Patience

thank you very much it has been a great privilege to be here and my husband has given me a list of instructions to read before i start on my topic for the afternoon many people have been asking about my broadcast gateway to joy it can be found on 99.1 fm 9 45 a.m 99.1 fm and 94 9 45 in the morning then 1200 people were expected to be here but more than sixteen hundred are here so that's good news and bad news because lars is sorry that he has run out of books he has a sample of every book and he will be happy to mail this at the same price that you would have but that you would have paid for it here and he will pay the postage so if you want books that are not there anymore he will be happy to send them to you people have also asked about the elizabeth elliott newsletter so if you would like to have your name on my newsletter which comes out six times a year no cost just put your name and address on a piece of paper with nl newsletter and give that to lars i don't know how he keeps all these things in different pockets but he has he's a genius at things like that now for other than times square churches excuse me for other than times square church attendees lars will mail tapes from this weekend so if you in other words if you go to a church other than times square church he will be happy to mail the tapes from this weekend if you send eight dollars which will include postage there will be three talks plus a fourth from another meeting another meeting that you're not going to be hearing here today but three talks plus a fourth it will not have a short question and answer session and anything that you want to see lars about see him at the book table um then i think this is what somebody told me that he still does have let me be a woman i don't think he's gone completely out of that one so that's one book that is still available i hope i got it all right lars i don't know if you're here but i sure do have some problems once in a while because i my mind goes blank on things anybody my age around here that has some idea things like that happened my topic this afternoon is patience the fruits of the spirit are love joy peace we talked about peace this morning and the next one is patience kindness goodness faithfulness self-control we're not certainly not going to have time for all of those but i do want to talk about the subject of patience because i think it is something that all of us at times lose and we need to go back to the word of god i gave you three points this morning under the topic of peace and i am going to give you just two points this afternoon under the topic of patience so number one is calm endurance and i see the hands of those of you who find that easy all the time don't see any hands maybe there's a few but very few of us can claim that we are experts in calm endurance it just seems to me that patience and calm endurance have almost become lost arts in america we're so incredibly impatient so self-indulgent so wrapped up in ourselves and so pampered and does any of you i wonder how many of you know when the word teenager was coined there were no teenagers when i was growing up because when we reached the age of 12 we were considered adults and we were expected to behave like adults and probably very few of you know that it was president franklin roosevelt that coined the word teenager and ever since then we've been in a mess and it's just sort of taken for granted that once a child passes 12 o'clock 12 then you can just forget about him until he's at least 19 or 20 because everything's going to go crazy and wild and you just have to put up with it my parents didn't know anything about that so fortunately we didn't have to be teenagers and i'm very grateful now there is very good biblical reason for just erasing the whole idea of teenagers how old was jesus when he was found in the temple confounding the doctors of the law many of you know that jesus was 12 years old and his parents had taken him up to jerusalem for the feast days and when they were on their way back home they had a large entourage of people and suddenly they discussed discovered the fact that their son their boy jesus was not in the crowd and so they had to go all the way back to the temple and they found him sitting in the temple confounding the wisdom of the teachers of the law jesus in other words recognized his responsibility before his father to speak the words of truth that his father had given to him and for those of you who have so-called teenagers i would strongly recommend that you go home and sit them down and say hey gang we're not having any teenagers in this crowd and from now on we are going to expect you to behave in an adult manner now [Applause] i can see that there are some feeble clappers and i can understand your frustrations you think elizabeth elliott i mean she is really tough and she gives us all this stuff we're supposed to do and how in the world are we going to do this well i would just suggest that you go home and as soon as possible gather your children around you and say you know i learned a couple things today can you imagine that your mother has actually learned something and they'll that'll just blow their minds you know because mothers are so old that they've probably forgotten everything they ever know but i think it would be quite doable to just sit down and say i've learned something very important and i have decided that we're not going to have any more teenagers in this house now that does not that doesn't mean we're going to kick you all out because you were teenagers it means that we were going to expect you to behave like adults and that will flatter your children and they are going to be grateful and they are going to have to pull themselves together and start behaving as god would want them to behave