Keeping a Quiet Heart in Every Season

thank you so much really i don't know how you have any breath left after all that singing please [Applause] don't use up my time [Applause] gotta let you out of here at a decent power tonight it is a privilege and a pleasure for my husband and me to be here so i want to say thank you for being so persistent carolyn it is very inspiring to see this many women all in one place i want to mention two of the books that are back at the book table one is a book that i'm sure you don't need but you know somebody that needs it it's called discipline the glad surrender and it deals very specifically with the discipline of the mind the body the emotions time and work and possessions and probably a few other things as well and the book which from which i'm taking the title of my talk tonight is keep a quiet heart and this is one of my more recent books it's just a collection of very short pieces from my newsletter some of you know that i re that i write a newsletter it's called the elizabeth elliott newsletter comes out every other month and it's just articles about things that i've been thinking about it has nothing to do with world news or anything like that it's really not a very good title for it i guess but it contains prayers my travel schedule so that you can know if i'm going to be anywhere near your area maybe once in a blue moon there's a recipe in there or a picture quotations poetry and just musings of mine so if you would like to get on the newsletter list you can ask my husband about how to do that when you get to the book table let's pray father i pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts may be acceptable in your sight because you are our strength and our redeemer in jesus name amen i don't really meet very many people who seem to have a quiet heart we women are particularly prone to complain about all sorts of things and things are never just exactly the way we want them to be or we wish we were somewhere else or we had somebody else for a husband or we didn't have this or that in our lives or we didn't have that terrible neighbor that we have to get along with or that awful person in the church that makes your life miserable they're just a whole lot of things that keep us from having a quiet heart but i am absolutely convinced that it is possible not only to keep one but to make it evident in your life but of course it takes growth and grace trusting god learning to trust him and that is a daily lesson for all of us isn't it i'm an old woman now and i realize that there's not a day that goes by that the lord doesn't have something else to teach me never imagine that we've ever arrived many years ago when my oldest grandson was just a little boy less than two i think i happened to be in the car with him and his father his father decided that that was the day they needed to go through the car wash and so this little boy was not explain it wasn't explained to him what was going to happen or anything it was really too young to understand very much of anything and so when the car was drawn into that dark tunnel the automatic car wash which can be a very scary experience for any of us on the first run through i saw this little boy's big blue eyes get bigger and he looked around and he heard all these strange noises beginning and he looked immediately to the face of his father and then when suddenly the roar of the water came down on all four sides of the car again his eyes opened wide with fear and he looked around and then he looked at the face of his father and then the giant brushes closed in it was kind of like some space movie or something so frightening all this terrible stuff noises and strange things happening and again his eyes darted around and then he looked at the face of his father i could see the fear in his face and i could see that he was ready to cry but he never cried and finally when the car was pulled out into the sunshine he broke into a big smile and he had never shed one tear and i thought about the fact that it was because he knew his father now he did not know why we were in there he didn't know if we were going to get out but he knew his father and he knew that never had his father given him reason not to trust him we have a heavenly father whom we need to learn to trust there is no remedy for fear except trust there isn't any other remedy i don't know what you may be fearing tonight but i do know that god knows so often i receive letters from people asking me all kinds of impossible questions and of course i can't possibly answer them all and i don't say well i know exactly what you're going through because most of the letters that i get are such horror stories that i they have nothing to do with anything that i've ever been through i feel as though i've never had a problem in my life when i read some of those letters so i can't say i know exactly what you're going through but there's one thing i can always say with absolute assurance and that is i don't know what you're going through but i know the one who knows and he loves you and he has allowed this to happen for his glory and for your growth in grace and i trust that every one of us here is hungry to grow in grace now for you diligent note takers and it's wonderful to see so many of you already scribbling away down there um it's really quite rare you know for people to bother to take notes i don't know what you do with them when you get home maybe you don't even probably don't even get them home half the time but um at any rate i'll give you three things by way of introduction three things but for the first half and then there are four things in the last part number one is trust in god's presence the second is trust in his sovereignty you sang about his sovereignty a little while ago and number three is trust in his love his presence his sovereignty and his love you're familiar with the story in mark 4 35 but i'm going to read it for you anyway you remember that jesus was when the evening came jesus said to his disciples let us go over to the other side leaving the crowd behind they took him along just as he was in the boat there were also other boats with him a furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion i love that little human touch jesus was human remember he had to sleep so