Loneliness: In Acceptance Lies Peace

ligonier ministries the teaching fellowship of rc sproul presents loneliness with elizabeth elliott this message is entitled in acceptance lies peace [Music] the title of this second talk is in acceptance lieth peace and i've taken those words from a poem written by amy carmichael a woman whose life has meant more to me than i could ever possibly express she was an irish missionary who went to india back in the late 1890s and spent 53 years there she died in india never had a furlough and she remained single all of her life and she knew i think a great deal about loneliness for many different reasons but this is just one of the many poems of hers that has had a profound impact on my own life and it is where i got the title for my talk she uses the pronoun he i'm sure referring to herself he said i will forget the dying faces the empty places they shall be filled again o voices moaning deep within me cease but vain the word vain vain not in forgetting life peace he said i will crowd action upon action the strife of faction shall stir me and sustain o tears that drown the fire of manhood cease but vain the word vain vain not in endeavor lieth peace he said i will withdraw me and be quiet why meddle in life's riot shut be my door to pain desire thou dost befool me thou shalt cease but vain the word vain vain not in aloofness lie of peace he said i will submit i am defeated god hath depleted my life of its rich gain o feudal murmurings why will ye not cease but vain the word vain vain not in submission lieth peace he said i will accept the breaking sorrow which god tomorrow will to his son explain then deep then did the turmoil deep within him cease not vain the word not vain for in acceptance lieth peace i think that one aspect of the pain of being alone is the thought how did i deserve this what did i do to deserve this and we are greatly tempted to self-pity which i think is one of the most deadly emotions in the world because self-pity is a swamp of your own choosing that nobody can drag you out of now what does self-pity come from basically i believe that the source of self-pity is pride now that may make some of you a little angry with me but i know enough about it myself because i certainly have been tempted to self-pity and i think at the back of one's mind when we start feeling very sorry for ourselves and we sink into this little swamp and say poor little me and we have a little pity party for ourselves and we think everybody else ought to join in the pity party in the back of our minds is the thought i deserved better than this what have i done to deserve this with the thought i haven't done anything and actually god has cheated me of something you remember the story of job satan approached god in heaven and there's another one of those spiritual paradoxes mysteries satan is permitted to enter the courts of heaven and to challenge god and he challenged god about faith and god called job's attention satan's attention god called satan's attention to his servant job and he said have you considered this man and satan said i sure have he said does he serve you for nothing he's a rich man you've given him everything but take away some of his riches and his lands and his houses and his servants and his children and then see how much he trusts you and god accepted the challenge and gave satan permission to do whatever he wanted to do short of taking job's life and so in quick succession job lost everything his houses his lands his herds his flocks his servants his children and finally the confidence of his wife she said to him why don't you just curse god and die what else is there to do so the question is will job trust you and job did a lot of complaining we read about the patience of job well i think if you study the book of job you don't find a very patient man but job's answer to god was yes i will trust you in fact he said if you slay me i will still trust you and god i believe is always looking his eyes are running to and fro throughout the whole earth to find a man or a woman who will say yes lord no matter what happens and by the s i mean and a voluntary willed choice i do not mean resignation i don't mean a weary and sort of lazy acceptance of oh well there's what else can i do i don't have any choice sort of helpless acquiescence or worse a teeth gritting white knuckle kind of fist clenching well if this is what you're going to do to me i guess i have to take it i don't have a choice but rather the acceptance that amy carmichael speaks of here it's not mere submission it is a voluntary yes lord yes lord way back in 1949 i was sitting on the side of a mountain on the edge of portland oregon mount tabor it was a beautiful moonlight night there was the warm fragrance of the douglas firs and the warm breezes and sitting about this far away from me was the man that i was desperately in love with and the man that i was desperately hoping was going to say on this idyllic night in this moonlight in this beautiful place with the majesty of mount hood there in front of us will you marry me and that's not what he said he said bet have you thought about the fact that singleness is a gift well the last gift in the world that i wanted was singleness i had thought a lot about singleness and he and i had talked a lot about singleness and as a matter of fact we have actually fallen in love a few months before that actually almost about a year before that experience and he had confessed his love for me but he told me that as far as he knew god wanted him to remain single maybe for the