Whose Am I?

your presence here tonight tells me that our speaker does not need any introduction i just want to share with you the experience i had when i had just turned to be a teenager in beirut lebanon the world had come that five missionaries had gone to ecuador young missionaries and that they were killed by the aqua indians and then as a response to that very difficult experience their wives had decided to continue the mission in that field and all the whole christian world was shook up by what happened however the next few years demonstrated that god was at work and that through that experience god reached out to those indians and the message was heard and received our speaker tonight who's elizabeth elliot she is one of the most popular speakers of our time her team revolves around faith missionary calling and man's relationship to god through her life and message she calls us to a through christian living the life that's not sugar-coated but one that includes suffering hardship as a process for god to conform us to his image she has written many books including the savage my kinsmen in the shadow of the almighty through gaze of splendor passion and purity a chance to die and others and she's also heard over in over 200 radio programs it's really my privilege to introduce to you elizabeth this is the very first time we've been invited to an army named church and this is my husband who is obviously not an armenian he comes from norway while he's fiddling with the bike let me mention two books that relate to the things that i will be talking about tonight one of them is a book which more men have told me has changed their lives than any other book it's shadow of the almighty this was the biography of my husband my first husband jim elliott and any of you who are getting real edgy thinking poor lars he has to listen to her talk about husband number one and occasionally husband number two who is also with the lord and i hope that lawrence is feeling fine and tonight don't ask me the question that i get asked so often by single women why would the lord give you three husbands and he hasn't even given me one date the answer is i don't know i never deserved any of them i never expected well i thought it would be a miracle if i got married once more than once but it is our privilege and pleasure to be here may i see the hands of those of you who have never been married thank you very much i can assume then that i'm speaking to a majority of singles there will be opportunity at the end for some questions if you'd like to ask a question i would be very grateful if you write it out this saves quite a bit of time and also makes for clarity so feel free to write any question that comes to your mind it need not relate directly to what i'm talking about but anything at all i will be willing to have a go at answering i can't promise that i will be able to give you the answer i'd like to ask first of all two questions that i asked two weeks ago i was in quito ecuador speaking at the commencement exercises of the missionary school there and i asked the students two questions what are you sure about and what are you afraid of i'd like you to think about those two questions i can tell you what i'm sure about it's just what the apostle paul said i am absolutely sure that christ is able to keep that which i have committed to him the verse starts out with i know whom i have believed and am absolutely sure that he's able to keep what i've committed to him and jesus tells us that we should be afraid of anything at all on earth only of him who has the power to cast both body and soul into hell we know that that's god only god can do that so be afraid of god fear god in other words and fear nothing else and yet i know that we are very fallible and very human and that most of us have many fears and one of the fears that is expressed to me many many times in mail that i receive is what if god know gives me a husband i don't think any man has ever written to me saying what if god never gives me a wife because there's a great deal more that you men can do about it than what women are supposed to do now in this day and age of course we're being told a lot of nonsense about equality and that men and women are totally equal and totally interchangeable i don't think we are equal except in a very few clearly defined conditions which we can find in the first chapter of genesis where it says that god created man which was a generic term including woman in his own image we are created in god's image we are equally being created by god we are equal in being placed under moral responsibility because you remember that the first commandment that god gave was be fruitful and multiply and it does take two to tango neither the man nor the woman could have obeyed that command alone but there i think the equality stops and i i like to think of the glorious inequalities it was god's idea to make us gloriously complementary and gloriously unequal and i'm all for it i think that we need to go back to a time when men were men and women were glad of it and accept masculinity and femininity as gifts of god and i would also like for you particularly tonight to ask yourself do you think of singleness as a problem or is a gift if it's a gift it's not a problem if it's a problem it's not a gift now i know what the natural reaction to singleness is with most women when they get let's say to the age of 25 or so then they begin to think of singleness as a problem i was not married the first time until i was 26 and that seemed like a very late marriage back in my day when most of my friends got married right out of college i believe and i think there is scriptural support for this view it's not just an elizabeth elliott opinion that singleness is a gift now i always have people asking me well do you think that i have the gift of singleness somebody will say to me well i just asked them one question are you single tonight on this particular sunday night if the answer is yes then my answer is yes you have the gift of singleness today this is the gift that god has given you now god can replace that with a different gift marriage of course is a gift singleness is a gift and to my utter dismay god gave me a very short time after i got married the first time a gift that i would never have asked for which was the gift of widowhood and it took me some years to begin to recognize that this is what it was i was a widow for 13 years after my first husband died and he and