but you know here in america we are the gotta haves we just gotta have everything i see these i don't know how many of these little scooters we've seen on fifth avenue yesterday um everybody's gotta have them and i've heard that they're very dangerous and they've they're constantly having to go to the hospital for broken bones because of that anyway there's nothing wicked about those little scooters but it's just another one of those signs you gotta have it if everybody else has got it then you gotta have it the other day i had to go into a department store one of those huge department stores that seemingly have everything i was so bewildered i hardly ever have to go shopping at all because i have a husband who does virtually all the shopping for me for which i'm very grateful but i could not believe my eyes of the stacks of toys that were stacked from floor to ceiling as high up as you could see with christmas stuff already i mean here we are just the beginning of october toys stacked to the ceilings harried mothers trying to pacify little children and usually giving in to their whiny demands here these all these little kids their eyes are just sparkling with all the joys of christmas that are coming and the mother doesn't know how to arrange any kind of calm endurance it really is quite simple you know just say no and if your child throws a tantrum you take him out to the car and you give him a spanking wow are we old-fashioned or what just say no and it really is simple now for many years i lived in the rain forest in the in the western the eastern jungle of ecuador uh some of you know that i was a missionary in ecuador and bores [Applause] but i had to learn two three other indian languages so having learned what i could of spanish in the beginning in the first six months that i was in ecuador then i had to begin learning the indian languages and i went first to the western jungle and i'm going to skip all that part that's another whole story this was when i was still a single missionary and before i was married to jim elliott but during that time jim elliott proposed to me after i had waited for five and a half years hoping that he would and he said i'm not going to marry you until you learn quechua mokichu is the language of the eastern jungle and so i was going to have to move from the western jungle up over the andes into the eastern jungle and start from scratch learning the language of the kichwas and it was it was a wonderful experience i lived with quiche indians in their homes and then when my husband died there's another whole part of the story that i have to leave out but after my husband was killed along with four other american missionaries i prayed that if god wanted me to do anything about those indians who had killed the five men that he would show me it seemed like a ridiculous prayer because uh obviously if if five american missionaries have been killed it didn't make any sense for a white woman to go into that area but skipping over a whole lot of other things i can just simply say that god did open a door for me to go in there and live with the people who had killed my husband my little daughter was three years old at that time she had no recollection of course of her father but it was amazing to me how warm and friendly these dear people were the only reason they killed the five men was because they thought that the five men were going to eat them and so they felt duty-bound to kill them before they killed them so i had the opportunity to observe calm endurance in those indians they had a very hard life the women worked from six o'clock in the morning till at least five o'clock in the afternoon doing the planting and usually the fishing and the men went off with their blow guns and their spears hoping to bring back food in the form of meat of some sort and these people were the most peaceful patient quiet people i've ever known in my life and as i say i worked with three different tribes but this particular tribe was the one that seemed the most quiet the most tactful and helpful and when i was learning the language of course they would just break up laughing they couldn't get over how stupid i could be well there weren't any books to follow nobody had ever written that language down you know so all i could do was just try to tune my ear to what they were saying and then reproduce it and i would have to keep asking them again and again did i say that right show me if i tell you it's wrong and they would just crack up every once in a while and it was just hilariously lots of fun and every morning when i would wake up i would see two teenage boys on a high platform looking down on my hammock and they would be waiting for the moment when they could make an announcement to the whole crowd there which means she's awake stunning piece of news well i haven't got time to tell you much more about that i'm going to be talking about that tomorrow afternoon some more of the things that i learned from those people but their willingness to teach me in my stupidity and to demonstrate calm endurance was a lesson which i hope i will never forget and i want to trust god with calm endurance at all times and i've read through a whole bunch of the three by five cards didn't have a chance to go through quite all of them but there are many many questions about what do i do about this what do i do about that i can't endure this any longer but you know god has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind and he will help you 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 remember hearing me talk about that this morning dr virginia blakeslee's words i went very frequently on the trail with these indians and they had a lot of fun asking me to be first in line you know why just so they could laugh because i couldn't tell an