rest of his life but at least until he had been a missionary in the jungle long enough to to assess the situation for himself and decide whether marriage would be a hindrance or a help and i said what do you mean singleness is a gift and i should have known that jim elliott was not likely to make a startling statement like that without having a scripture right at his fingertips so of course he opened he didn't have to open his bible he had it all in his head he said you can check first corinthians 7 it says in there that singleness is a gift and the apostle paul was single when he wrote that and he was strongly recommending that everybody ought to be single just like him before he finishes the chapter how however he does acknowledge that each person has his own appropriate gift from god some the gift of marriage and some the gift of singleness and that it is within the context of that gift that we are to glorify god well i had the gift of singleness a lot longer than i wanted it jim and i were actually married by the time we were both 26 in fact we were married on his 26th birthday i was 10 months older than he but when we came out of that marriage ceremony i remember thinking that now god had given me the greatest gift that any woman could ever desire and i had received the gift of this man that i thought was just the most wonderful man in the whole world i could never possibly love anybody else and i came out of that marriage ceremony elated just thinking about those words till death us do part that was undoubtedly 50 years down the road but now i had the gift that i wanted more than anything else the gift of marriage i'd had the gift of singleness and i'd had to say yes lord and i haven't got time to tell you that story now but that story is told in my book called passion and purity but it was five and a half years of having to say yes lord i will accept this loneliness and this singleness but now god had given me the gift of marriage well it was only 27 months later that i was standing by my shortwave radio one morning when i learned that my husband jim was missing along with four other american missionaries and the lord gave me the scripture that i quoted earlier isaiah 43 2 when thou passes through the waters i will be with thee and it was five days before we knew that the men were actually dead and you can imagine the desperate praying that we five wives did during those days asking god begging god pleading with god to bring our husbands back safely from what we all knew was a very dangerous venture and ultimately when a ground party was able to reach the site where the men had camped the report came again by shortwave to tell us that they were all speared to death and i realized over a long period certainly it was not the first thought that struck me but gradually the realization grew that god had given me a third gift which was widowhood certainly the last gift that any woman would ask for i hope that before i finish with these talks i'll be able to at least help you to understand why this makes sense to me maybe it'll never make any sense to some of you to think of singleness or widowhood as a gift but it was the context of the will of god for me at that point god had permitted this thing to happen and now it was my job either to say yes lord or no lord now if i had shaken my fist in god's face or gritted my teeth and said well there's nothing else i can do about it i would have still had to go through the agonies of widowhood so i only had two choices it was either yes lord or no lord but way back when i was 12 years old i had prayed that god would work out his whole will in my life at any cost and it was as if the lord was saying to me did you want to rescind that prayer did you want to renege on your promise to do my will whose will did you ask for and i said well yours lord so i began to see that it was within the context of being a widow that i was to glorify god and over these years i have seen that the experiences through which god took me the deep water through which i had to go when he walked with me the hot fires whatever else whatever other metaphors you would choose to describe the experiences of widowhood it is that very deep valley deep water hot fire that gave me a platform that gave me a responsibility and a privilege of speaking to others in the same situation well that was 1956 when i became a widow for the first time and i was married again in 1969 that was the miracle that i was sure could never happen i thought it was a miracle i got married the first time i couldn't imagine that anybody would want to marry me the second time and this amazing wonderful man came along and i knew that i would probably be widowed a second time in the ordinary course of human events because my second husband was 18 years older than i but i didn't expect it to be quite so soon we learned three years later that he had cancer and he died after four and a half years and so god had given me the gift of marriage the second time and then he gave me the gift of widowhood the second time and now uh ever since 1977 i've been married to lars grin and as far as i know he's feeling fine tonight as you can see on camera and he's still back there so i'm grateful for that and i think of of what a gift lars is to me and actually when lars was courting me and he did so in a very gentlemanly you might say southern slow way i mean he is a bit laid back as you can probably tell but he moved with deliberate speed if he had done it any other way he would have scared me off but it was with deliberate speed that he was courting