i had only been married 27 months and yet i was very aware of the fact that i had been given a very great gift in having those 27 months of marriage but i would like to remind you that the apostle paul who seemed to feel that he had the best gift of all which was singleness at the time that he wrote first corinthians he tells us that whatever our present marital status may be that is a gift he said each one must abide in the gift that god has given him i don't think paul meant abide forever but i do think that he was speaking others the necessity of acceptance i believe that acceptance is the key to peace if we refuse to accept the condition that god has given us then our lives will be in turmoil and we will be miserable but i have to go on to say that there are two very different responsibilities for men and women if you happen to be single for a man there is a very great test of his willingness to allow god to lead him to the right woman if it's god's will that he should marry and to trust him for the courage in case he gets rejected to be a man is to be responsible when i wrote my book the mark of a man which is on the subject of masculinity i asked my friend dr j alpacker what he thinks of when he thinks of masculinity and without any hesitation whatsoever dr cracker said responsibility and i think that we live in a time when men are allowed to be very irresponsible i think the feminist movement has had a tremendous effect on all of us it's inescapable and it has made women uncertain of their femininity men uncertain of their masculinity and very uncertain of exactly what they're supposed to do to or for us women because a man doesn't know whether if he opens the door for a woman he will have his teeth pushed down his throat my brother is a professor in a christian college and he once opened the door for a girls student and she swung around and she said did you do that because i'm a lady and he said no i did that because i'm a gentleman don't be afraid to be a gentleman even if you get that kind of response but i'm just simply trying to illustrate the fact that there is a great deal of confusion and we need to go back to the manufacturer's instructions you know if the thing doesn't work when all else fails what do you do read the directions well they're in here and the things that i'm saying to you tonight i believe are entirely supportable by scripture and if you ever say anything that you don't think is i do expect to be challenged i may when all else fails give you an elizabeth elliott opinion but i certainly intend to base the things that i have to say on the scriptures now if singleness is a gift then it is something which is meant to be offered to god i see all of life as a gift absolutely everything in my life comes from grace even this the most sorrowful things even the most dreadful things the worst things that could ever happen that happened to me i see now as god's gifts of grace meant to be received with thanksgiving accepted and then offered back to god also with thanksgiving and so let your singleness be a daily offering to god a daily commitment and acceptance yes lord and of course for women it may be acceptance every day for the rest of your life for men you have another kind of responsibility and i don't know how much time we're going to have to get into just exactly what that is but for women i think the difficult thing [Music] is waiting waiting on god and we were never meant ladies to be the initiators remember that god created eve for adam the man the woman was created for the man not the man for the woman if you miss that in genesis 2 you can pick it up in first corinthians 11. it's very clear there but you do remember that god created the woman for the man he created her from the man literally out of his bone and he brought her to the man adam was not brought to eve eve was brought to adam so i see in this divine arrangement god's assignment to men to be the initiators those who take responsibility which means that you have to take the risks the big risks of being perhaps rejected and then the responsibility and the risks of being fathers i believe that every man in the world is created to be a father not necessarily in the physical sense the biological sense obviously many single men have served god faithfully as singles all their lives and the church has been blessed by them but for by far the greatest majority god's will is marriage and fatherhood if god doesn't give you the biological privilege of being a father he expects you to be a spiritual father if you are a physical father you are also meant to be a spiritual father but when i say that i believe every man is meant to be a father i mean at least in the spiritual sense and by the same token i believe that every one of us women because we are given the gift of femininity he is meant to be a mother a spiritual mother if not also a biological mother so now having given you those basic principles by way of introduction i do have three questions which i think we need to ask ourselves when we think of our conduct one toward the other men toward women women toward men the first question is whose am i the world is always asking that tiresome question who am i and you can spend the rest of your life trying to find that out and i think it's a dead end street so just forget about who am i and ask whose am i that is a far more crucial question because i do believe that only god knows who we are we live in a time when people are continually probing their entrails and examining themselves and dredging up all sorts of quote memories unquote and trying to figure out who they are back in the 70s and a lot of young people who were putting on a backpack leaving home and going out maybe to kathmandu or some such place hoping to be able to find out who they were well good has said only god knows who i am and may god preserve me from ever finding out you remember what isaiah's response was when god showed him who he was it's in the sixth chapter of isaiah when he saw the lord high and lifted up and his train filled the temple and the presence of that holiness made the very doorposts shake and isaiah fell on his face as one dead and he said woe is me for i am a man of unclean lips there certainly wasn't any self-esteem built up by his vision of holiness nor will there be in my life or yours if we see the lord in all his holiness and his beauty so this is why i asked the question whose am i now the world tells you it's your body it's your life