animal trail from a human trail animal trails were just about six inches at the most wide guess how wide human trails were just about six inches i couldn't tell the difference so i'd go tearing off on a side strip side trip and everybody just be breaking up laughing they'd be standing back there on the trail just waiting for me to come to the fact that i'd gone off on an animal trail and they would laugh they would crack up my stupidity but they were really sweet and helpful and kind i didn't know how to make pots and the all the indian women knew how to make beautiful pots and they made them all out of the same mud out of the same river and they made them all exactly the same shape but not necessarily the same size they had pots from that size to that size and those were the only pots that they had in which they could cook things over fire and so it was fascinating to me to watch them make those pots and of course i went to them and said please show me how to do it well they had another opportunity to just break up laughing because of course i couldn't do it like they did they didn't have a potter's wheel they just had to do it by the eye and every one of their clay pots was perfectly symmetrical mine a mess and of course they just broke it and threw it away and said she doesn't know how to do much of anything we all slept in hammocks where do you think we got the hammocks well the women had to make them and they had to make them out of a particular kind of fiber that came from a particular tree and it took ages to roll that fiber on their bare thigh and roll and roll and roll it would take about 4 000 feet to make one hammock and they did it they they did it patiently calm endurance you know we get all been out of shape so easily and worried and in a stew and everything's chaos if i were to come into your home what would your kitchen counter look like would you want me to walk in there and rearrange things of course not it wouldn't be my business to do so but i've been in a lot of homes where to me it just looks like chaos i don't know how they find anything so i want all my kitchen counters to be exactly the way i want them to be and everything in its place but it's a matter of acceptance and calm endurance and lord show me and i dare say that there's some of you here who say i i just i don't have time to clean my kitchen or i don't have time to do this or that or the other thing that you know needs to be done in your home but again i remind you the lord god will help you and he has promised to do that i was non-stop entertainment for this whole crowd of people when these boys would make the first announcement she's awake then the next thing i would have to unwrap myself from the blanket in which i slept and then take the blanket off unwrapped myself and i always slept in my clothes these were people who didn't wear any clothes at all and i could never understand why they didn't freeze to death because it was really quite cold at night but we all had fires next to our hammocks and so when i would take my blanket off i was fully dressed i had to sleep in all my clothes because i was cold and they weren't but then i had to take a small radio out of a rubber bag and carry it from my little house over to a palm up what am i trying to say a piece of bamboo a bamboo pole and i had to carry had to carry my little radio from my little house over to the bamboo pole and as i walked these two boys would make sound effects with every step i took they go hey and had brought down the house everybody would laugh and they never got tired of it every single morning and then they would hear me talking on the this little radio that i had and they would say and that's what their language sounds like now a great deal was expected of children much more was expected of them than of me and i was like a child in their midst who didn't know how to do anything i challenge you to have higher expectations of your children if we're going to get rid of the whole teenage thing god can show you how to graciously and gently and slowly i'm not suggesting that you go home and tear into everybody but the lord can show you how to instill calm endurance in your children and if ever if all of a sudden they're the kind they just fall apart and they want to throw themselves on the ground and scream you have to be calm and point out to him that you're not going to put up with that kind of behavior those indian children knew that they were responsible to work babies were left with three-year-olds to take care of the fire and to make sure the baby didn't fall into the fire and to feed the baby when the when the mother was gone for the whole morning sometimes the whole afternoon and those little children knew how to take responsibility they knew how to gather the sticks that they had to keep the fire going they knew how to keep the baby away from the fire and they took it as a matter of fact and they didn't have any clothes or any kind of cloth or anything in which to carry the baby they just had to carry them in their bare arms and i saw calm endurance in those children there was very little fuss and the adults would not put up with a whole lot of fuss screaming or anything like that was almost unheard of they were such quiet people and if a child made a big fuss about something because he had stepped on a thorn for example and my little daughter stepped on many thorns and they stepped on hot coals and they had plenty of reasons to cry but they had to learn to cry quietly and if they didn't then the whole crowd would yell which means everybody listened to this and that shut them down real can you say just another one of those languages i've seen little children on the trail all the fathers would be first then the mothers then all the little children trailing behind and when the