Consume my life

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.

When he died [at the hands of the Auca Indians], Jim left little of value, as the world regards values.…Of material things, there were few; a home in the jungle, a few well-worn clothes, books, and tools. The men who went to try to rescue the five [missionaries — all of whom died] brought back to me from Jim’s body his wrist watch, and from…the beach, the blurred pages of his college prayer-notebook. There was no funeral, no tombstone for a memorial.…No legacy then? Was it “just as if he had never been”? Jim left for me, in memory, and for us all, in these letters and diaries, the testimony of a man who sought nothing but the will of God, who prayed that his life would be “an exhibit of the value of knowing God.”

The interest which accrues from this legacy is yet to be realized. It is hinted at in the lives of…Indians who have determined to follow Christ, persuaded by Jim’s example; in the lives of many who write to tell me of a new desire to know God as Jim did.…His death was the result of simple obedience to his Captain.

Jim Elliot and four other missionaries met their deaths trying to reach the Auca Indians for Christ.

Adapted from The Prayer Bible Jean E. Syswerda, general editor, Tyndale House Publishers (2003), p375.

Digging Deeper: End of the Spear by Steve Saint (Tyndale, 2005), son of Nate Saint, chronicles the story of the encounter with the Ecuadorian tribe, which also became a major motion picture.