you have a right to your body if it feels good do it the bible teaches the exact opposite it is not my body let me read from first corinthians 6 verses 18 through [Music] 20. flee from sexual immorality all of the sins a man commits are outside his body but he who sins sexually sins against his own body do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy spirit who is in you whom you have received from god you are not your own you were bought at a price therefore honor god with your body make up your mind whose property are you god's or your own second question what is god's purpose for us we find in romans 8 28 a very familiar verse everything that happens fits into a pattern for good to them that love god to them who are called according to his purpose but it's the next verse that defines what that purpose is that we should be shaped to the image of his son what god wants to do with every man and woman in this room tonight is to shape you into the image of his son now what does it take to shape an image well it takes a hammer doesn't it the blows of a hammer the chippings of a chisel and the rasping of a file and i would suppose that everyone in this room has had at least one have a glow in your life we've had quite a few chippings of the chisel and daily we experience the rasping of the file just to get those sharp corners and those rough edges smoothed down god's purpose in everything that happens to you if it's in the singleness that you have now which you may regard as a great form of suffering even though you may see it god gave it to you to teach you to conform you to shape you to hone you into the image of his son it is this very state of your singleness that is the place the context in which god wants to create that image the third question what must i do if i've made up my mind that i belong to god if i'm prepared to receive his shaping process then what is my responsibility well we had one definition of that in first thessalonians 4 the apostle paul says finally brothers we instructed you how to live in order to please god as in fact you are living we ask you and urge you in the lord jesus to do this more and more for you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the lord jesus it is god's will that you should be holy or sanctified as another translation has it very often young people come to me and they say how in the world do i find out what the will of god is and my sympathies go out to those young people because i can remember how terrified i was that i was going to miss the will of god i was just sure that it was my own idea that i was supposed to be a foreign missionary even though i thought that god had called me to be a foreign missionary i thought well i'm probably making a horrible mistake but even if he has called me to be a foreign missionary i suppose i go to the wrong field well even if i get to the right field suppose i go the wrong tribe i mean it's just dozens of questions not to mention a huge question in the back of my mind is god ever going to give me a husband and how are we supposed to find out the will of god well most of the time the will of god is right on your doorstep or right in your lap and usually my answer when young when students come to me and say how do i find out the will of god my question to them is are you a student the answer is yes then i can tell you what the will of god is for you you can yes study that's the will of god for a student quit plagiarizing quit cutting class quit leaving your papers till the very last night do what your professor tells you to do and be nice to your roommate that's the will of god it's not very ethereal or mysterious and the apostle paul just comes right straight out with a hammer blow and just bludgeons us when he says it is the will of god that you should be sanctified and in the very same verse it says that you should avoid sexual immorality that is the will of god avoid sexual immorality and that applies to all of us married or single that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable not impassionate lust like the heathen who do not know god now how many of us can be can say we are obedient to that you remember jesus staggering accusation that even the thought of sexual immorality is in itself sin so we are all sold under sin aren't we we are guilty and we need the grace of god but what it means for us is obedience sometimes i'm asked what do you talk about on that radio program or what do you write books about what do you talk about when you have a chance to speak it almost comes down to two simple words trust and obey for there's no other way to be happy in jesus but to trust and obey as of him that we sang in our family devotions many many times it was when i was 12 years old that i realized that if jesus christ was my savior which i had always believed he was and i had received him as such he had also to be my lord and i came across the prayer of commitment written by a woman named betty scott stan it made a very deep impression on me for two reasons the first was that betty scott had been a guest in our home when she was on her way to china to marry her fiance john stam she was one of many many missionaries we were privileged to meet in our home because my parents believed in hospitality i came across this prayer and i'll give you the prayer first and then i will tell you why it made such a profound impression the prayer is lord i give up all my own plans and purposes all my own desires and hopes and accept thy will for my life i give myself my life my all utterly to be to be dying fill me and seal me with thy holy spirit use me as thou wilt send me where thou wilt work out thy whole will in my life at any cost now and forever and some of you know the story of john and betty stan they were captured by chinese communists and beheaded that made a very profound impression i was eight years old when that happened and i knew that that lady had sat at our dinner table i was 12 when i came across this prayer i copied it into my bible it has been one of the prayers of my life ever since but i knew that i had to give everything to god for him to do anything he wanted with at any cost now let we make that kind of a commitment of course god is going to test us isn't it there will be testings not once and again but again and again and again as to the reality and the validity of our commitment well the big test came when i was a senior in college and i began to face what we call senior panic i happen