me and as i could see that he was beginning to close in for the kill i began to pray for god's answer because i had absolutely no idea of ever getting married the third time and it just didn't fit my idea of what i was supposed to do it certainly was not anything that i had imagined that god could possibly want me to do and my answer would have been a flat no except that i felt that there was a still small voice saying to me possibly i'm trying to give you a gift have you considered that possibility and i said no lord i really hadn't considered that possibility and the lord was saying well you jolly well better and so i began to pray for an answer if when if and when lars did come around and pop that question i needed to have god's answer and one of the scriptures that he gave me because i always go back to this straight edge in order to straighten out my crooked thinking and it was in first corinthians 12 that i found this verse men have different gifts but it is the same lord who accomplishes his purposes through them all and i began to see that although lars could not do all the things that jim could do and lars couldn't do all the things that ad could do ad couldn't do all the things that jim could do either and lars could do some things that neither jim nor ad could do i was making these odious comparisons people have said to me oh you would never think of comparing your husbands would you and i said of course i would i do it all the time and as lars will tell you the most perfect men in the world are your why your wife's first and second husbands but i don't think i do make those odious comparisons too often do i darling but that verse was pretty important men have different gifts it is the same lord who accomplishes his purposes through them all and so i saw that god was asking me to accept a totally new gift unexpected unasked but it was going to be within the context of being the wife of lars grant that i was to glorify god and the gift of widowhood or the gift of loneliness is in fact a a gift given for the sake of the body body with a capital b i mean the body of christ you know god doesn't give us any gifts just for ourselves alone if you have the gift of a wonderful baritone voice maybe you sing in the shower and you probably enjoy that but i would hope that you sing for somebody else too and when you stop and think about it there isn't a single gift that any of us has that's just for ourselves alone it is to be received with thanksgiving offered to god and used for the sake of the body and every gift carries with it not only the privilege but also a responsibility and i think of my friend daphne cronin she is back there in a wheelchair on the back row and i didn't know daphne very well at all before she had her accident she was headed for the olympics in horsemanship and how long ago was it daphne two years has it been two years now she was going over a jump i think it was one of the last jumps in one of those preparatory events before she was to go to the olympics and the horse fell on her and so she is now quadriplegic now daphne told me a wonderful story she told me how there was one woman in that hospital in the rehab hospital who just gave herself to daphne to bring her back to all the capability that the muscles that she had left were capable of doing was her name brenda is that correct and daphne said that only god knew what brenda had meant to her well lo and behold the next year it was brenda who was ill and daphne said i found myself the one at the end of the bid and brenda was in the bed and i wish i had more time to tell you more details of this story but the point i'm trying to make is that daphne had accepted this thing that had happened to her such a totally devastating thing and had offered it back to god maybe not even in so many words i'm not really sure about that but she had accepted it there was no question about that she gave a testimony in our church about how god had enabled her to accept this thing and then god gave her responsibility responsibility for somebody else and daphne said it was a wonderful thing to see the progress the leaps and bounds that i made in physical progress because i was giving myself to brenda now she has a platform that i don't have i have never been ill to me not to mention paralyzed but every gift is a privilege given to us by god every privilege carries responsibility and in every situation there are lessons for us to learn lessons which absolutely cannot be learned in any other way now i know that's true in my own life i could not possibly know god in the way that i have known him because of the loneliness that i have experienced in romans 4 14 verses 7 to nine we read this no one of us lives and equally no one of us dies for himself alone if we live we live for the lord and if we die we die for the lord whether therefore we live or die we belong to the lord this is why christ died and came to life again to establish his lordship over the dead and the living i imagine that some of you have had an experience that to you is worse than death you would rather have died than have gone through that experience and i suppose that that thought must have crossed daphne's mind a few times in those agonizing struggles and it's not as though they're ever going to be over but the lord didn't give you that privilege because he said i want to teach you something i want to reveal myself to you in a way that you would not have eyes to see or ears to hear or heart to understand without going through this wilderness this deep water this dark valley this hot fire