do we and he enjoyed the comfort of a pillow so do we the disciples woke him and said to him teacher don't you care if we drown he got up rebuked the wind and said to the waves quiet be still then the wind died down and it was completely calm said to his disciples why are you so afraid do you still have no faith they were terrified and asked each other who is this even the wind and the waves obey him these were the disciples remember those who had walked with him and talked with him and heard him pray here they were asking each other who is this they still didn't really understand did they that he was the almighty son of the almighty father and even the wind and the waves knew his voice and obeyed how was it that jesus was able to go to sleep in the midst of that storm it was because of his absolute trust in his father the disciples were saying don't you care if we perish that's a different translation from the one i read but they weren't perishing they were panicking weren't they and that's very easy for us to do isn't it get all bent out of shape and just feel as if the end of the world has come and we're just not trusting we're panicking amy carmichael wrote a poem about that little incident that i've just read hold us in quiet through the age-long minute while thou art silent and the wind is shrill can the boat sink when thou dear lord art in it can the heart faint that waiteth on thy will hold us in quiet we need quietness how much do you arrange for in your life how much noise do you have to have if you go for a walk do you have to have walkman in your ears we live on the coast in massachusetts and it's amazing to us that the people who come down to sit on the rocks in front of our house will sometimes bring with them a boom box or they're sitting down there when when we're sitting up on our terrace and i love the sound of the ocean and the sound of the seagulls and those are the only sounds we hear and there they are with a radio and i think do they ever want real quiet and peace we need to arrange in our lives for quietness solitude and i want to recommend to you mothers of young children that you should have a quiet hour in the afternoon and this is something that my daughter did she realized how desperately she needed some quiet and she certainly understood that children need quiet as well and they need to be taught solitude and so every afternoon in her family and she has eight children everything shuts down at two o'clock in the afternoon and each child has to be alone and is not allowed to listen to music or turn on tape recorders or play with any kind of toys that make any kind of noise and each one has to be alone in his own room or in a room where my daughter might assign him of course she doesn't have eight bedrooms but they know that there's a whole hour that they are not allowed to come out of the room there's no running to get glasses of water or coming in to say mommy what do i do now and they're not even allowed to go to the bathroom they have to do that before the hour starts and so when there's this total calm these children are learning to appreciate solitude and silence and think what it's doing for the mother have you thought about that valerie's a gen she's the real champion at being able to lie down and go to sleep just like that for 10 minutes and wake up in 10 minutes and then she gets up and she's got 50 minutes to do something which she wants to be able to do without being interrupted by children and the little children who don't have who don't read time are given a timer and the timer is put in the room and valerie says when the bell rings you can come out you are not to come out until the bell rings you know if you start that just the minute the child stops having an afternoon nap he can take it for granted that this is a quiet time even though he doesn't go to sleep i just want to put that little parenthesis in by way of a very strong suggestion if you're not doing that if your children are not being taught to amuse themselves without saying well what can i do now mom and if they're not being taught to appreciate total silence do something about it hold us in quiet through the age-long minute twelve hours silent and the wind is shrill can the boat sink but now dear lord art in it can the heart faint that wadeth on thy will trust in his sovereignty is the second thing now what does sovereignty mean god is totally in charge of the universe he is all-powerful he is omnipotent he is running the show nothing absolutely nothing can take place without his permission now that's a sticky one for us to swallow isn't it because we always want to ask the question but how does this terrible thing that happened have anything to do with the will of god why did god let that happen who of us has not asked that question and of course the answer is none of our business why god knows exactly what he's doing and absolutely nothing can happen without his permission he is sovereign he's running the show and so if i can absolutely trust and rest in the fact that my heavenly father is the engineer of the universe there's no reason to lose my peace i can keep a quiet heart george mcdonald has written some wonderful novels george mcdonald was a scottish minister back in the 1900s at the 1800s and he was jailed he was deprived of his ministry and put into jail and then he had a very large family of 11 children and so he got out of jail he decided that the best thing to do in order to support the family was to write some books so he wrote many many books i have a shelf about this long which is not nearly half of them and he has some wonderful stories in there and one of them has a dialogue between two men and i wrote i copied this out on a little three by five slip of paper for my father because my father was a worrier and my mother was a worrier and i'm a born worrier so i know what i'm talking about when i say that we need to learn to keep a quiet heart and over the years i could see that my parents did learn that there was real spiritual growth in them as i looked back of course i wasn't aware of it at the time but i can remember my father worrying a great deal about the business that he was in at a certain point and so i copied out this quotation from george mcdonald and gave it to my father back in 1959 and he carried