to be a student on a christian college campus and if you don't meet a christian husband on a christian college campus where they're all these very attractive unattached males where is one ever going to find a christian husband and so i realized that if god wanted me to be a foreign missionary which i firmly believed he did want my chances would be sharply reduced when i left that college campus so i began to pray asking the lord whether he was going to give me a husband or not and it was my experience then it has been my experience almost every time since when i want to know what god is going to do that his answer is not yes and it's not no it's trust me you know it really isn't our business what god is going to do tomorrow or the next day or next year our business is to do what god has given us to do today and to trust him for tomorrow but i continued to pray and cry and struggle and weep and feel sorry for myself over this whole business of whether i was going to be a single missionary for the rest of my life i had very few dates i was not by any means the girl whose phone rang very often in our dormitory i was what they call the wall flower in those days so i was praying that the lord just maybe lord could you just maybe give me a hint as to whether maybe 10 years down the road there might possibly be somebody and the lord was just silent or he was saying trust me but the great test came just before i graduated when the man that i had been eyeing on the campus for months one of the most attractive men on the campus and i'm sure i was only one of probably 100 girls that were i ain't the same guy he asked me to go for a walk well i almost died i just almost died and of course i said yes and we hadn't walked very far down the street on a beautiful may morning when he turned to me and he said bet i think we need to get squared away how we feel about each other well i almost had a heart attack right there and then but at the same time i was a little bit peaked that he had the hoots but or the brass or the cheek to imagine that i had some feelings for him because i had been very obedient to my mother and i had never by anything whatsoever allowed jim elliott to think that i was interested in him i thought i had kept my feelings entirely to myself and whatever gave him the idea that i had some feelings for him because here he was saying i think we need to get squared away about how we feel about each other so i said what do you mean and he said what do you mean what do i mean i'm in love with you and i've been loving i've been in love with you for months didn't you know that i said no i didn't know that i really said you must be deaf dumb and blind i'm trying to show you in every way except verbal but now i'm telling you i've been in love with you but next question or next stunning statement was i think maybe god is asking me to remain single perhaps for the rest of my life so those of you that read passion and purity know the rest of the story but we went and sat down in a park and we talked for seven hours jim was saying very clearly right up front i am not asking you to marry me if god ever gives me the green light to get married you're the woman i want but i am not asking you even to wait for me i'm not asking you for any kind of a commitment we are committed to god you are going to africa i'm going to south america you go ahead and go to africa i will go to south america if god wants to bring us together god knows how to do that in his own time well that was a severe test but the lord was reminding me whose will did you ask for when you were 12 years old was it yours or mine or your zord and he was saying will you trust will you be willing to leave your feelings for generally in my hands whether i ever bring you together again or not well i don't know the more crucial test in a young person's life than the willingness to trust god for relationships with the opposite sex i believe it is the most crucial area and jesus christ is not lord in that area jesus christ is not lord in your life you know the word crucial those of you that have studied latin know very well that comes from the word crooks which means cross it is the very cross in which the will of god cuts across the will of man it is the most crucial most decisive point in your life what will you do with it what do you expect god to do with and for you but suppose he never gives me a wife suppose he never gives me a husband will you accept that will you say yes lord have you put your life on hold i discovered that so many singles really have put their lives on hold and they're not really very serious about anything expecting that they get serious when god brings along the partner for their to marry but you don't know that you have tomorrow you don't know that this world is going to be here tomorrow you only have today it's one day at a time will you glorify him gladly thankfully gratefully and with all your being as a single man or a single woman do you know that him lord in the fullness of my might i would be strong is it half-heartedly that you would be strong for god is it with just a little piece of your heart hymn goes on to say i would not give the world my heart and then profess thy love oh not for thee the weaker part challenge you tonight to think have you accepted your singleness as a gift have you offered it back with thanksgiving to god and asked him to make you a spiritual father or spiritual mother and every person in this room is old enough to be a spiritual father or mother if you're 15 years old and i know that this is true because when i was nine years old we moved from philadelphia to new jersey and my next door neighbor was a 15 year old christian girl a lovely girl named ruth and ruth took an interest in this skinny shy scared stranger next door and i looked up to that girl to me she was an adult and i wanted to look just like her and walk like her and talk like her and dress like her and do my hair like her and be like ruth and i saw a ruth about two years ago it had been 50 years since we had seen each other and i told her i've been talking about her all over the country she had absolutely no idea what i was referring to and of course i told her i said you'll never know what an example you were to me so never forget that somebody's watching and whatever age you are somebody is watching somebody younger is looking to you for an example are you willing to take that boy or that girl under your wing pray for them help them encourage