Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Keep A Quiet Heart
Interruptions, Delays, Inconveniences
Emily, wife of America's first foreign missionary, Adoniram Judson, wrote home from Moulmein, Burma, in January 1847:
"This taking care of teething babies, and teaching natives to darn stockings and talking English back end foremost . . . in order to get an eatable dinner, is really a very odd sort of business for Fanny Forester [her pen name--she was a well-known New England writer before marrying Judson].... But I begin to get reconciled to my minute cares." She was ambitious for "higher and better things," but was enabled to learn that "the person who would do great things well must practice daily on little ones; and she who would have the assistance of the Almighty in important acts, must be daily and hourly accustomed to consult His will in the minor affairs of life."
About eighty years ago, when James 0. Fraser was working as a solitary missionary in Tengyueh, southwest China, his situation was, "in every sense, 'against the grain.'" He did not enjoy housekeeping and looking after premises. He found the houseboy irritable and touchy, constantly quarreling with the cook. Endless small items of business cluttered up the time he wanted for language study, and he was having to learn to be "perpetually inconvenienced" for the sake of the gospel. He wrote after some weeks alone:
"I am finding out that it is a mistake to plan to get through a certain amount of work in a certain time. It ends in disappointment, besides not being the right way to go about it, in my judgment. It makes one impatient of interruptions and delay. Just as you are nearly finishing--somebody comes along to sit with you and have a chat! You might hardly think it possible to be impatient and put out where there is such an opportunity for presenting the Gospel--but it is. It may be just on mealtime, or you are writing a letter to catch the mail, or you were just going out for needed exercise before tea. But the visitor has to be welcomed, and I think it is well to cultivate an attitude of mind which will enable one to welcome him from the heart and at any time. 'No admittance except on business' scarcely shows a true missionary spirit."
There is nothing like the biographies of great Christians to give us perspective and help us to keep spiritual balance. These two are well worth reading. It was J.O. Fraser who so inspired my husband Jim Elliot with missionary vision that Jim planned to name his first son after him.
One more quotation--this from an out-of-print book, The Life and Letters of Janet Erskine Stuart. Says one who was her assistant for some years, "She delighted in seeing her plan upset by unexpected events, saying that it gave her great comfort, and that she looked on such things as an assurance that God was watching over her stewardship, was securing the accomplishment of His will, and working out His own designs. Whether she traced the secondary causes to the prayer of a child, to the imperfection of an individual, to obstacles arising from misunderstandings, or to interference of outside agencies, she was joyfully and graciously ready to recognize the indication of God's ruling hand, and to allow herself to be guided by it
Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Keep A Quiet Heart
My Life for Yours
About ten years ago, a young Canadian woman sat in the assembly hall at the University of Illinois in Urbana, along with seventeen thousand other students attending InterVarsity's missionary convention. She thrilled to the singing of the great hymns, led by Bernie Smith. She heard the peakers. "I remember the incredible excitement and desire to know and serve God that I experienced at that time. Now I have walked through some deep waters, and I feel compelled to write to you," her letter to me said. She had read two of my books just before the convention, and I happened to have been among the speakers. Another was Helen Roseveare, author of Give Me This Mountain and other books. At the time, Barbara was especially moved by the thought of the cost of declaring God's glory. Her letter told me this story:
Three years after Urbana she married Gerry Fuller, "a wonderful man who demonstrated zeal for Christ, a passion for souls, a beautiful compassion for hurting, broken people who needed to know the healing love of Jesus Christ." Following seminary and student pastorates, he became a prison chaplain and an inner-city missionary. Then he married Barbara and together they worked in Saint John, New Brunswick, with street kids, ex-convicts, and glue-sniffers.
The time came when Barbara saw Gerry seeking the Lord with such great intensity it made her question her own commitment to Christ. Was she prepared to die to self as he was? What was it that drove him to pray as he did--at least once until four in the morning? Was her own love for the Lord as deep as his, or was it perhaps shadowed by her love for her husband?
Gerry had a nephew named Gary, "a quiet guy with an artistic nature and talents that had been squelched as a child, leaving him very insecure, undisciplined." He couldn't hold down a job, got in trouble with the law. When relatives consented to his using their vacation cottage, a neighboring cottage was broken into. The owner called Gerry to say that his gun had been taken; Gary was the prime suspect, but they didn't want to call the police until they'd called Gerry.
Gerry was "scared stiff," but knew what he had to do the next day; put his whole trust in God, go to the cottage, try to persuade his nephew to turn himself in. He and Barbara went to bed.
Next morning when they prayed together he asked the Holy Spirit especially to strengthen Barbara in raising little Josh and Ben. Should she go with him to see Gary? She was relieved that his answer was no--"If anything happens to him, the children will need me," was the thought that flashed into her mind.
Gerry said goodbye. Barbara fasted, prayed, cared for the little boys, worked in the garden, waited. All day she waited. He did not come. Oh well, Gerry was always late for everything. No doubt they were deep in conversation. He had tried so often to help Gary. Lord, may He help him now.
At last the sound of a car. Eagerly Barbara looked up from her weeding. It was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She froze, then fell to the ground sobbing. Gerry was dead. But looking up at the bewildered faces of her sons, four and two years old, she pulled herself together, took their little hands, and told them Daddy was with Jesus and they wouldn't see him again for a long time. "From that point on there was the sense of being carried through the whole dream-like event. God surrounded me with His presence and an overwhelming sense that 'It's all right.' I knew He was in charge."
The murder was a deliberate act. Gary is serving a life sentence in a penitentiary with some who were led to Christ through Gerry's witness. They loved Gerry, but for love of his Lord they have forgiven his killer. A number of lives have been changed as a result of his testimony, but "in spite of the good things that came of his death there is always the WHY," Barbara writes. "As you say, we must let God be God. It's hard to explain, though, to a tired three-year-old when he wails, 'I miss Daddy!'
"One of my greatest blessings and comforts came as a surprise about six weeks after my husband's death when I discovered that I was pregnant with a baby conceived the eve of his homegoing. And how like the Lord and His perfect timing to present me with a beautiful child on Easter Sunday--the girl I had prayed for. Her name is Marah Grace and it is by God's grace that she has made my bitter wafers sweet.
"People say I am brave, but I don't see any great bravery in walking through one of the difficult experiences of life. God is the One who strengthens us at the time for the things we must face. My greatest fear was the fear of losing Gerry, but when the time came God swooped under me as a great bird and carried me on eagle's wings above the storm.
"So that is my story. I wanted to share it with you--I feel somewhat akin to you. My husband went in obedience to God, well aware of the danger, and laid down his life for Christ's sake. My task is to follow that example and to instill in my children the values Gerry and I shared: the supreme value of knowing Jesus Christ and serving Him with our whole selves."
Thank you, dear Barbara, for being one more faithful witness to a wholly faithful and sovereign Lord. Like Jim Elliot, Gerry knew that "he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." He would have understood the motto of the Coast.