it in his wallet until he died in 1963 and i have the very same slip of paper here and this is the dialogue between these two men conversation one of them said the care that is filling your mind at this moment or but waiting until you lay the book down to leap upon you that need which is no need is a demon sucking at the spring of your life and his friend says no mine is a reasonable care an unavoidable care indeed is it something you have to do this very moment says his friend no then you are allowing it to usurp the place of something that is required of you this moment his friend says there is nothing required of me at this moment nay but there is the greatest thing that can be required of a man and what is that says his friend trust in the living god i do trust him in spiritual things everything is an affair of the spirit do you believe that everything is an affair of the spirit it matters how you do your housework it matters how you treat your husband and your children it matters what you read what you see what you love what you do everything is an affair of the spirit so when you think of trusting in the sovereignty of god you realize that god's sovereignty probes every single area of your life and let's not make the very common mistake of separating the spiritual from the physical or that which is spiritual work as opposed to that which is housework for example there is no dichotomy for a christian everything that i do is meant to be an offering to jesus christ all that i am all that i have all that i do and all that i suffer is meant to be an offering to jesus christ do you suppose ladies that jesus is more interested or shall we say even more impressed with my standing in front of an audience like this and speaking then he is in the way i iron larsa's shirt or clean the bathtub i don't think so i don't think there is any difference in god's eyes there is a time for me to iron a shirt and a time to clean the bathroom and a time to speak to a group of ladies just happens that this is part of my assignment but this is not spiritual work as opposed to the rest it's all for jesus and i want you to get that into your heads as clearly as you possibly can because some of you have been thinking i wish i could do something really wonderful for god i wish the lord would give me a ministry well if you're a mother god has given you a ministry hasn't he a lady said to my mother one time or she said to me i guess after my mother had died she said what did your mother do outside of the house and i said nothing at all she said you mean she never she didn't have any ministry and i said well we were her ministry her six children and she said she gave her whole life to her six children i said yes and i said if you were to ask my mother what she did that is what she would tell you she raised six children for god and she said to me this woman just looked at me with the most pity pitying expression and she said well that means she didn't have any life of her own did she and i said if you had asked my mother if she had a life of her own my mother would not have had the foggiest notion what you were talking about we were the ministry that god had given her i don't know what ministry god has given you but i know he's given every single one of you a ministry ministry means service it doesn't mean anything else you must get that through your heads trust in his sovereignty he assigns you your place in his scheme of things are you being faithful in that place now one who truly believes in god is not going to be worried about tomorrow as i've already confessed i'm a born worrier and i realize it is a sin we have been we have been told clearly in scripture do not worry about anything whatever we're told that in jesus when jesus spoke in the book of matthew don't worry about anything and in philippians 4 do not worry about anything whatsoever and we do it don't we we we are sinning when we do that but if we truly believe in god there is absolutely nothing to worry about and i do think that i've made a certain amount of progress along those lines as i look back over more than seven decades i realize that nothing that i worried about has ever done any good it is a colossal waste of time and energy and that's bad enough but the worst thing about it is that it is disobedience now can you remember what you worried about last tuesday probably some of you worried about whether you were going to get here tonight whatever it was that you worried about it didn't help did it so cut it out ladies just quit stop it now one of the most i would say perhaps the most difficult decision that i ever had to make in my life was whether i was going to go and live with the indians who had killed my husband and i had prayed a prayer after jim died lord if there's anything you want me to do about the alca indians i'm available thinking it was a very safe prayer have you ever prayed a prayer that you certainly didn't intend for god to answer you just thought that maybe you ought to pray it but you didn't really expect that god was going to pay much attention to it well if the time came when it appeared that god might indeed be asking me to do just that and so i lay awake at night worrying about how would i get there how would i know that this is really what you want me to do lord how would i know what when to go and what in the world would i do with my three-year-old daughter of course there was no question of my leaving her behind i was her mother and i was certainly not planning to turn her over to somebody else to raise so i figured if god wants me to go to the alkas god wants valerie to go to the alkas now you can imagine that her grandparents took a rather dim view of my taking their little granddaughter in to live with the tribe of naked people that had killed her father imagine a three-year-old child being taken into a place like that so i think you can sympathize with my temptation to worry and i would lie awake at night and i did a lot of it a lot of worrying but constantly the lord was speaking to me in that still small voice just saying i'm in charge i know what i'm doing i'm not going to ask you to do anything for which i am not going to give you the grace now that did not mean that he was not going to let me get killed he didn't tell me ahead of time that he wasn't