them cheer them set an example of godly manhood godly woman and reach out and when you feel very self-pitying and your last best friend has gotten married and you've been the bridesmaid for the ninth time and then they're having their babies and all these things read isaiah 58 and the following verses if you pour yourself out for the hungry then god will satisfy your desire and you will become like a watered garden whose waters fail not it is the condition of fruitfulness that you die that you pour yourself out paul said i am ready to be offered i am willing to be poured out like a drink offering and the apostle paul was a single man whom god used to bless the church i think of amy carmichael a great irish missionary to south india she was there for 53 years without a furlough she believed before she was 20 years old that god wanted her to remain single she had more than one chance i believe to get married but she never got married god made her the mother in both the physical almost and spiritual sense of about a thousand indian children because god brought these needy children directly to her and she became amma the terrible word for mother she couldn't have done it if she hadn't been single the church history is full of the blessing that singles within but then of course i do want to say just a very few things to you men my art goes out to you and i don't for a moment want you to think that i am a men basher i'm not i love men i've been married to three of them and i have four brothers i had a wonderful father but you do you live in a very difficult time you live in a dangerous time you have been fed an awful lot of garbage absolute bilge and nonsense about machismo and what masculinity is all about and it's just absolute nonsense and we need to go back to the example of scripture examples many many men there set examples for us but of course jesus is the primary example but i do believe and i repeat that it is god's will for almost all men to be married it is an exceptional case when god gives you the gift of singleness and that doesn't necessarily mean the gift of celibacy maybe there are those men who are born celibate jesus said there are those who are born eunuchs those who are made eunuchs and those who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of god but i think jesus is pointing out that this is an exceptional case so i just want to remind all of you single men that it is your responsibility seriously to get down before god and seek his will as to whether or not marriage is in his plan for you i just want to say to young people today quick dating quit dating all together for a while now i haven't got time to go into all the other alternatives that i have would like to talk about but i do think it's very distracting and it's not helpful any of us who look around and see what's happening these days with marriages can see that the dating game is not really working it is leading to a series of intimacy and breakup intimacy and breakup intimacy and breakup then you get married and it's the same thing intimacy and breakup they didn't work so you look for another model well it's a man's job to put away childish things to accept adult responsibility which for most of you means to be a father and to be a husband so how do you do this you pray now i've been talking about these things for years and i was i was given the privilege of speaking to an adult sunday school class and there were many singles in the class and i presented my case about this stop dating be silent before god pray if it takes several years and ask god to bring the right woman across your path or to show you where to find her when i finished it turned out that the leader of this singles group was a married man he had just been married a year or so but he said i know that elizabeth elliott doesn't need my testimony but he said i just want to tell you that i've dated from the time i was 16 until i was 22 and he said i had my heart broken about five five or six times and he said i'd hate to think of how many hearts i might have broken in my irresponsibility and he said finally when i was about 22 i thought this is not working i don't like this system i don't want to have to go all over the world looking for the right one when i'm going to pray and he said i made up my mind that i was going to pray and i would not get married until i was 29 years old he had set that arbitrary figure well he said i did pray and he said when i was 28 years old i felt very strongly that god was pointing out a certain woman in my church and saying that's the woman i want you to marry and i was saying well lord i wasn't going to get married till i'm 29 years old that can't possibly be the right woman but anyway he gave us all many more details but the story was he realized that god was humbling him and saying how about taking my will instead of yours did you ask me if it had to be 29 so he said okay lord and he said anyway the woman that god pointed out to me i married it was not a case of worn fuzzies and stars and stripes forever and roman candles and all the rest i was born it was a case of obedience to god and he said it has been a wonderful two years god has given us together now i could repeat story after story after story of how god has worked in just that way not the details but the basic principle of realizing that the modern idea of dating is very modern did you ever stop to think about the fact that well when my parents were young they wouldn't have thought of going out one man with one woman somewhere at night they went by twos or fours or sixes or they sat in the living room of the ladies home my father had to court my mother in the living room of her home and he never took her out without being with a group of other people so this whole idea of dating is really a very very recent and bizarre phenomenon in human history because most of human history has had arranged marriages and i was talking with a group of young people at the dinner table tonight my first opportunity to talk to a bunch of armenians and ask them do you have arranged marriages well it was an interesting discussion because of course it isn't exactly that now but it was very heartening to me to hear several of them say that they certainly would be willing to listen to the advice of their parents so there are very many things that go into this but i want to remind you of the wonderful story in genesis 24 where abraham sends his servant to choose a wife for isaac now abraham