Elizabeth Elliot Devotions

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Lost and Found
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


"I was disappointed, and anxious about getting a new contact so far away from home. As we sat and rested, surveying the world from such a gloriously high perspective, the fragment of a verse popped into my head: 'The eyes of God go to and fro through the whole earth.'

"God knows exactly where my contact is this moment from His high vantage point, the amazing thought struck me. But I'll never see it again, I concluded.

"So, still glum, I headed down the path to the bottom where the others were preparing to climb. About half an hour later another girl set out where I had also begun my climb. She had no inkling of the missing contact. But there, at the steep bottom of the rock face, she let out an excited cry: 'Hey you guys--did anyone lose a contact?'

"I rushed over as she continued yelling, 'There's an ANT carrying a contact down the mountain!'

"Sure enough. Special delivery! I bent down, retrieved my contact from the hardworking ant, doused it with water and put it back in my eye, rejoicing. I was in awe, as if my Father had just given me, though so undeserving, a big hug, and said, 'My precious daughter, I care about every detail of your life.'

"I wrote to tell my family. My dad drew a cartoon portraying an ant, lugging a big contact five times its size. The ant was saying to God, 'Lord, I don't understand why You want me to drag this thing down! What use is it anyway? I don't even know what it is, and I certainly can't eat it and it's so BIG and HEAVY. Oh well, if you say so, Lord, I'll try, but it seems like a useless piece of junk to me!'

"I marvel at God's ways and how He chooses to reveal His mercy in ways far beyond our human comprehension."

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Thanksgiving for What is Given
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


Some people are substituting "Turkey Day" for Thanksgiving. I guess it must be because they are not aware that there's anybody to thank, and they think that the most important thing about the holiday is food. Christians know there is Somebody to thank, but often when we make a list of things to thank Him for we include only things we like. A bride and groom can't get away with that. They write a note to everybody, not only the rich uncle who gave the couple matching BMWs, but the poor aunt who gave them a crocheted toilet-paper cover. In other words, they have to express thanks for whatever they've received.

Wouldn't that be a good thing for us to do with God? We are meant to give thanks "in everything" even if we're like the little girl who said she could think of a lot of things she'd rather have than eternal life. The mature Christian offers not just polite thanks but heartfelt thanks that springs from a far deeper source than his own pleasure. Thanksgiving is a spiritual exercise, necessary to the building of a healthy soul. It takes us out of the stuffiness of ourselves into the fresh breeze and sunlight of the will of God. The simple act of thanking Him is for most of us an abrupt change of activity, a break from work and worry, a move toward re-creation.

I am not suggesting the mouthing of foolish platitudes, or evasion of the truth. That is not how God is glorified, or souls fortified. I want to see clearly what I have been given and to thank Him with an honest heart. What are the "givens"?

Thankless children we all are, more or less, comprehending but dimly the truth of God's fathomless love for us. We do not know Him as a gracious Giver, we do not understand His most precious gifts, or the depth of His love, the wisdom with which He has planned our lives, the price He pays to bring us to glory and fulfillment. When some petty private concern or perhaps some bad news depresses or confuses me, I am in no position to be thankful. Far from it. That is the time, precisely then, that I must begin by deliberately putting my mind on some great Realities.

What are these "givens"? What do I most unshakably believe in? God the Father Almighty. Jesus Christ His only Son. The Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting. Not a long list, but all we need. "The necessary supplies issued to us, the standard equipment of the Christian." We didn't ask for any of them. (Imagine having nothing more than we've asked for!) They are given.

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Thanksgiving for What is Given
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


Take the list of whatever we're not thankful for and measure it against the mighty foundation stones of our faith. The truth of our private lives can be understood only in relation to those Realities. Some of us know very little of suffering, but we know disappointments and betrayals and losses and bitterness. Are we really meant to thank God for such things? Let's be clear about one thing: God does not cause all the things we don't like. But He does permit them to happen because it is in this fallen world that we humans must learn to walk by faith. He doesn't leave us to ourselves, however. He shares every step. He walked this lonesome road first, He gave Himself for us, He died for us. "Can we not trust such a God to give us, with Him, everything else that we can need?" (Romans 8:32, PHILLIPS). Those disappointments give us the chance to learn to know Him and the meaning of His gifts, and, in the midst of darkness, to receive His light. Doesn't that transform the not thankful list into a thankful one?

