Make Yourself Small: Meekness

nothing else needs to be said please welcome elizabeth elliott thank you thank you you mustn't use up my time thank you so much i'm really thrilled to be here especially thrilled that valerie and her daughter elizabeth can be with me here on the platform and i know that it's not very likely that you're going to remember much of what i say but i hope that you might take home with you something that i write and so just very quickly i want to mention three things one of them is a little booklet for children between the ages of 10 and 16 called sex is a lot more than fun another is my newsletter if you would like to receive this personal letter every other month you need not pay money but you do need to sign your name at the book table where my husband is and my most recent book is called the shaping of a christian family it is the story of the home in which i grew up and it's my hope that it will help young parents who want to have a christian home but didn't come from such a home when i was a very lonely bible school student in alberta canada there was a knock on my door one day and i opened the door to find the most radiant face framed by white hair a lovely face with pink cheeks beautiful smile a dear lady that i had never seen before and she said in her wonderful scottish accent are you betty howard and i said yes oh betty dear she said and she always called me betty dear you don't know me but i know you and i've been praying for you and if there's ever a time when you feel like you'd have a you'd like to have a cup of scottish tea and a scone just pop down to my little department and we'll have a little chat well you can be sure that i took mom cunningham up on that wonderful invitation and many a bitter cold winter afternoon i made my way to her little tiny basement apartment where she made that cup of tea and those scones and then she would listen to my tales of woe my problems my stories and she would always open her bible and i think more times than not she would read romans 15 and i it just completely goes out of my mind may the god of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing and i know that mom cunningham recognized in this lonely girl somebody who needed the god of hope and that joy and peace and i know of no one in my experience who has made a greater difference outside of my own mother than that dear woman who personified for me joy and peace and thankfulness and she was widowed about four years after i was and i visited her in canada and we were talking about what it's like to be widows and she told me about how there were certain things that she just felt so bad about things that she should have done and she hadn't things that she should not have done and she had and she said to me i prayed o lord why didn't you show me and he said because you weren't ready to be shown you weren't ready to be shown now this is a huge convention the elaborate preparations which susan and her team have made for us are rather staggering the pages of instruction i said to valerie this afternoon never in all my experience of speaking have i received such sheaves of paper and i don't know how many times i read them over and i've forgotten almost everything that i read so i have to be steered around thousands of women are here and so we can automatically conclude that this is an important conference right if it's big it's important if you have enough pieces of paper and enough people running around with badges and things that makes it important and you came from 50 states i don't know how many but i want to say to you this afternoon that its importance is going to be measured only in the individual lives of each woman here have you been thinking big in terms of this conference anticipating that you are going to be learn you are going to learn how to think power you heard about power dressing and power lunches and all that sort of thing well i may shock you by saying that this afternoon i want to encourage you to think small think small one of the very great saints of the church when she was dying was asked for a last message and her message was make yourselves small make yourselves very small i want to speak on one word which i believe is the key to supernatural power we're not talking about what the world considers power it's one word that is the equivalent to those four words of mom cunninghams ready to be shown and the word is meekness meekness do you think weakness as soon as soon as you hear that word meekness do you know who the bible says was the meekest man it was moses would you think of moses as a weak man if you have in your mind as i always have when i think of moses michelangelo's sculpture and paintings i think of moses as probably one of the most powerful redoubtable awesome men in all of scripture and this is my husband lars you can meet him while he adjusts the microphone [Applause] the bible says that moses was the meekest man who ever lived undoubtedly meaning up until that point david speaks of meekness the meek he says will he guide in judgment are you struggling with a question of guidance the great question is are you ready to be shown if it happens to be different from the pathway that you anticipate yourself isaiah would you think of him as a weak man isaiah says the meek will rejoice in the lord how about the apostle paul weak no but he speaks of the fruits of the spirit one of the fruits is meekness and then of course the strongest man who ever lived jesus calls you and me if we are tired and overburdened he says come to me all you are tired and overburdened and i will give you rest but there are three conditions have to come and then he says take my yoke upon you what do you think that yoke is i believe that the yoke that jesus is speaking of is the double yoke you've seen yolks for two oxen a wooden frame that goes across the backs of the necks of two oxen to keep them moving together working together pulling together and i picture the double yolk jesus bending his neck under one side and he says take my yoke upon you i am to bend my neck under that same yoke the yoke i believe is the will of god what was the yoke that jesus took when he came to earth he said lo i come in the volume of the book it is written of me to do thy will of god take my yoke upon you and learn of me for i am meek meek and humble in heart some translations say gentle and humble meek and lowly and as i think back over my 65 years i think of the women who have made the greatest difference in my life and i can say without qualification that every single one of them has been a woman of true holy meekness not a woman who thought about power dressing and power lunching but a woman who had bent her neck under that yoke women who were ready to be shown teachable in other words receptive and who exemplifies that receptiveness