father went into the river and across the river then the mother went into the river and across the river and the children had to go into the river and maybe they'd never swum before but they had to swim to keep up with their mothers it was very interesting to watch the dynamics between these people who never made a fuss about much of anything and i think of our civilization today what kind of patience do we have when we find ourselves in a traffic jam for example or in the holland tunnel or on fifth avenue when nothing can move or when there are fire trucks and emergency vehicles every other block it seems like in new york city but in your own home those are the places where the rubber meets the road aren't they are you calm and gentle and quiet as you reprove your children if they're being naughty the lord wants us to demonstrate the patience that he has with us just think of the patience of god of his love for us of his gentleness and his kindness hebrews 12 verse 1 says let us run with patience another translation says perseverance let us run with patience or perseverance the race marked out for us and let us fix our eyes on jesus let patience have her perfect work and those with those who wish to make a mark that's one of the modern translations let patients have for perfect work in those who wish to make a mark to excel to win gold medals to aim for fame now there is something to be said for excelling my parents taught us six children to do the very best we could do they didn't expect us to do what we couldn't do but usually children think they can't do a whole lot of things that they can do and that was what i saw one of the great lessons that the alka indians told taught me that these little children did what they had to do even though they didn't think they could another one of the hazards of jungle living was if we were going down a very slippery muddy trail sometimes from rather high up down into a stream that we had to cross i being the stupid outsider several times as i was going down this muddy trail sliding and slipping i would grab the nearest tree or twig and i find out that it's made of fire ants so all the fire ants went up my arm spreading fire all the way well i felt like screaming but of course i knew that i couldn't do that with these calm enduring people i hope i've learned some lessons for the rest of my life it's been good many years since i was with them but in 1919 my husband and i my daughter and her oldest son and her husband we all went down to visit the algas again and it was a wonderful thing to be able to see the same ones that i had known who had become christians and one of them in particular remembered that when he was bitten by a snake everybody else in the whole clearing had decided that that snake bite was so bad and he had several but this time they knew that he was going to die well i had no serum to give him but i just said lord is there anything at all that i could do to help this poor man his head swelled up till it was right up to his shoulders his tongue was black his whole body had turned black with the poison of this snake bite and even his wife who was the one and only witch doctor in the crowd gave him up for god for for dead so i just went over that night when he was lying in his hammock and i had a little rubber syringe and i spent the whole night syringing the blood out of his mouth that was the only thing i could do he was choking on blood he was delirious and so i just kept syringing it out of there well do you know in 1996 when we were back there this dear man came to see us and he said to me tapa they called me gikade that was my name they never did tell me what it meant so probably just as well probably meant something like stupid but that's what he said you helped me that night and i haven't forgotten it so that night would have been 1958 and we saw him in 1996 and he was grateful sweet loving people who had killed five missionaries because of a mistake well hebrews 12 1 said us let us run with patience or perseverance or endurance the race that is marked out for us let us fix our eyes on jesus let patience have her perfect work and those who wish to make a mark to excel to win gold medals and aim for fame those are not nearly as important the gold medals and the fame as the patience and the perfect work that god wants to work in each of us will you love him will you trust him will you praise him as i look through this pile of three by five cards i see that there are so many who are in deep trouble many problems with husbands many problems with children many problems because you're single several people came to me and said how can you know whether god's ever going to give you a husband or not what am i to say to whom god has given three husbands i thought it was a miracle i got married the first time i was never a popular girl i wasn't beautiful i was not sought after i was hardly ever dated but jim elliot saw something in me that he liked and he proposed to me and so jim elliot and i had two and a half years of marriage before he died and of course i never expected to be married a second time 13 years later i was married to a wonderful man whose wife had died he lasted four and a half years of course that was the end as far as i was concerned but most of you have laid eyes on my husband lars grind to whom i have been married now for more than 23 years can you imagine how many women have said to me why in the world would god give you three husbands when he's never even given me a date what am i to say i don't know i just know that god knew long before i did that i was going to have to write books which would mean that i was going to have to speak and if i was going to have to speak it would be very nice to have somebody that goes along with me and helps me and takes care of things