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A New Thanksgiving
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


Those who call Thanksgiving "Turkey Day," I suppose, take some such view as this: Unless we have Someone to thank and something to thank Him for, what's the point of using a name that calls up pictures of religious people in funny hats and Indians bringing corn and squash?

Christians, I hope, focus on something other than a roasted bird. We do have Someone to thank and a long list of things to thank Him for, but sometimes we limit our thanksgiving merely to things that look good to us. As our faith in the character of God grows deeper we see that heavenly light is shed on everything--even on suffering--so that we are enabled to thank Him for things we would never have thought of before. The apostle Paul, for example, saw even suffering itself as a happiness (Colossians 1:24, NEB).

I have been thinking of something that stifles thanksgiving. It is the spirit of greed--the greed of doing, being, and having.

When Satan came to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, his bait was intended to inspire the lust to do more than the Father meant for Him to do--to go farther, demonstrate more power, act more dramatically. So the enemy comes to us in these days of frantic doing. We are ceaselessly summoned to activities: social, political, educational, athletic, and--yes--spiritual. Our "self-image" (deplorable word!) is dependent not on the quiet and hidden "Do this for My sake," but on the list the world hands us of what is "important." It is a long list, and it is both foolish and impossible. If we fall for it, we neglect the short list.

Only a few things are really important, and for those we have the promise of divine help: sitting in silence with the Master in order to hear His word and obey it in the ordinary line of duty--for example, in being a good husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, or spiritual father or mother to those nearby who need protection and care--humble work which is never on the world's list because it leads to nothing impressive on one's resume. As Washington Gladden wrote in 1879, "O Master, let me walk with Thee/In lowly paths of service free...."

Temptation comes also in the form of being. The snake in the garden struck at Eve with the promise of being something which had not been given. If she would eat the fruit forbidden to her, she could "upgrade her lifestyle" and become like God. She inferred that this was her right, and that God meant to cheat her of this. The way to get her rights was to disobey Him.

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A New Thanksgiving
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


No new temptation ever comes to any of us. Satan needs no new tricks. The old ones have worked well ever since the Garden of Eden, although sometimes under different guises. When there is a deep restlessness for which we find no explanation, it may be due to the greed of being--what our loving Father never meant us to be. Peace lies in the trusting acceptance of His design, His gifts, His appointment of place, position, capacity. It was thus that the Son of Man came to earth--embracing all that the Father willed Him to be, usurping nothing--no work, not even a word--that the Father had not given Him.

Then there is the greed of having. When "a mixed company of strangers" joined the Israelites, the people began to be greedy for better things (Numbers 11:4, NEB). God had given them exactly what they needed in the wilderness: manna. It was always enough, always fresh, always good (sounds good to me, anyway, "like butter-cakes"). But the people lusted for variety. These strangers put ideas into their heads. "There's more to life than this stuff. Is this all you've got? You can have more. You gotta live a little!"

So the insistence to have it all took hold on God's people and they began to wail, "all of them in their families at the opening of their tents." There is no end to the spending, getting, having. We are insatiable consumers, dead set on competing, upgrading, showing off ("If you've got it, flaunt it"). We simply cannot bear to miss something others deem necessary. So the world ruins the peace and simplicity God would give us. Contentment with what He has chosen for us dissolves, along with godliness, while, instead of giving thanks, we lust and wail, teaching our children to lust and wail too. (Children of the jungle tribe I knew years ago did not complain because they had not been taught to.)

Lord, we give You thanks for all that You in Your mercy have given us to be and to do and to have. Deliver us, Lord, from all greed to be and to do and to have anything not in accord with Your holy purposes. Teach us to rest quietly in Your promise to supply, recognizing that if we don't have it we don't need it. Teach us to desire Your will--nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

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An Overflowing Cup
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


"The Lord is gracious and compassionate.: good to all... faithful to all his promises... loving toward all he has made.... righteous in all his ways.... near to all who call on him.... watches over all who love him.... My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord" (from Psalm 145, NIV).

As the year dwindles my heart swells. How to express the joy and gratitude for daily evidence of all the above? I thank God for all the saints whose lives have demonstrated to me what it means to be a Christian. Dr. May Powell, a remarkable English lady, died at age ninety-five. She had joined Amy Carmichael in her work in India in 1924, helping to build up the medical work and then, when Amy was injured, becoming co-leader with her of the Dohnavur Fellowship. After Amy's death in 1951 the responsibility of leader fell to Dr. Powell. Eventually, she returned to England to care for two older sisters. Following their deaths she continued to serve the Lord she loved, always available to many who needed her prayers and her counsel.

