Tag: Jim Elliot

Consume my life

Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Jim Elliot

God’s Word is powerful

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

Jim Elliot, 1949

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.

Jim Elliot, 1948

Jim Elliot’s prayer

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.

Elizabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty

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.

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Think Small and Travel Light

by GraceCreates with Jon Walker on Monday, August 8, 2011 at 12:00am

So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly, and let us run with determination the race that lies before us. Hebrews 12:1b (TEV)

 

When Jesus tells us to break with our old existence, his command is not arbitrary or random. You could say it is meant to make us small enough to fit through the narrow gate that leads to the kingdom of heaven. Imagine trying to go down a narrow path and then through a narrow gate wearing a backpack overstuffed with heavy regrets from your past and superficial distractions from the present.

 

You’d end up exhausted and frustrated as your backpack and the things spilling out of it kept getting snagged on the narrow sides of the path. You’d begin to see many of the things you carried were a hindrance rather than a help and one-by-one you’d start tossing them aside.

 

How would you feel when you got to the end of the path and found out the only way you could fit through the gate was to leave behind everything you still had with you, even your backpack? So you reluctantly throw it off and head through the gate only to discover that everything you’d been carrying, everything you’d been so reluctant to leave behind, will be useless in your new life in the kingdom of heaven.

 

Inside the kingdom of heaven, you realize you’ve made your journey more difficult than it had to be simply because you kept trying to hold on to things that were impossible to keep. This is why Jim Elliot, who was killed while attempting to evangelize the Waodani people in Ecuador, wrote, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Think Small and Travel Light by Jon Walker is a post from: GraceCreates

Jon Walker is the author of Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer’s ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ and Growing with Purpose.
He has served on staff at Saddleback Church and Purpose Driven Ministries and is currently the managing editor of Rick Warren’s Daily Devotionals and the Ministry Toolbox. Contact him at questions@gracecreates.com.