like book tables now i never thought of any of that and of course i did a whole lot of speaking and traveling long before lars came along but let patience have her perfect work that we may be perfect and entire i said i would give you two headings under patience number one is calm endurance and i've tried to illustrate that in the way the alka indians operated now let's look at quiet waiting jesus says do you want to be my disciple now you can say yes or no he's not going to come running after you and begging you to be his disciple he simply says do you want to be and he's so patient with us and so loving and he knows exactly what each one of us needs your needs are different from my needs god knows exactly what they are and if you feel that god has not been paying attention to your needs which seems to be one of the themes that i find in these three by fives why isn't god allowing me to do this or that or the other thing or why does god do so and so what can i say i know that god loves you with an everlasting love and he says if you want to be my disciple you must do three things number one an unconditional offering of myself to god and that means lord here i am all of me for you forever do anything you want with me but that's scary i don't know what god's gonna do to me well god's never going to do anything to you that is not for you remember that god will never do anything to you that is not for you and you mothers can say that to your little children when you're about to spank them i am going to spank you not because i don't love you but because i love you and i have to do to you what i have to do for you i have to spank you and this very small child hardly understands that but it doesn't take him very long to find out what that spanking means and i hope you have the courage to administer it so jesus says if you want to be my disciple you don't have to be one but if you want to you give up your right to yourself number two you must be willing to accept the cross in whatever form it is presented to you in what form do you expect that cross to be presented to you certainly not in anything heroic or brilliant or likely to set the thames alight but we give ourselves accepting the cross in whatever form it comes and i think of many many of my spiritual tutors older women who have taught me many of them unaware that they were teaching me anything i think of one old lady by the name of mrs kershaw when we lived in new jersey mrs kershaw lived in the same town and my mother discovered that she was a widow lived all by herself she had one good for nothing son who lived somewhere else and he hardly ever came around to see his mother and she was she was widowed and very poor and somehow or other my mother discovered her and began to have her come and work in our home although this lady was in her 70s she was hump-backed she was stone-deaf she was abandoned by her son and widowed but that lady had won one thing in mind when she came to the howard home and that is how can i make the howard family happy and she was a ray of sunshine in that kitchen all day every day bending over the sink and days when we didn't have dishwashers washing dishes scrubbing the floor making applesauce baking cookies anything at all that she could do to make the howard family happy she accepted the cross now there was no i don't suppose it ever crossed her mind that there was a cross in her life because she was so radiant i remember coming home from college my mother had been writing to us us who had left the nest and told us about this lovely lady that she discovered and so when i was home for christmas vacation i walked into the kitchen and here was this hump-backed old lady standing there washing dishes and i didn't know that she was stone deaf so i just called her name and i said you must be mrs kershaw she didn't move a muscle i was behind her she didn't see me my sister was standing on the other side of the kitchen she said she's deaf i said stone deaf she said she can't talk even if you shout so of course i shouted mrs kershaw i never looked so i went over and i tapped her on the shoulder she turned around with this radiant smile and she said oh it's the daughter and she knew that my mother had four sons and one daughter and one daughter was still in school but i was the other daughter so she just smiled this beautiful smile and it was only later that i began to learn about some of the crosses in that lady's life not because she told me just because of observation but i think of mrs kershaw is probably one of the first people i'll see when i get to heaven just simple humble hard-working woman do you want to be my disciple jesus says it must be an unconditional offering of myself it must be a willingness to accept the cross and i have no doubt that her wayward son must have certainly been across to her whatever form it is presented to you accept it and then number three is a lifetime decision to follow jesus christ and once you make up your mind that you're going to follow jesus christ you have got to move down that trail like a thunderbolt and don't deviate no matter what happens god loves you and he is there and he wants to hold your hand but he wants you to trust him i'm sure many of you know that wonderful gospel hymn when we walk with the lord in the light of his word what a glory he sheds on our way while we do his good will he abides with us still and with all who will trust and obey trust and obey for there's no other way to be happy in jesus but to trust and obey you can go out a far to a far country trying to find happiness and health and wealth and all that but it comes back down to are you willing to trust and obey will you be happy in jesus and trust and obey a frenchman by the name of fennel who was living i think in the 17th century 17th centuries