I visited her in England in 1983 when I was working on A Chance to Die, the biography of Amy Carmichael. She had given me specific instructions by phone as to train, taxi, and finding the residential home where she lived. She was waiting at the door, very tiny and erect, very cheerful and direct, reminding me at once (but in appearance only) of the old lady in "Beverly Hillbillies"!

"So you're Elisabeth. Come in. Do you know the word loo? (I did--British nickname for toilet.) Yes. There's the loo. There's your room. Tea at the top of these stairs in twenty minutes." Up the stairs she went with great energy. Her room was not much more than a cell. A narrow cot, a small table with the teakettle, cups and biscuits all ready on a neat cloth, two chairs. A short bookshelf on the wall. Half of the books were Amy Carmichael's. I had my notebook in hand.

"What would you like to know?" she asked. There wasn't time for nearly all my questions, but in those hours I knew that I had been with a very great woman, one of God's hidden ones whose strength lies in nothing explainable by personality or heredity, but in Him who is Rock, Fortress, and Might, who is, "in the darkness drear their one true light," whose distant song of triumph steals on our ears sometimes and makes our hearts brave again and our arms strong. Praise to God for such living flames of His love.

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An Overflowing Cup
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


And then there are my parents, both of whom are now also with the Lord, but with whom I feel that I have been living again during the past year as I worked on a book on the shaping of one Christian family. Studying minutely their letters and diaries, rereading the autobiography Mother wrote for us children, poring over the pictures, ransacking my memory and the memories of my brothers and sister, I have often paused and said, "Thank You," to Him who gave us such parents and such a home. I have also been solemnly aware of the weight of responsibility that is laid upon us because "to whomsoever much is given much is required."

As an editor my father spent his life reading other people's writings and never thought of writing a book. Three collections of his short writings were published in book form, however, one entitled New Every Morning (published by Zondervan in 1969, now out of print). Here's the title piece, an exercise in thanksgiving, and a glimpse of the man he was. I think you'll see why I'm thankful for such a father.

"Blessings taken for granted are often forgotten. Yet our Heavenly Father 'daily loadeth us with benefits' (Psalm 68:19). Think of some of the common things which are nevertheless wonderful:

"--the intricate, delicate mechanism of the lungs steadily and silently taking in fresh air eighteen to twenty times a minute;

"--the untiring heart, pumping great quantities of clean blood through the labyrinth of blood vessels;

"--the constant body temperature, normally varying less than one degree;

"--the atmospheric temperature, varying widely it is true, but never so much as to destroy human and animal life;

"--the orderly succession of day and night, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, so that, with few exceptions, man can make his plans accordingly;

"--the great variety of foods, from the farm, the field, the forest, and the sea, to suit our differing desires and physical needs;

"--the beauties of each day--the morning star and growing light of sunrise, the white clouds of afternoon, the soft tints of a peaceful sunset, and the glory of the starry heavens;

"--the symphony of early morning bird songs, ranging from the unmusical trill of the chipping sparrow to the lilting ecstasy of the goldfinch and the calm, rich, bell-like tones of the wood and hermit thrushes;

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An Overflowing Cup
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart

 
"--the refreshment that sleep brings;

"--the simple joys of home--the children's laughter and whimsical remarks, happy times around the table, the love and understanding of husband and wife, and the harmony of voices raised together in praise to God.

"All these and many others come from the bountiful hand of Him 'who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's' (Psalm 103:4,5).

"'It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness' (Lamentations 3:22,23).

"'It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High' (Psalm 92:1)."

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Hints for Quiet Time
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


Having a quiet time with the Lord every day is absolutely essential if you expect to grow spiritually. But you have to plan it. It won't "just happen." We're all much too busy. Early morning is best, and there are plenty of scriptural precedents for that (Jesus rose "a great while before day"; the psalmist said, "In the morning shalt Thou hear my voice").

If you meet the Lord before you meet anybody else, you'll be "pointed in the right direction" for whatever comes. God knows how difficult it is for some to do this, and if you have a reason you can offer Him why early morning won't work, I'm sure He'll help you to find another time. Sometimes the children's afternoon nap time can be quiet time for a mother. At any rate, plan the time. Make up your mind to stick with it. Make it short to begin with--fifteen minutes or so, perhaps. You'll be surprised at how soon you'll be wanting more.

