where thou wilt and work out thy whole will in my life at any cost at any cost now and forever you don't know what the cost will be do you but it will cost you my dear uncle tom he took care of his wife for four years when they were both in their 80s uncle tom was older than she very decrepit but she was bedridden for four years and uncle tom was her nurse and when she died i said uncle tom i just think it's wonderful what you did for your wife grant dot and he looked at me says what's wonderful about it it's what i promised to do wasn't it talk about duties which would be distasteful to a man but 60 years before he had said in sickness and in health for richer for poorer till death us do part and he fulfilled that promise and the last thing condition of discipleship is follow give up your right to yourself take up the cross and follow now when we make up our minds that we are going to follow jesus we'd like a preview of coming attractions wouldn't we well what am i going to get out of this what's he going to give me if i give my whole life to him you know we bargain with god well i'll do this for you lord if you'll do that for me and that's not going to work he has already made it perfectly clear in the first two conditions of discipleship you've got no rights left you have given me your life it belongs to me it's no longer yours and you're looking at a woman who is not her own i am not my own i have been bought with a price and therefore i am to glorify god in this one and only body god's not going to give me another one this tall white anglo-saxon aged female body is the only one in which i can glorify god and so he says will you follow me you can be sure that at my age i think a lot about the future how much future is there left for me i'm not going to worry about it because i just know the lord's going to take care of me in south carolina there's a family by the name of retu r-e-t-t-e-w they have adopted 19 children 10 of them are very seriously handicapped we visited them one day and i said to debbie the mother do you ever worry about what in the world you would do if your husband died she just looked at me and smiled without the slightest hesitation she said no i don't worry about that at all because she said i just know the lord's going to take care of us now what are you worrying about that might happen tomorrow or the next day or 20 years from now cut it out quit worrying we talked about that yesterday now there are three principles to learning the will of god if you want to follow the lord you may be saying well how in the world am i going to know what he wants me to do let me give you three simple principles number one tell him you'll do anything he says what's the point of telling god that you want to know his will unless you've already made up your mind that you will do it no matter what it is at any cost tell god you'll do anything he says number two you could guess read your bible and pray how are you going to be in communion with with god if you're not arranging specific time with your bible and silence prayer before god your bible so that you can receive his word you're praying so that you can converse with him and the third thing which is very often overlooked do faithfully what god has given you to do today god has given you some things to do today including being here you know what you have to do when you leave here and get home are you faithful meticulous careful thorough and glad about the things that the lord has assigned to you i can promise you from my own experience of so many years that the will of god is going to be very different from what you expect it's going to be harder is going to be bigger and it's going to be far more glorious i can say that without any fear of equivocation it will be glorious and i can look back and think all those tough things thank you lord it is glorious the will of god proverbs 3 5 and 6 trust in the lord with all thine heart lean not unto thine own understanding in all thy ways acknowledge him and he might direct your paths is that what it says he will direct your paths but you have to acknowledge him in all your ways discipline proverbs 15 32 says he who ignores discipline despises himself now you know the area in your life which desperately needs discipline are you sweeping it under the rug are you laughing about it and saying oh well i'm not very good at that you know i'm just no good at getting up in the morning whatever it is you know the area of discipline is your place a mess what's the top drawer of your dresser look like what does your the trunk of your car look like what does your kitchen counters look like these are all areas that require discipline he who ignores it despite despises himself and lastly let me just add that with it is often our duty to do what we don't want to do often also it is our duty to leave undone what we want to do if it's that mess in the closet that you've been telling yourself you're going to do something about and somebody comes along and says let's go to such and such for lunch you might have to weigh those two things and decide which one is going to require the most earnest and honest discipline give your life away give up your right to yourself take up the cross and follow god bless you now before before i leave the platform i just want to ask that we have say one minute of perfect quiet meditation bow your heads close your eyes and think of what you've just heard or written down and ask the lord to show you something that you need to do about it okay i'm in

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Length: 45min 11sec (2711 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021