he wrote this he said what god asks is a will which is pliant in his hands which neither desires anything nor refuses anything which wants without reservation everything which god wants and which never under any pretext wants anything which god does not want i'll read it again what god asks is a will which is pliant in his hands bendable in other words which neither desires anything nor refuses anything which wants without reservation everything which god wants and which never under any pretext wants anything which god does not want are you wanting a whole lot of things that god obviously up to this point does not want are you willing to put yourself unreservedly in his hands he's got the whole world in his hands can you trust him will you trust him now there was a very tough assignment given to me under this heading of quiet waiting i was graduating from wheaton college in illinois in 1948. jim elliott was in the class of 1949. but jim took me for a walk just a week or so before i was going to graduate and we hadn't gone more than about a block or so when he stopped and he said let's not go back to the dorm right now this was a beautiful may morning the sun was shining let's not go back to the dorm now i said let's go and sit in the park so we went and sat on the grass in the park and he said i love you but he said i am not going to lay a finger on you because i have no rights over you whatsoever he said i don't know if god will ever give you to me for a wife but he said if god wants me to remain single i'm willing to remain single for the rest of my life well we sat there on the grass and we talked for seven hours we got terrible sunburn when we came back to the college uh he and i happened to be for various reasons sitting on the platform in the chapel so all 2000 students could see two people that were read as lobsters and we got a whole lot of questions asking what were we doing well jim elliott said i just know i only know one thing and that is that i belong to jesus christ body and soul and he said i am not going to put a finger on you because i have no rights over you and so we were sitting facing each other at least this far apart and my father had told my two my four brothers don't ever tell a woman you love her until you are ready to say will you marry me and nowadays it is chaos with young people having relationships what in the world is a relationship unless it's engagement or marriage there is nothing else and so god reminded us of that and we had to do a whole lot of quiet waiting asking god and so it was five and a half years from that day in the in the park before god gave jim the go-ahead to propose to me as a wife jim and i had two and a half years as husband and wife and then he was killed a tough assignment i don't know what yours may be but god is calling you to calm endurance to quiet waiting and in my case talk about tough assignments right now the most the toughest thing in my life is a computer it's just about to do me in the fruit of the spirit is patience it is never rigidity it is not strictness in principle or practice it is long-suffering a willingness to wait and no hurry or exactness god lets plants grow quietly christ's longsuffering for paul when paul was the chief of sinners christ was there for him some of you are dealing with church troubles some of you are dealing with patience with yourself patience with your husband patience with your script with your children and an old uh monk who did nothing but clean pots in a monastery wrote this when i failed in my duty i only confessed my fault saying to god i will never do otherwise if you leave me to myself it is you who must hinder my falling and mend what is amiss after this he gave himself no further uneasiness about it the lord will enable you to be patient to be calm and to be quiet but you're going to have to put yourself at his disposal are you willing for that may the lord give you grace and patience god bless you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so i now have a whole bunch of questions and answers and i don't know where my husband lars went but if he's within earshot i would appreciate it if he would come up here because sometimes he helps me with these questions and answers you may or may not remember speaking to me at the banquet in the walter hoving home at the crowne plaza hotel this was not too many months ago my name is so-and-so and i have been in the program for 10 months and i have six months left my life has been completely changed by god he has even put a love in my heart for my two children not long ago after the banquet a woman that volunteers or services teaching a parenting class gave me your book keep a quiet heart and it has blessed me i use it as a daily devotional i have a decision to make regarding my future and of course my two girls i have very serious a very serious police record which will affect by looking for work it seems limited i really want an education i feel as if i need one considering my police record but also i want to care for my children i have been in prayer do you have any advice well i think you put your finger right on it in that word prayer the lord will help you we only have 10 minutes okay take a short how may i continue to keep my focus heavenward i find myself getting distracted with this world and i want to say so what else is new can one have an eternal perspective all the time what would you say to that i don't know about you but i know i can't i hope to do better and i hope that's the way my view goes but we're still you know we live in the world we're not part of it we ought to have our eyes fixed upward and it's always a struggle a struggle is not a word it's a good word it's always one it's difficult work how do you speak to a girl child about sexual purity when you yourself