more beautifully more perfectly than that little virgin mary who when she was given a stunning announcement by a dazzling visitor responded without hesitation without ifs ands buts what ifs with these words behold the handmaiden of the lord let it happen as you say anything you say lord i'll take it here i am you're handmade teachable receptive gentle many of you i'm sure have come to this conference tired already and if you came here to get physical rest i think you've come to the wrong place you're not very likely not in a room with four women many of you are overburdened many of you are carrying burdens that would make my problems all the problems in my life look like feathers i don't know you i don't know your burdens but i do know the one who knows but jesus says come to me all you who are tired and overburdened and i will give you rest could he have said that would he have said that if he were not totally capable of giving you rest there isn't any human being that can ever give you rest we can provide you with a place to rest perhaps we may make it possible for you to rest in some ways but we can never give it to you and jesus says if you're tired and overburdened i am the one that can give you rest not relaxation but rest but if you're going to receive that rest you must come to him not to elizabeth elliot but to jesus i will give you rest the second thing you must do is to take that yoke bend your neck bow your head and take the same attitude that jesus took when he said i have come to do the will of my father now much of our tiredness much of our burdens are caused by conflict aren't they and where does the conflict come from well i was examining myself as i know that i must do every time i'm going to get up and dish out what i believe is the truth of god to other people i better be cautious and asking god lord touch my heart speak to me burn my conscience and it happens almost every single time whatever the subject i'm going to speak on will be the subject on which god puts his finger on the sorest place in my soul and yesterday that's exactly what he did and i can't tell you the details but i recognized that i was very far from being truly meek as a holy woman is meant to be the conflict came from the desire to protect myself to excuse myself to think about my time my space my rights concerns which are completely foreign to jesus and certainly ought to be completely foreign to you and me there is no irritation whatsoever in a true meek spirit the purpose of jesus was to love his father and to do what his father said that's what i really want so he says to me and he says to you come take my yoke learn of me and we cannot learn one single thing at this conference without a teachable spirit the spirit which refuses to say but wait a minute that doesn't mean so and so i get so tired of hearing people say what god doesn't mean in all those hard verses and there are many hard sayings of jesus he said for example if you don't sell everything you possess you can not be my disciple now everybody here knows what that doesn't mean don't you but all i want to know if i'm going to be gentle meek teachable ready to be shown is lord what does it mean what does it mean for me what does it mean now in the sore place in my life teach me lord teach me to be meek now one thing that meekness does not mean is weakness another thing is phlegmatic now there are four kinds of temperaments i'm told and these are very ancient categories that go back thousands of years one of them is phlegmatic well i don't know what i am but i can tell you that i'm not phlegmatic i'm probably a horrible combination of choleric and melancholic but those are my those are natural dispositions we are not talking about a natural disposition when we talk about meekness because there isn't a woman in the world i'm quite sure of this who was born meek you and i are operators manipulators schemers we've got our rights at heart we've got our time we've got our space we have our own ideas of what we want god to do for us and when he comes at us with a surprise do we say behold the handmaiden of the lord let it happen as you say well i had to pray for forgiveness meekness is not being phlegmatic that's a natural disposition it's not sluggishness it's not being just too lazy to bother to get into an argument just anything goes kind of thing you know there are two sides to all of these natural temperaments too fearful to speak up indifferent meekness is not feminine fragility psalm 25 verse 9 and i thought i had my marker right there tom psalm 25 verse 9 and here's what it says show me your ways o lord teach me your paths guide me in your truth and teach me for you are god my savior and my hope is in you all day long now can he teach me his way if i'm not ready to be shown guide me in your truth and teach me and as any teacher and i'm sure there are many teachers here to see this afternoon as we know there is no better way of learning than trying to teach and the minute you start dishing it out the holy spirit of god has to dish it out to us doesn't he james 1 21 describes humble acceptance of god's truth teachability and james 3 13 speaks of the meekness that comes from wisdom the truly wise are meek have you ever seen a close-up photograph of einstein einstein was probably one of the most brilliant intellects in history his face to me is a picture of meekness because he knows so much and the more you know the more you know you don't know and socrates said the man who knows that he doesn't know is a much wiser man than the man who doesn't know that he doesn't know and it takes us a long time to find out that we don't know very much you know what the word sophomore means it just means the one who thinks he knows it all and it's amazing after you're a sophomore in college then when you're a junior and a senior you suddenly begin to realize that your parents are getting smarter and smarter because you realize that you really don't know nearly as much as you thought you knew the meekness that comes from wisdom and where does wisdom begin with the fear of the lord that is the beginning of wisdom now i said at the beginning that this word is what i believe is the key to supernatural power where did i get that idea well from jesus he said the meek shall inherit the earth it doesn't look as though that's happening does it the meek seem to be the last in line it is an explicitly spiritual quality it is a learned quality not natural we're not born with it it is a practiced course in our lives we have to learn through the ordinary little irritating things anything at all that cuts across my will anything at all that inconveniences me how do i respond meekness springs from love do i respond in love to god all of my relationship with my friends with my family with strangers should spring from my relationship to god