well think about the gifts that god has given to you will you believe in god's love and purpose will you seek his instruction in it for example if you have right now some new experience of helplessness and dependency all of us have experiences when we feel totally helpless and to be quite honest i felt very helpless yesterday i was very tired because the earlier part of this week was rather rigorous with other things in lincoln nebraska and we traveled on wednesday and yesterday i was trying to get myself prepared and psyched up and finally prepared for tonight and i just said lord i don't know whatever gave you the idea that i could do this and i certainly felt that i couldn't do it and i know that i could not have done it without your prayers and i know many of you have been praying for me in the prayers of other people and without my own prayers and my husband's prayers the branch cannot bear fruit of itself it's only when we abide in the vine jesus said without me you could do nothing now when we come to this position of helplessness and dependence remember that jesus has been there too jesus was in such an agony over the conflict of his own will with the will of his fathers that he swept great drops of blood but he came to the point where he said not my will but thine be done now lest you think that i'm some kind of a paragon without any feelings or that i'm made of cement i'm not going to read you one of my love letters to jim but i thought i'd read you one of just a portion of one of his to me during this long period when we were agonizing because of loneliness for each other missing each other to the point where i was almost physically sick at times and he wrote me this he said your sense of loss that are not being able to share things these past few months is not new to me he had left for ecuador south america and he was writing these exciting letters about his journey by boat down the west coast of uh central and south america and all the wonderful new experiences in ecuador and i was just in an agony to think that he was going through all that as a single man and here i was back in new jersey he said i know this feeling and i often tell him about it and then the realistic facing of non-accomplishment comes to me and crushes to silence all telling for if really we have denied ourselves to and from each other for his sake then should we not expect to see about us the prophet of such denial and this i look vainly for it comes to this i am a single man for the kingdom's sake for the sake of the body in other words it's more rapid advance it's more potent realization and then skipping some he says there is the somewhat philosophical realization that actually i have lost nothing we may imagine what it would be like to share a given event event and feel lost at having to experience it alone but let us not forget the loss is imagined not real i imagine peaks of enjoyment when i think of doing things together but let not the hoping for it dull the doing of it alone let not the hoping for it dull the doing of it alone and then he says let not our longing slay the appetite of our living pretty well expressed letter for a love letter isn't it for a guy who was only let's see how old was he 25 i guess at that time so there is a world of difference between a yes which doesn't have any agony attached to it and a yes which means agony i've described i've given you jim's description of his own feelings and i think i was probably going through worse agonies than he was i wasn't having all the fun that he was and the distractions but jesus was on his knees in the garden of gethsemane sweating great drops of blood but finally coming to the place of saying yes to his father's will it's one thing to agonize it's another thing to respond with bitterness and resentment and anger and you and i have that choice in first peter the first chapter he's speaking to exiles people who must have been very lonely very cut off very alienated and he comforts them with these wonderful opening words he's speaking to the he tells them the places where they live that he's writing to and he said you're chosen of old in the purpose of god the father hallowed to his service by the spirit and consecrated with the sprinkled blood of jesus christ you are under the protection of his power until salvation comes that's verse five and then he says in verses six and seven this is cause for great joy even though now you smart for a little while if need be under trials of many kinds even gold passes through the assayer's fire and more precious than perishable gold is faith which has stood the test these trials come so that your faith may prove itself worthy of all praise glory and honor when jesus christ is revealed and i would remind you of the verse that i gave you in my first talk since he himself has passed through the test of suffering he is able to help those who are meeting their tests now whatever your experience of loneliness may be whatever wilderness god is calling you to go through remember he went through it first there's an old hymn that says christ leads us through no darker rooms than he went through before i can testify with all my heart that in acceptance lieth peace and by acceptance i mean a simple willed act of saying lord i don't like it i don't understand it i don't know how i'm going to bear it but by your grace i'll take it my answer is yes god bless you

Channel: The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation

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Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020