gave him a few specifications as to what the servant was to look for and he gave him ten camel loads of gifts to take can you remember that the servant went to the one spot in the village where a man could watch observe women with propriety at a distance he went to the village well and he watched the women who came and the two crucial principles that i think are for you men he watched quietly and he prayed silently and god showed him the right one he was attracted to her beauty he was attracted to the fact that she was gracious she offered to give him a drink and she then went way beyond the second mile in offering to water his camels now i've been told that a cattle can drink 20 gallons of water or something like that and he had 10 camels that was some job anyway she was gracious she was hard-working she was beautiful and she belonged to the right tribe according to what abraham had said anyway god has his own ways god knows how to lead you to the right woman we had a korean student living in our house he was definitely from a culture where they arrange marriages well in this case his parents have been living in america for a number of years and so they said we will not insist on arranging your marriage but we do want you to get married and he was 26 years old he lived in our house and he was getting phone calls from his parents saying get with it find god's toys for you they were christians and it had a wonderful story to tell about how god had pointed out a girl in the korean fellowship of the church in which he belongs somebody that he'd seen and he she'd been in a group many times he was never attracted to her and he said when i got down to business and began to pray i used to see this young man going out on the rocks in front of our house we live by the massachusetts bay there and he would go out often and sit on those rocks with his bible for hours i knew he was a man of prayer but he told me this wonderful story of how god when he got serious god just kept bringing that woman across his path over and over again he said lord what she got finally he proposed to her without any feelings it was a matter of obedience and about two weeks later he said to me you know what the most incredible things are happening i said like what he said that woman has depth of spirituality she is ministering to me in a way i've never dreamed she could have done i didn't see that in her well they now have three children we've seen them a couple times since their marriage and i as i say i could repeat story after story the one thing i want you to remember is even if you think you've got a date even if you think you've got to take certain elements into your own hands have you seriously prayed and some of you can probably say yes you have and you've been praying for years well remember it doesn't have to have anything to do with romance that's a real pitfall because any married person can tell you that romantic feelings are a very very shaky basis for a marriage and when they evaporate that's when you have to start loving according to first corinthians 13. you know usually in this country we marry because we love somebody but from day one after the wedding you must choose to love them because you married them we think we have to marry for love but the bible teaches very clearly that love must be a choice and first corinthians 13 makes that very clear keep your distance maintain respect for the opposite sex do not touch i just want to shout from the house tops keep your hands off and your clothes on and nothing unexpected is going to happen i have these tragic letters from the readers of my book passion and purity they say oh i only had that book about two years ago or about five years ago my life wouldn't be in such a mess but somehow or other we got pregnant well you know it happens the same way every time same way every time why should it be such a big surprise if you've never touched her if you never took any articles of clothes off her or you it wouldn't have happened respect distance do not walk into temptation it's an absolute travesty to pray lead us not into temptation if you're just going to walk straight into it yourself don't put yourself in that kind of a position don't go to the guy's dorm room at the university don't go out in a car with just two of you henry brandt the christian psychologist said his 16 year old son asked if he could take borrow the car to take a girl on a date his father said no not unless there's two of you two other people going along and his son said well what's the matter don't you trust me dad and his father said i wouldn't trust me in the dark with a 16 year old girl why should i trust you don't march straight into temptation avoid danger make a decision in advance new women i was raised by my mother and also by the headmistress of the boarding school that i intended the girl holds the tv to every situation all you need to do is back off my mother said keep them at arm's length and never chase my mother had three proposals before my father came along and god has given me three husbands and i kept those rules just back off and if the guy says if you really loved me you'd go to bed with me the simple answer that is if you really talk to me you wouldn't ask me to do that preserve your virginity at any cost virginity is a priceless and irreplaceable gift we're all born with it and you can only give it once do you want to go to the right person or the wrong person now i would be very naive if i imagined that i was talking to a bunch of virgins everybody in this room has preserved his or her virginity some of you have blown it some of you gave it to the wrong person i have a message for you too the blood of jesus christ cleanses us from all sin now that i believe covers all sin god is not going to give you back your virginity anymore you'll give me back your leg if your leg gets chopped off but he will give you back your chastity if you will break off that your illegal illicit relationship that you are in now or if you will go and apologize to that person whose virginity you might have stolen or to whom you might have given your own your sin to god you can start over there's hope for all of us we're all sinners some in one kind of way some in another but before god we're all of us helpless and hopeless there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from emmanuel's veins sinners plunged beneath that flood lose how many of their guilty stands all that's what the old hymn says sinners plunge beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains make a decision in advance it doesn't do to make up your mind how far to go after you find yourself in the dark room or the back seat of the car you have to make that decision in advance and you make your own decision women you make cures but in the final analysis i think in fine we women find that a man will be about as much of a gentleman as is required not much more and as my husband often says to young women who ask him questions if a man starts asking you questions which are really none of this business intimacy questions about sex what do you think about how many children to have and what when would you like to get married and all that sort of thing just probing and probing trying to get you to put all your cards on the table there's a very simple thing you can say why do you ask it's none of this business unless he has already asked you to marry him and then we have the very strange experience one time of talking with a young man and since then it's been repeated a few times a young man who said that he'd been going with a girl was just wonderful she was everything he'd ever dreamed she was all he was ever wanting a wife and he said uh he just would love to get to marry her and so i said are you engaged and he said oh no he said i can't do that and we said why he said because i don't know how she feels about me and so lars said well i can give you very simple formula for discovering how she feels about me first of all say i love you and secondly say will you marry me you'll find out real fast again i repeat the three questions whose am i what is his purpose for me what must i do may god help you to trust him to wait for him and may god give you men the courage to be a man and accept the responsibility that god places upon you to pray to seek his will and to receive it with thanksgiving and may god give us women that gentle and quiet spirit that keeps the mouth shut and waits for god's will to be unfolding god bless you my husband i'll be glad to pick it up and bring it up here [Music] i can start with one question if that's all we have let me go home but here's one over here guys i always try to give a spiritual answer if i can obviously i need to give a brief answer because it's late and as i said earlier i expect to be challenged if you think i've said something unscriptural something there's another one over here while i was in the same area women seem to be more involved in missions and ministry how can women motivate men to get more involved at church how can we get men to take the leadership role instead of all the women that's a very good question i don't think it's so complicated the answer it's a question that i certainly understand because i see that so often it is the women that are taking the leadership in the church i think the women need to back off and i know what you're going to say to that well if we back off then it's not going to get done two wrongs don't make a right if it is the men's job to take the leadership in the church which i absolutely believe is totally scriptural there isn't any question about this we women were never meant to serve authority so if it is a man's the men's job to be the leaders in sparking missionary interests and all the rest then my disobedience will not help their disobedience we need to back off and shut up and if it really happens what you think that okay then nothing's gonna happen i think eventually the men might wake up and realize that god is putting a finger on them as long as the women will do stuff you know it began way back in the garden of eden where eve decided to take the initiative she was the one that decided to eat the fruit she went to adam and made the suggestion adam wimped out he did not dig in his heels and say wait a minute we're not going to do this he just went along with whatever the little lady says and it's too i think ever since the garden of eden that has been the foundation of women to run things we are manipulators we are schemers we want to run things we want to organize things we want to build a fire and be human and the men would just as soon let the women do what they want back off and just sit there with your arms folded and watch so again i say i'm not men bashers but i see this phenomenon and whoever asks this question i don't know whether they're a member of this church or not maybe it's a different church but whatever the problem may be i think the best thing that we women can do to make to get men to do what men are supposed to do is to quit doing what women are not supposed to do and that we should be more feminine and ask god to help you to be feminine in order that the men may be masculine the more womanly we are the more manly the men will be and the more manly the men are in the true godly biblical sense the more womanly we will be another question as an older woman what counsel do you have for us loving and respecting our husbands lots and lots of that we can talk for hours let me give you just two simple rules two simple aspects of what love is love is the intention of unity and concern for the good of the other obviously this applies to husbands as well as two wives but it's my prayer that the lord will make me will show me ways in which i can make my husband lars job as easy and pleasant as possible it is his job to be the head of the house i don't make him my head he doesn't earn the headship he doesn't want the hardship he the headship he doesn't it's not an achievement it is an assignment it is a divine assignment it's not up for grabs we don't sit down and vote on who's going to run the show i know that my husband is my head now if you think you're looking at a woman who was born meek quiet laid back and wanting to be told what to do then i have misled you very greatly because that's not the way i was born there is not one submissive atom in my body it is god's will that i submit to my husband now if i think my husband is not doing a very good job of whatever he's supposed to be doing god says to me what are you doing to make it easier so i pray lord show me ways in which i can make the largest job as easy and pleasant as possible help me to aim for unity and always to be concerned for his good not mine i think i'll leave this one out okay where can i find base dam's quote the prayer that i gave you i have probably three or four copies of it here i'll be glad to give you you can see me afterwards my christian mother is leaving my father