going to let me get killed that was none of my business now i want you to get this spiritual principle very clearly in your minds obedience is our business the results of that obedience are god's business you understand that it wasn't up to me to figure out what was going to be the result of my going in there i had no more guarantee that i was going to come back out alive than the five men did so i had to trust in his sovereignty and i thought of a lovely little poem that was posted over the bed in the summer place that we used to go to in this in new hampshire when i was a little child those thrilling few weeks that we would have when we drove from philadelphia up to new hampshire in fact we used to go by pullman train in those days none of you here have ever even heard of a pullman train probably but that was the most exciting thing in the whole wide world it's just tragic that it doesn't exist anymore but then when my parents managed to get a car back in the 30s we would drive and it took us two days from philadelphia up to new hampshire and i loved getting into that tiny little bedroom which was always mine i could smell the lovely fragrance of the balsam and the pine come through the window and i could hear the little river down below rippling over the stones and the sighing of the wind in the trees and i would sink down into that feather bed and over the bed was posted this little poem that said sleep sweetly in this quiet room oh thou who air thou art and let no mournful yesterdays disturb thy peaceful heart nor let tomorrow scare thy rest with thoughts of coming ill thy maker is thy changeless friend his love surrounds thee still forget thyself and all the world put out each feverish light the stars are watching overhead sleep sweetly then good night and i would go to sleep very happily and quietly number three if we're going to keep a quiet heart we have to trust in his love he is perfectly wise he is perfectly confident constant which means he is the same yesterday and today and forever and he is perfectly capable of holding us up in the everlasting arms anybody here who has ever heard me say you are loved with an everlasting love that's what the bible says and underneath are the everlasting arms and he's not going to let go he is not going to let go of you those everlasting arms are there and another little story from george mcdonald's novel he tells a story of a young man who was way up in the highlands of scotland when a sudden flash flood occurred and he found himself almost swept away in the river he managed to gain his foothold and he saw a girl desperately clinging to a tree and the river was rising rapidly and the roaring water was swirling all around and the young man was able to go and rescue the girl and hold her in his arm she was a girl about 12 years old he was holding her in his arms above the level of the water but of course the water was constantly rising and as the water was rising he was continuing to lift her arms but she could see to lift her in his arms but it was very obvious to the girl that not very long from then he wasn't going to be able to hold her any above the flood and she looks up terrified into his face and she says are you sure that the floods will not drown us his answer is no but i am sure that no flood can sweep us out of the everlasting arms no flood can sweep us out of the everlasting arms no disaster can take you out of those arms so you have to trust his love how is it that his love can allow tragic things to happen read the bible think of the things that happened to joseph but in the end of that amazing story of all those years of imprisonment and the hatred of his brothers and everything when he finally meets his brothers and is able to preserve them from famine he says you meant it for evil but god meant it for good there's that seeming paradox isn't it the sovereignty of god which allows evil to occur and the absolute ability of god to bring good out of that evil well think of daniel having to go into the lion's den he didn't know he was going to come out did he he was obedient to god obedience was his job the results of that obedience was god's job shade dragged me shaq and abednego they went into the fiery furnace they didn't know that they were going to come out again of course they didn't they certainly expected to be burned to a crisp and the king mocked them and he said do you really think that your god can keep you out of this furnace and they said yes but we want you to know o king that if he doesn't be it known unto you that we will not bow down and serve you and then of course john the baptist had his head chopped off because he was being obedient to god stephen was stoned to death as he was preaching the gospel and what did you sing about just a little while ago our sinless savior was nailed to a cross wasn't he god allows terrible things to happen but he knows how to transform them and so he's saying to you and me today keep a quiet heart i know what i'm doing i never make any mistakes i haven't forgotten you i haven't let go trust in his love those are the first three points now there's four things that will make that describe the difference that christ can make in your life if you keep a quiet heart now just for those who've already lost your place in numbers one two and three trust in god's presence number two trust in his sovereignty number three trust in his love now the difference that a quiet heart makes number one you will begin to qualify as an instrument of peace i hope that you know that beautiful prayer written about 700 years ago by saint francis of assisi i have this framed on the wall of my study and i use it as a prayer very often i want to recommend that you use written prayers now maybe that'll be a shock to some of you i came from the kind of a background where we kind of thought that anything that wasn't just spontaneous was a little bit suspicious and i've certainly learned since then that god didn't put all those prayers in the bible for nothing he told us that we were to say the lord's prayer so that's perfectly clear that is a command that we are to use those words when you pray say our father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name and i do trust that you know that prayer and that you use it very often but there are also