is it a meek gentle quiet humble loving spirit mom cunninghams was gentle just the sort of person you know she could put her arms around the whole world and everybody would love her because she loved everybody as she did it is the key to supernatural power of course our model model model is always jesus and we look at the meekness of jesus strong mighty powerful to do miracles his name is king of kings and lord of lords but what did he do in that last supper with his disciples he actually sat down at the table with the man that he knew was going to betray him he said the man who dips his hand in the bowl with me now is the one who will betray me he not only allowed judas to eat with him he got down on his knees and washed the feet of judas and all the other disciples he took in other words the lowest place of the lowest slave in an eastern household think of that towel and that basin is there anything that has to deal with more disgusting stuff you nurses know what i'm talking about jesus was willing to wash the feet he let judas kiss him there in the garden and he looked with love on peter when peter had just betrayed him with serene unflappable love wounded love sorrowful love but not bitter not angry not rejecting but he looked on peter i will never forget visiting the church in jerusalem which is built for the memory of that night when jesus was betrayed it's called the church of the crowing some of you have been there and it happened that there were no tourists there i was the only person and there was a very young dutch priest who was in charge that day and he took me through very slowly told me this whole story took me down into the dungeon where jesus is said to have been kept during that night and then we sat together in a pew there in the church and he said i don't know what this experience in jerusalem will mean to you but he said i pray that it will be as significant in your life as it was as the look of jesus was in peter's life when the crowed jesus looked on peter and he said may jesus look on you today meekness think of what he has put up with in you and me are you having trouble forgiving somebody somebody who has done something humanly speaking which is absolutely unforgivable something for which there are no excuses whatsoever and no human way of ever letting go compare that with what you and i have done each of us individually let us think of what jesus has suffered from us and the look of jesus on the man who had just betrayed him so blatantly the man whom he had named peter the rock on which he was to build his church that man says i never knew him i don't know what you're talking about and jesus turns and looks on him it was a force that was irresistible the meekness of jesus more irresistible than any earthly power there's never any tit for tat in the life of a meek woman or meek man and of course the great question is how do i attain this how can i so sinful how can i whose life is lived in this fallen broken world and i have to live with sinners even lars this man that was up here on this platform he's not perfect he's wonderful but he's not perfect and you know what lars has to live with a sinner yes how shall i learn this do you know that hymn eternal light eternal light how shall i whose native sphere is dark whose mind is dim before the ineffable appear and on that on my naked spirit bear the uncreated beam there is a way for man to rise to that sublime abode an offering and a sacrifice a holy spirit's energies and advocate with god it's not beyond the realm of possibility but i must learn to live spiritually with jesus i must learn to dwell with him to allow his love to pierce my heart this hard crusted heart i pray for the piercing of that love the minute i my territory my time my space is invaded the minute there's some aggression that comes toward me the minute i receive a nasty letter in the mail what is my reaction do i lift my eyes to his face i must immediately take that thing and lift it up into the light of the face of jesus christ how does it look to you lord and he reminds me how did my tormentors look to me dwell in that light bring the insults the hurts all of them learn of me he says learn of me meekness is entirely detached from self-assertion how are we to learn this in a world that tells us learn to assert yourself do your own thing be aggressive stand up for your rights protest for your rights learn to love yourself i was appalled a few months ago when i received in the same mail two magazines one was a christian magazine in which the lead story was entitled how to love yourself and there were many suggestions be good to yourself be proud of yourself learn to praise yourself and on and on and do you know what the other magazine was i think it was u.s news or world and world report it was not time magazine but it was one of those news magazines and the cover story was called the cir the curse of self-esteem the curse of self-esteem and i found a wonderful quotation there which i hope i will never forget it was from goethe the german philosopher and he said i don't know myself only god knows who i am and may god deliver me from ever finding out learn of me jesus says not learn to love me not learn to know who elizabeth elliott is who cares what does it matter may god for may god forbid that i ever find out what she's really like i want to learn of him i want his meekness not my natural temperament i want to be entirely detached from self-assertion i want an utterly new and different response those things which would naturally make me lash out nothing could be more remote from feminine fragility a phlegmatic temperament a don't care attitude a weak sentimentalism than true holy meekness but this meekness is indissolubly linked in the lamb of god and the lion of judah do you remember in the book of the revelation where john said that the angel told him i'm going to show you the lion of judah and when he looked it was a lamb a lamb that looked as if it had been sacrificed can you think of anything meeker the strength the power of the king of kings the lord of lords the lion of judah and the meekness of the lamb which before her shearers is dumb he opened not his mouth when he was reviled he reviled not again he was taken to prison and to judgment he gave his back to the smiters and his cheeks to those who pulled out the hair that's my savior come to me he says all you who are tired and overburdened i will give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn of me for i am gentle and humble in heart meek and lowly and you will find rest for your souls may god give us that holy meekness for jesus sake

Channel: The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation

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Length: 32min 52sec (1972 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020