a marriage of 37 years for another man i know i need to forgive but i cannot accept the propriety of her actions what is a christian response in such a situation at what point do i accept her actions i think there's a very big difference between accepting them as right and accepting them as something that you can't change certainly if i were her daughter if i were i presume this as a son or daughter who has written this i think you have every reason and every right to let your mother know what you think about this she probably already knows but purely in a gracious and earnest way you would put your views to her i don't see that there's anything else you can do other than to pray and we have to leave with god the things which we cannot change that's a great lesson through all our lives isn't it to change the things that can be changed and ought to be changed but to leave with god the things that can't be changed so that is not accepting the thing as right i don't think you should ever accept it as right god hates divorce but i think you have to accept the fact that you've done what you can do and from now on your only job is prayer after engagement is intimacy appropriate and see that raises the question of how far the apostle paul gives us very simple instructions in the first verse of first corinthians 7 he says it is good for man not to touch a woman now a wife is different from a woman if she is your wife then the husband has power over the wife's body the wife has power over the husband's body but the bible doesn't give us any indication that there's anything like that before marriage now of course biblical be truthful was a very very serious thing be truthful was almost the same as marriage you remember that it was when mary was betrothed to joseph that she became pregnant by the holy ghost and joseph at that point being a just man had planned to put her away because naturally he couldn't help thinking that she had been unfaithful to him so he was going to put her away divorce her in other words which was what he would have to do as a betrothed man but then of course god prevented him from sinning in that way by sending the angel to say don't be afraid to take unto you marry your wife because that which is conceived in her is by the holy ghost but i think you've got to answer to god for your actions i have letters in my file from people who have had their first kiss at the altar during the wedding and others who have not even touched each other in any way until the altar now i'm not going to tell you that it's a sin to hold hands or to touch or to kiss but i will say that i think it's extremely dangerous you have to be very careful that you know where you can draw the line do you know how far you can go and not slip over that line so you have to answer to god what words do you have for women who have been raped believe that if there has been absolutely no participation or consent on the part of the woman and only you and god really know the answer to that if there has been none you stand before god honest and pure in that respect then i believe in god's side you're still a virgin i don't think you need to worry about that if you've been raped forgetting those things which are behind is paul's word just don't live the rest of your life making a career out of some past suffering or some victimization it's a terrible thing that we're living in today this whole victimized mentality we've all been victims of somebody else's sin and think of all the victims of our sins whether it's the sin of rape or not that doesn't matter we've all sinned against people and we are all suffering because of sin let's leave those things forget those things which are behind and reach forward to those things which are before just remember that jesus christ came into the world to save all of us and that needs to save us from our past how much does our appearance contribute towards temptation in the way of grooming and clothing etc appreciate that question because it just seems to me that there are a lot of women parading around practically naked who perhaps have never been taught that is a dangerous thing to do and they are putting temptation before men my mother was very strict with us about modesty but it needs to be emphasized it needs to be taught for the pulpit and not just women i mean men are just as guilty i don't know whether you may never stop to think about the fact that women are tempted by looking at men and the way they are these are just the facts of life so let's not try to draw attention to ourselves by the way that we dress or the way that we undressed and i think that the outer appearance has a great deal toward temptation if if you think a person is ugly i don't think you're going to be sexually tempted by that person but if you think the person is attractive then let's be modest in the sense of not trying to make a show of our bodies do you have to force yourself into liking someone to obey god even if there's things about them that are exactly opposite to the things you like it is god's will for you to marry somebody that doesn't appeal to you you don't have to force yourself you do have to make up your mind that you will obey god but god is going to make it possible and god is going to change your attitude now jim elliot told his parents very plainly put it down in black and white and even let me see the letter that he thought of me as being far from beautiful and his parents were just appalled they had never seen me and so when they got this letter they thought why in the world would he go looking at a girl that's so far from beautiful but later on when things had advanced to some point i don't even know i think it must have been before we were engaged that his mother said to him one day if she is god's woman for you there will be a time when you will be able to find beauty in her so i have a hunch that maybe that did happen at some point although i could never possibly be what he had in his mind he wanted a short dark-haired dark-eyed athletic girl that's it that's all the questions i thought i had another one here thank you so much there was one that i really don't want to answer you know who it was so we could talk about that privately if you want to do it thank you so much and lord bless you you

Channel: The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation

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Length: 70min 19sec (4219 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021