Take a single book of the Bible. If you're new at this, start with the Gospel of Mark. Pray, first, for the Holy Spirit's teaching. Read a few verses, a paragraph, or a chapter. Then ask, What does this passage teach me about: (1) God, (2) Jesus Christ, (3) the Holy Spirit, (4) myself, (5) sins to confess or avoid, (6) commands to obey, (7) what Christian love is?

Keep a notebook. Write down some of your special prayer requests with the date. Record the answer when it comes. Note, also, some of the answers you've found to the above questions, or anything else you've learned. Tell your children, your spouse, your friends some of these things. That will help you to remember them. You'll be amazed at what a difference a quiet time will make in your life.

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Chronicle of a Soul
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


I kept a five-year diary from high school through college, and began spiritual journals during my senior year in college (1948), which I continue to keep. These are chronicles of growth: mental, emotional, and spiritual. It is astounding to go back through them and learn things I had completely forgotten. It is wonderfully faith-strengthening to see that indeed "all the way my Savior leads me," hears my prayers, supplies my needs, teaches me of Himself. As God said to Israel, "Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led these forty years in the wilderness."

My memory is poor. A journal is a record of His faithfulness (and my own faithlessness too--which teaches me to value His grace and mercy). If you decide to begin recording your pilgrimage, buy yourself a notebook (or one of those pretty flowered cloth-bound blank books available in gift and stationery stores) and begin to put down (not necessarily every day):

   1. Lessons learned from your reading of Scripture. (If you put these in a journal instead of marking up your Bible, you will find new things each time you read the Bible instead of reading it through the grid of old notes. Worth a try?)
   2. Ways in which you intend to apply those lessons in your own life. (Reading your journal later will reveal answers to prayer you would otherwise have overlooked.)
   3. Dialogues with the Lord. What you say to Him, what He seems to be saying to you about some problem or issue or need.
   4. Quotations from your spiritual reading other than the Bible.
   5. Prayers from the words of hymns which you want to make your own.
   6. Reasons for thanksgiving. (Caution: when you get into the habit of recording these, the list gets out of hand!)
   7. Things you're praying about. You might choose to have a separate notebook for this, or an "appendix" in another section of the same book--date on which a prayer was prayed; date on which answered, with space for how the answer came in some cases.

If you have a family, I would strongly urge you as a family to keep a prayer notebook together. This will help everybody first of all to learn to pray about everything, instead of merely talking or worrying or arguing. It will also help you to be specific, to hold your requests before the Lord together, and then to note the answers and give thanks together (especially when the answers weren't the ones you were looking for).

As George MacDonald wrote, "No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best: therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things."

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Chronicle of a Soul
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart



"Where I found Truth, there I found my God, the Truth itself, which since I learnt, I have not forgotten.... Too late I loved Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee... Thou calledst, and shoutedst, and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest, and scatteredst my blindness. Thou breathedst odors, and I drew in breath and pant for Thee. I tasted, and hunger and thirst. Thou touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace."

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Waiting
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


"I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry" (Psalm 40:1, NIV).

The tests of our willingness to wait patiently for the Lord come almost daily for most of us, I suppose. Probably I am among the Lord's most impatient servants, so the lesson has to be renewed again and again. A tough test came when my daughter's family (of ten) was searching for a house. Southern California is not a place where one would wish to conduct that search. It's a long story, but at last, all other possibilities having been exhausted, a house was found, an offer made. That night word came that two other offers, of unknown amounts, had also been made. Dark pictures filled my mind: the others would surely get the house, the Shepards would be reduced to renting and we'd been told that rentals start at about $2000 per month (imagine an owner willing to rent to a family with eight children!).

"Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord" (Psalm 27:14, NIV).

I lay awake in the wee hours ("when all life's molehills become mountains" as Amy Carmichael said), repeating Scripture about God's faithfulness, trusting, casting all cares, waiting. I had to keep offering up my worries and my impatience. At four I was up reading the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham called the place where he had offered up Isaac "The Lord Will Provide." I took that as the Lord's word to me that morning.

Before nine o'clock, my son-in-law Walt called to say "Offer accepted. Other offers, both higher, turned down." No explanation. It was the Lord's doing.

Waiting requires patience--a willingness calmly to accept what we have or have not, where we are or where we wish we were, whomever we live or work with.

To want what we don't have is impatience, for one thing, and it is to mistrust God. Is He not in complete control of all circumstances, events, and conditions? If some are beyond His control, He is not God.