have not been sexually pure of course you can go to the foot of the cross and ask the lord's forgiveness because the blood of jesus christ cleanses us from all sin and just remember that when you speak to that girl you have to confess if there's if she asks now if she doesn't ask and you don't and she doesn't ever have to know that you were promiscuous be thankful for that but the chances are that she may ask well mom did you stay pure and you're going to have to say no and you're going to say but i'm so thankful for the privilege of teaching you what it means to be pure because the lord god will help you you've been widowed twice myself only once how do you trust again well i never even thought about trusting again because i certainly didn't expect to be married a second time i thought it was a miracle i got married the first time so just thank the lord that you've been widowed that was his providence and you don't need to worry about whether god's going to bring another man along if he does it's one day at a time how do you keep a quiet and gentle spirit as a single person when your heart longs for a family and children the simplest thing i know is to take one day at a time yesterday is gone tomorrow is not here don't worry about tomorrow the bible says the bible about the bible says tomorrow will take thought for the things of itself focus on what god is doing in your life today how can you be sure that the man you are going to marry is god's will so in other words you've already told the man that you will marry him but you're not too sure it's god's will is it normal to be nervous and wonder if it is right what to do well if you have any smallest doubts as to whether or not it is right and if you're feeling nervous about it then get down on your knees and don't think it's you're the final authority it's the lord to whom she has to answer are you sure you don't want to answer some of these yourself well i'll get one i'm picking yours up how did you know it was god's will each time you got married well rather than to answer it just speak to god's will give those three simple little things that you have because you've got a lot of questions on god's yes i get many questions from young people asking me how will i know the will of god i'll give you three answers three points number one tell god you'll do anything he says because obviously it doesn't make any sense to want to know what the will of god is unless you're willing to do anything he says number two very obvious read your bible and pray and number three if you are as a college student or high school student for that matter you have to do the work that you've been given to do as a student and that is the will of god don't plage your eyes on your papers don't uh be sarcastic to your professor do the work that's assigned to you and i believe that's the way you're going to find out here's one how do you know if quote this end quote is the right path for you there's a question there's always a question to any decision that we make you know you come to a crossroad you come to a fork in the road you can take one way you can take the other and what elizabeth just said about god's will applies to that also you know you you get look at the bible you pray about it you talk to spiritual people about it and when you decide you go down that path and yet there'll always be the thing well did i until maybe later on because often later you can look back and say yes that was the right choice is there a reason why you kept your name elliot was it difficult to adjust to three husbands i am mrs lars grin and if you ever get a letter from me you will see that the heading on my letter is mrs lars grin obviously it was impossible way back in 1957 when i wrote my first book i was still jim elliott's i mean i was still mrs p james elliott and although he was dead i took that name and publishers would take a very dim view of my changing my name every once in a while since i've now had three husbands you don't want to have to say well this is a book by elizabeth howard elliott leach grinn so just so you know i am mrs lars grin but my pen name is elizabeth elliott i'm sorry but because of time this is the last one that elizabeth can answer it's difficult to leave all of these but such is the case if you have a really a pressing question why see me out there at the book table i was afraid he was going to say see me i don't want to i want him to get some of these answers how in god's name does one get back to the place where they first met the lord once the fellowship has been interrupted for a period of time does god reserve that place to be re-entered in order for one to grow in him or is there a new place why is the process seemingly so long well i don't know the answer to whether god is going to reserve a new a place for you or is he going to give you a new place i don't think we need to know either of those in order to get back to the place where you first met the lord you get down on your knees and you simply lift up your hands to the lord and just say lord show me cleanse me fill me use me direct me and we have a wonderful counselor you know everybody's running off to counselors all over the place i can't get over the numbers of letters i get from people telling me well i've been in counseling for six years you know nothing seems to happen and i want to say to all of these people have you gone first to the wonderful counselor thank you and god bless you and it's been a great pleasure and a privilege for my husband and me to be here with you

Channel: The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation

Views: 14,648

Rating: 4.9183674 out of 5

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Id: 0RD4UfDbdCM

Length: 57min 6sec (3426 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020