Suffering is Not for Nothing: Offering

my title for this fifth talk is offering if god has given us a gift it's never only for ourselves it's always to be offered back to him and very often it has repercussions for the life of the world jesus himself offered himself to be bred for the life of the world he said the bread that i will give is my body and i give it for the life of the world for a christian the pattern is jesus what did he do he offered himself a perfect and complete sacrifice for love for the love of god and you and i should be prepared also to be broken bread and poured out wine for the life of the world think of the gifts of others whom you know which have been a great blessing and joy to you i think of the gift of music i have a nephew who's a concert violinist that's a tremendous gift but he doesn't just play his violin all by himself in his little apartment that gift is for the sake of the world and i believe that that's true of every gift that god gives to us in some way which is not always apparent right at the beginning among the great gifts of my life are my husband my daughter my grandchildren and there are times when i could be very selfish about those gifts and yet i have to recognize that it's not just for me but these also that i think of as as my own must be held with an open hand and offered back to god along with my body and all that i am you're familiar with paul's word i beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of god that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable to god which is an act of intelligent worship i particularly like that translation an act of intelligent worship now if i present to god my body as a living sacrifice then that includes everything that the body contains my brains my personality my heart my emotions my will my temperament my prejudices my failings all the rest of it is presented to god as a living sacrifice god has after all given me a body to live in everything in my life i begin to see as a gift and i mean everything now that may seem like sheer poppycock to some of you but i hope that in the context of the things that i've been saying you'll begin to see that everything can be seen as a gift even my widowhood i began very slowly to recognize after my first husband was killed that it was within the context of widowhood that god wanted me to glorify him it was not my idea it was something which god not only allowed but in a very real sense which i began slowly to understand he had given me because he had something else in mind and this was a gift not just for me but for the life of the world in some mysterious sense which i did not need to understand because i could trust him now again let me help you with three things and i'll try to tell you what i'm going to say and then i'll try to say it and then i'll try to tell you what i've said so that there may be a little bit closer relationship between the things which i mean to say and what you hear me saying and what you've got in your notebook and what you think i said when you talk about it tomorrow when somebody says did you go to hear that woman well what in the world did she say under this heading of offering let's put down three things number one everything is a gift number two there are several kinds of offerings which i can make to god let's shorten that down and just simply say that we want to think about an offering as a sacrifice and when i use the word sacrifice with regard to my own life sacrificing my body for example as a as a living sacrifice presenting my body as a living sacrifice the emphasis is not on loss and desolation and giving up the emphasis is on the fact that god has given me something which i can offer back to him we'll come to that a little bit later and number three the greatest the offering of obedience i'll stop with that as the heading number one everything is a gift number number two offering as a sacrifice and the offering of obedience when i get up in the morning i do try to make it a practice to do some of my praying first thing in the morning it's a good thing to talk to god before you start talking to anybody else and i try to begin my prayers with thanksgiving there's always a long list of things to be thankful for and one of them is that i can get up in the morning that i can be in a comfortable place looking out over a very beautiful view i thank god for the sleep of the night for health and strength and for work to do i'm very grateful for work i think about somebody like johnny erickson and what johnny wouldn't give to just have a chance to wash dishes maybe one time or do the worst job that you and i might hate thank god that you can get up i thank him for my house and my husband and my health and the money that we have and the food that we have and the clothes for our backs and grandchildren and my daughter and on and on and on and you all have equally long lists i'm sure but then i don't always find it easy to include on that list the thorn in the flesh the word that my husband spoke to me which hurt me as he does that once in a while i'm married to a sinner i don't know what you other married women are married to but far as i know there really isn't anything else to marry and it's always a good exercise for me to remember that my poor husband is also married to a sinner so i thank god for that husband with his imperfections which are not very many but i thank him for the particular set of gifts that he has given me in that