A spirit of resistance cannot wait on God. I believe it is this spirit which is the reason for some of our greatest sufferings. Opposing the workings of the Lord in and through our "problems" only exacerbates them. It is here and now that we must win our victories or suffer defeats. Spiritual victories are won in the quiet acceptance of ordinary events, which are God's "bright servants," standing all around us.

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Waiting
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands. "Peace I leave with you; I do not give to you as the world gives" (John 14:27, NEB). What sort of peace has He to give us? A peace which was constant in the midst of ceaseless work (with few visible results), frequent interruptions, impatient demands, few physical comforts; a peace which was not destroyed by the arguments, the faithlessness, and hatred of the people. Jesus had perfect confidence in His Father, whose will He had come to accomplish. Nothing touched Him without His Father's permission. Nothing touches me without my Father's permission. Can I not then wait patiently? He will show the way.

If I am willing to be still in my Master's hand, can I not then be still in everything? He's got the whole world in His hands! Never mind whether things come from God Himself or from people-- everything comes by His ordination or permission. If I mean to be obedient and submissive to the Lord because He is my Lord, I must not forget that whatever He allows to happen becomes, for me, His will at that moment. Perhaps it is someone else's sinful action, but if God allows it to affect me, He wills it for my learning. The need to wait is, for me, a form of chastening. God has to calm me down, make me shut up and look to Him for the outcome.

His message to me every day
Is wait, be still, trust, and obey.

And this brings me to the matter of counseling. Upon our return from a trip to England I found a pile of mail, so many letters asking me what to do about things, for example: a wife's critical spirit, unemployment, a wife who has abandoned husband and children, a single mother doing a job she hates, an unfaithful husband, a woman (who tells me she is Spirit-filled) having an affair with her pastor, a farmer who'd like a wife, a mother-in-law who is nasty to her daughter-in-law, a stepson who is angry because "we don't spend enough money on his children," a wife who snaps at her husband each time he tries to snuggle up, and a husband who "drinks like a fish, curses like a sailor, and says he loves God."

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Waiting
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart


I wish I could write the same letter to everybody: Wait patiently for the Lord. He will turn to you and hear your cry. It is amazing how clear things become when we are still before Him, not complaining, not insisting on quick answers, only seeking to hear His word in the stillness, and to see things in His light. Few are willing to receive that sort of reply. "Too simplistic" is the objection. One listener to my radio program, Gateway to Joy, wrote, "I got so upset at what you were saying I ripped the earphones out and aid, 'I'll do what I want to do!'" But there are those who can say, "This is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation" (Isaiah 25:9, KJV). Here are two testimonies:

"I've lost my mother, my brother, my husband, and my baby. My song is More Love to Thee, O Christ."

"God picked up the scraps and pieces and made us whole--a whole woman, a whole man, a whole marriage."

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God's Sheep-Dogs
By Elisabeth Elliot
Taken From: Keep A Quiet Heart

From a friend whose son, two and a half, had to have surgery for a cyst (always a worrisome sign): "The cyst was benign! We are so grateful! We set the Lord before us so we will not be shaken for the living of life. Our goal is not to be comfortable and have everything turn out fine, but to be godly and make an impact on our dying world and its values.... May God continue to refine your life message as 'He keeps you from willful sins as His servant; may they not rule over you' (Psalm 19:13). Barrett (my son) memorized Genesis 4:7, and as he faces temptation he says the verse. He is learning to make wise choices and to be obedient.... We have not spared the rod on him but it has really worked. He says 'the rod drives out my foolishness.'"

That letter came on the same day that I was reading Hannah Whitall Smith's Everyday Religion. She quotes George MacDonald. His words illuminate what Barrett's mother wrote:

"Man has a claim on God, a divine claim for any pain, want, disappointment, or misery that will help to make him what he ought to be. He has a claim to be punished, and to be spared not one pang that may urge him toward repentance; yea, he has a claim to be compelled to repent; to be hedged in on every side, to have one after another of the strong, sharp-toothed sheep-dogs of the Great Shepherd sent after him, to thwart him in any desire, foil him in any plan, frustrate him of any hope, until he comes to see at length that nothing will ease his pain, nothing make life a thing worth having, but the presence of the living God within him; that nothing is good but the will of God; nothing noble enough for the desire of the heart of man but oneness with the eternal. For this God must make him yield his very being, that He himself may enter in and dwell with him."

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