many other prayers almost i think all of paul's epistles have prayers in them and those are worth memorizing and use them but i also use prayers that are not in the bible that other people have written because they have been able to articulate things which i would never be able to have thought of but it's just what i want to pray i wouldn't have been able to without the help that i've gotten from all these other sources so saint francis's prayer says this lord make me an instrument of your peace where there is hatred let me sow love where there is injury pardon where there is doubt faith where there is despair hope where there is sadness joy where there is darkness light o divine master grant that i may seek not so much to be consoled and this is a word that we females desperately need we're always feeling so sorry for ourselves you know we want people to hover over us and surround us and prop us up and feel sorry for us and tell us how awful everything is teach me not so much to be consoled as to console to be understood as to understand to be loved as to love it is in giving that we receive it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life you begin to qualify as an instrument of god's peace if you have a quiet heart and lars i can see you standing back there but i cannot tell what your hands are doing if you would stand outside that door to my right i would be able to see you if you'd stand just behind it where there's a little bit of light i desperately need his signals as to when i'm to stop and he's always back there to help me with that so i'm very grateful obviously we're getting down toward the end here the second thing enter your energy will be directed toward god not toward yourself which means that you will have the ability to work and not to worry when your energies are directed to toward god it's going to eliminate worry martin luther said jesus taught us to work and to watch but never to worry and we are to live in the serene in a serene tranquility with a quiet heart i've been amazed at how many different writers use the phrase a quiet heart i was quite surprised to find it in martin luther's prayer not a prayer but a statement here jesus taught us to work and to watch but never to worry or to be anxious but to commit all to him and live in the serene tranquility of a quiet heart and the third thing that the difference which will be made if you keep a quiet heart instead of frustration acceptance the temptation comes from the enemy to be frustrated the antidote for that is acceptance which is simply lifting up your hands and saying yes lord i'll take it i will receive this inconvenience this perplexity this sorrow this disease this miserable person yes lord see i can tell when it kind of gets you down where you live it says in psalm 16 5 lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup and have made my lot secure and i find that a very stabilizing calming quieting verse everything that happens has been assigned lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup and it made my lot secure psalm 16 5. a quotation from this wonderful little devotional called joy and strength now this is called daily strength for daily needs is another one by the same author called joy and strength and this book has been around for more than 100 years and i found this very helpful in fact it was this particular passage that gave me the idea for the title of my talk and also the book this is by somebody named annie keary don't know who she was i think i find most help in trying to look on all interruptions and hindrances to work that one has planned out for oneself as discipline trials sent by god to help one against getting selfish over one's work then one can feel that perhaps one's true work one's work for god consists in doing some trifling haphazard thing that has been thrown into one's day now that has helped me so many times because i don't think a day goes by when some trifling haphazard thing doesn't get thrown in to mess up my schedule and i like a schedule and i want everything to go exactly my way and so the lord sees to it that some trifling haphazard thing gets thrown into my day it is not a waste of time as one is tempted to think it is the most important part of the work of the day the part one can best offer to god after such a hindrance get this do not rush after the planned work trust that the time to finish it will be given some time and keep a quiet heart what a help and number four the last of these it's going to make a difference in the way in which people see you as a calm person you will have far more room for prayer lift up your heart just quietly while you're doing your housework while you're doing your work if those of you who work in an office it may be a noisy place it may be a place in which there are constant demands upon you and you can just quietly lift up your heart to god sometimes just lift up your eyes and that gesture in a split second god will see just a reminder lord i need your help lord i worship you lord i accept this back during world war two a group of about a hundred chinese had to make their ways through the mountains it was a very dangerous and very long and arduous journey and they made this little song which they sang i will not be afraid i will not be afraid i will look upward and travel onward and not be afraid that is a choice to not be afraid is a choice and it takes the calm that the holy spirit can give you to make that kind of a choice just choose not to be afraid and i would just ask you in closing has god ever broken a promise no he doesn't break his promises and so he says will you love me will you trust me will you praise me he wants us to keep a quiet heart trust in his presence trust in his sovereignty trust in his love qualify as an instrument of his peace direct your energies toward god instead of frustration acceptance you will learn the calm is an old hymn that says drop thy still dues of quietness till all our strivings cease take from our souls the strain and stress and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace god bless you

Channel: The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation

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Length: 45min 44sec (2744 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2022