man which i can offer back to god with thanksgiving when joseph was taken into captivity he could not possibly have imagined what god had in mind years later but in genesis 45 8 we read joseph's words to his brothers it was not you that sent me here but god what looked like a horrible thing jealous brothers hating their younger brother wanting to get rid of him deciding to kill him then realizing they could make some money out of him selling him into captivity he goes down to egypt and is made a slave and eventually ends up in prison and one thing in another does that look like a gift from god and yet he says it was not you who sent me it was god paul said there was given to me a thorn jesus refers to the cup which his father had given him now all of these things represent great suffering not trivial things at all and joseph was able to say when he named his son ephraim god has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction it's not the experience that changed him it was his response and joseph trusted god now what is god's intention when he gives you and me something he is giving me something in my hands to offer back to him with thanksgiving i remember when i was a little girl wanting to buy christmas presents for my parents and i had no way at all of earning my money my brothers had paper routes and earned maybe 25 cents a week or something like that back in the depression days but i had to depend on an allowance so i would have had absolutely nothing to give to my mother for christmas if my mother hadn't given something to me first and that's the way it is with us with god isn't it we are totally destitute everything that we have comes from him and we have nothing to offer except what he has given us there's an old uh thank prayer of thanksgiving at the offering time all things come of thee oh lord and of thine own have we given thee we receive it from him we accept it in our hands we say thank you and then we offer it back this is the logical sequence of the things which i have been talking about everything is a gift everything is meant to be offered back and this lesson became a powerful life-changing transforming lesson during the time of my husband's illness and when i would awaken in those wee small hours of the night which amy carmichael calls the hours when all life's mole hills become mountains my mind would be filled with vivid imaginings of the horrible things that were going to happen to my husband between now and death now death was the unarguable conclusion of what my husband had medically speaking there was no possibility that he was going to survive so i had faced that fairly squarely but the doctors were predicting hideous mutilations that they were going to practice on him between now and death and i felt i could not stand it and in those wee small hours i began to cry out to the lord and it came to me with great clarity one night i suppose about two or three o'clock in the morning that my agony my anguish which was vicarious for my husband was something which god had put in my hands to offer back to him it was a gift now let's think about this second thing the idea of sacrifice there are many occasions in scripture where the word sacrifice is used and it was a very important part of the hebrew life back in old testament days blood sacrifice was a daily occurrence in the tabernacle and the people's whole lives were controlled by the rituals of sacrifice but the old testament also speaks of the sacrifice of thanksgiving in the psalms and the verse that came to me in those hours of fear was a broken and a contrite heart i will not despise the sacrifices of god are a broken spirit a broken and a contrite heart i will not despise i'm talking to people i'm sure who have a broken spirit a broken heart god will not despise that offering if that's all you have to offer i felt as if i was destitute like the widow of zarephath you remember the story of how elijah was fed by ravens for time and then god told him that the ravens were going to stop and that he was to go down to a place called zerath where there was a widow who would feed him now i don't think we can begin to imagine the absolute uh dereliction of a widow in those ancient times but she was the most helpless and poor of all now why in the world would god almighty who owns the cattle on a thousand hills choose a destitute woman to feed his prophet elijah and you remember that when elijah reaches zerath he finds this woman out gathering a couple of sticks and he asks her for a drink of water and then he asks her for the most unreasonable request imaginable and he says bake me a cake well if she were speaking modern english she would have said surely you've got to be kidding i'm out here gathering two sticks so that i can bake the last handful of flour and the last few drops of oil into a little cake which is the only thing that stands between me and my son and death we are starving to death and you ask me to bake you a cake but the woman recognized that this was a man of god and so to her it was a matter of obedience to god and she baked him a cake she believed his word that the crews of oil would not fail nor would the barrel of meal be emptied what had god done in sending the prophet to a destitute woman he had put into that woman's hands something to offer back but what a pitiful offering one little handful of flour a few drops of oil do you remember when the little boy brought his lunch to jesus or the disciples extorted that lunch from him who knows we don't really know whether that little boy gave it up willingly or what happened i've often wondered about that little boy but anyway he had five loaves and two fishes which the disciples brought to jesus and he put it into jesus hands and one of the disciples said this what is the good of that for such a crowd now i'm speaking to some of you who feel as if you have nothing whatsoever to offer to god you don't have any huge sufferings perhaps you don't have any great gifts you were behind the door when they gave out the gifts and poor little me i can't sing and i can't preach and i can't pray and i can't write books and i can't be the hostess with the mostest so i really can't serve the lord if i had sow and those gifts then it would be a different story i don't know who i'm talking to but i'm sure that there are some of you who would be saying what is the good of my offering for such a crowd you're telling me that i have something which is going to matter for the life of the world and i say yes that's what i'm telling you because god takes a widow with nothing god takes a little boy's lunch and he turns that into something for the good of the world because that individual let it go and i began to see again very dimly and don't imagine that i was some kind of spiritual giant to see this thing it was the holy spirit of god that said to me give it to me let it go offer it up a sacrifice something in your hands to give me how does a mother feel when her tiny little two-year-old comes into the house with a smashed dandelion clenched in his little sweaty fist and he offers her the smashed dandelion it means everything in the world because love transforms it that's what this is about suffering and love are inextricably bound up together and love invariably means sacrifice we talked about the sacrifice of fathers and mothers what about the sacrifice of husbands and wives what about the sacrifice of those who are prepared to be single for the rest of their lives for the glory of god i think of amy carmichael she believed that god was actually calling her to remain single and it scared her she felt that she might perhaps be desolate with loneliness and god brought to her mind the words none of them that trust in me shall ever be desolate and out of that offering that brokenness that living sacrifice which was the life of amy carmichael came a great missionary work which continues to this day amy carmichael a single woman became the mother of thousands of indian children there was a time when the family that she founded as the donovar fellowship little children rescued from temple prostitution numbered that family numbered over 900 people at one time and she worked there for 53 years and she wrote these words in one of her poems if thy dear home be fuller lord because a little emptier my house on earth what rich reward that gurdon were you and i have no idea what god has in mind when we make the offering but everything is material for sacrifice again and again i've had people say to me how do you handle loneliness and i say i can't handle loneliness well didn't you spend a lot of time alone in the jungle yes i did i spent a good many more years alone than i did married well how did you handle it i didn't i couldn't i have to turn it over to somebody who can handle it in other words my loneliness became my offering and so if god doesn't always remove the feeling of loneliness it is in order that every minute of every day perhaps i have something to offer up to him and say lord here it is i can't handle this now i don't know what your emotions may be that you can't handle but i believe that every one of us knows something about loneliness the singles always imagined that the married people are not lonely but i can testify that there are different kinds of loneliness and they are just one example of the offering that i'm talking about today i have never forgotten what a missionary speaker said in chapel when i was a student we had compulsory chapel five days a week at wheaton college so we heard hundreds of speakers and remembered practically nothing of most of them but i have never forgotten what this woman said she spoke about the little boy bringing his lunch to jesus and she said if my life is broken when given to jesus it may be because pieces will feed a multitude when a loaf would satisfy only a little boy what have you got in your hand to give to him is it a gift that you recognize as a gift a talent for example is it the willingness to be a mother and to take the criticism of the women who say that a woman who's got half a brain will put her children in somebody else's care and get out and do something quote fulfilling is it the willingness to take the flack from the rest of the world about something which you've decided to do for jesus sake is it the willingness to be unrecognized unappreciated you know we've got a very twisted idea of this word ministry we think that a ministry means just a very short list of things preaching or singing or doing a seminar or writing a book or teaching a sunday school class of course those are ministry they're forms of service but the word ministry just means service and service is a part of our offering to god people would think of my ministry as being my missionary work my writing my speaking but you know i don't spend most of my life standing at a podium i spend most of my life sitting at a desk standing at a sink standing at an ironing board going to the grocery store sitting in airports doing a whole lot of things which are not anything for which i expect to get medals they are moments to be offered to jesus do the next thing which brings me to my third point the offering of obedience when my brother tommy tom was a little boy about three years old one of his favorite forms of play was to take all the paper bags out of the drawer in the kitchen where my mother kept them and spread them all over the floor well my mother permitted that with tommy he was number five i was number two and i don't think i would have gotten away with it but she'd learned a lot of things by that time and i'm sure she was tired but anyway she said you may do that on one condition that you put the bags back in the drawer before you leave the kitchen well he understood that perfectly well children usually understand far more than we think they do so she came into the kitchen one day and there were paper bags all over the floor but no sign of tommy so she found him in the living room where my father was playing the piano playing hymns and my mother said tommy i want you to come and put the bags back in the drawer and he looked up with a smile of the most innocent and seraphic sweetness and he said but i want to sing jesus loves me my father stopped playing the piano and took the opportunity to press home a profound lesson to obey is better than sacrifice now i'm sure he used terms which tommy could understand but it's no good singing jesus loves me when you're disobeying your mother and the highest form of worship is obedience what do i have to offer to god which is more important than my obedience and there's a great lesson on this from the book of ezekiel hidden back there in the 24th chapter god said son of man i'm about to take the delight of your eyes away from you at a stroke yet you shall not mourn or weep nor shall your tears run down sigh but not allowed make no mourning for the dead bind on your turban put your shoes on your feet do not cover your lips nor eat the bread of mourners in other words forget all the ritual signs of mourning and ezekiel says this i spoke to the people in the morning and in the evening my wife died and on the next morning i did as i was commanded very short description of some pretty important things in the mor in the evening my wife died and the next morning i did as i was commanded and i have discovered that there is no consolation like obedience and when i was trying to offer up my feelings to god in those wee small hours of the morning i thanked god when it was time to get up because there were all kinds of just simple ordinary down to earth things to do do the next thing god gave to the widow of zarephath and to the little boy and to ezekiel something to give back to him something which would matter very much to others god enabled ezekiel to give his sorrow back to him and to get up and do what he was commanded to do for the life of the world it wasn't just ezekiel that god was interested in right there god wanted to make ezekiel into broken bread and poured out wine for the life of the world let me ask you who are the people who have most profoundly influenced your life those who have most profoundly influenced my life are without exception people who have suffered because it has been in that very thing that god has refined the gold tempered the steel molded the pot broken the bread and made that person into something that feeds a multitude of whom i have been one of the beneficiaries i had a wonderful letter from a woman an older woman who told me that back when she was a little girl in the depression her father died none of his friends came to the funeral she had to wear a borrowed dress the house was mortgaged her mother was left a widow with seven children and the lawyer who was supposed to be handling her financial affairs stole the inheritance and the lady said this when we went back to the house after the funeral my mother picked up a broom and began to sweep the kitchen and she said i look back on that now and i realized that it was the soft swish swish swish of that broom that he began the healing process she said my mother was a destitute woman and when people asked her years later how did you ever make it she just said i prayed well she didn't just pray she prayed and she did the next thing she picked up the broom and so i say to you today god has put something in your hand which you can accept you can say thank you lord and then you can offer it back to him let me give you another verse that encourages me tremendously psalm 119 verse 91 says this day as ever thy decrees stand fast for all things serve thee what's happening in your life today is it good then it's easy to thank god for isn't it is it bad if you can remember that this day like every other day his decrees stand fast those eternal verities are unshakable his word is infrangible the world and all its passionate desires will one day disappear the man who is following the will of god is part of the permanent and cannot die i encourage you to make an offering of your sufferings ugobassi said this measure your life by loss and not by gain not by the wine drunk but by the wine poured forth for love strength standeth in love sacrifice and he that suffereth most hath most to give you

Channel: The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation

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Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021