1983 May/June issue Part 4

An Old Prayer

Christians in the Orthodox Church used a prayer called the Jesus prayer. Sometimes they pray it in the rhythm of breathing, learning in this way to pray almost “without ceasing.” The words are simple, but they cover everything we need to ask for ourselves and others: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.

The Lord did not say we should not use repetition. He said we should not use vain repetition. A prayer prayed from the heart of the child to the Father is never vain.

The Very reverend Kenneth R.Waldron, a priest of both the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and of the Anglican Church, wrote to me of his having had surgery. “The last moment of consciousness before the anesthetic took over, I heard my surgeon repeating in a whisper: HOSPODI, PUMILUY, HOSPODI PUMILUY, HOSPODI PUMILUY (Dr Waldron put the Russian words into phonetic spelling) –Lord have mercy on us…It is wonderful to drift off into unconsciousness hearing these words on the lips of the man whose hands you trust to bring you out of your troubles. It is great to have a surgeon who knows how to pray at such a time. Think of the comfort and help that this simple prayer has brought to thousands the years, a prayer that was a big help to me in January 1982. Some of my hospital friends thought they would not see me alive again, but the good Lord had a bit more work for this old priest to do.”

The Jesus prayer was one my husband Add and I often used together when he was dying of cancer and we seemed to have “used up” all the other prayers. I recommend it to you.

1983 May/June issue Part 3

How can i say thanks?

Wonderful letters have come from many of you, expressing appreciation from the newsletter. "Who'd want to read an Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter?" I had asked, and you have cheered me immensely. Sometimes writing seems like dropping pebbles down a gopher hole- 'disappeared without a trace." But if a gopher pops up now and then, you know a pebble touched. Thank you, from my heart. A lady in Florida said she would love to hear about Valerie and of the other families of the men killed in Ecuador 1956. "We still have the life magazine from that year," she said.
The epilogue to the 25th- anniversary edition of my book Through Gates of Splendor includes recent news and photographs of the families.
Valerie is now 28, wife of Walter D. Shepard, Jr., pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Laural, Mississippi. They have three children. Five-year-old Walter told me last summer that the thing he wanted more than anything else in the world was "to be a good brother." Elisabeth. at age three, is direct, decisive, and daring. Shortly after her third birthday she climbed behind the wheel of a large van, turned the ignition key, shifted from "park" to "drive", and drove down a steep hill. Val and friend watched (helplessly) but prayed (effectively). "He shall give His angels charge over thee..." Those assigned to Elisabeth must be especially nimble and attentive. There was very minor damage to the van, none at all to Elisabeth or to the two children who were passengers. One of them was Christiana, Elisabeth's six-month-old sister. The other was a seven-year-old boy who had gotten into the van to talk to Elisabeth. A recent phone call from Val reported that Christiana is now walking and trying very hard, with long sentences in original gibberish, and with much intonation and body language, to talk. She was a year old on December 29.

1983 May/June issue Part 2

A note to fathers

Are you depriving your son of his sonship? “Hey! Hold it. What…?” Hebrews 12:7 says, “can anyone be a son who is not disciplined by his father? If you escape the discipline in which all sons share, you must be bastards (illegitimate) and not true sons.” (J.B Philips) Do you love your son or daughter enough to say no- and hold to it? Would you by cowardliness that fears to make a rule (perhaps because “nobody else” believes in it), treat your child as though you cared no more about him than you would care about a bastard?

But there are some words of caution. “Fathers, don’t over-correct your children, or make it difficult for them to obey the commandment. Bring them up with Christian teaching in Christian discipline.” (Ephesians 6:4, J.B Phillips)

This reminds me of the way in which the Lord Jesus teaches us. He is so patient with us who are such “fools and slow of heart.” The Sheppard does not make it hard for the sheep to walk in the right paths. He is always trying to make it easier for them, but they balk, they wonder off, they don’t listen. Children as well as adults are like sheep. They go astray. Fathers are meant to be shepherds. Don’t over-correct. “Your fathers must not goad your children to resentment, but give them the instruction, and the correction, which belong to a Christian upbringing.” (Same verse, New English Bible) It’s balance that is needed. Correct them, teach them. Don’t go to extremes. Ask God for wisdom. It’s too big a job for any ordinary human being. Look at God as a Father. How does He deal with us? Try to follow His pattern.

A note to mothers

If you have small children, you have the toughest, most demanding, exhausting, consuming job in the world. You need help! Watching my daughter Valerie with her three children shows me that keeping them happily occupied while doing her necessary housework is no small matter. Have you thought of giving even tiny children work to do? It doesn’t have to be all play. They can learn very early to do small tasks: put away the silverware, store paper bags away when you come back from grocery shopping, empty waste paper baskets, pick up toys and clothes and put them where they belong, straighten shoes on the closet floors, wipe baseboards with a damp rag, sweep under the radiators with a small dust brush, pick up sticks from the lawn, take everything out of a drawer or shelf so you can clean it, then put it back. Of course you can do it better and faster. But if you patiently show a child how to do these things and then patiently (!) let them do them, he will: 1) learn to work, 2) be taught responsibility, 3) have the pleasure of being useful, 4)learn that actions have consequences, 5)feel himself an important member of the household 6) know he is needed, 7)enjoy cooperating with mother and 8) be busy. A few weeks or months of patience on your part, provided you start early enough, will result in an ordered home, where each person contributes to the other’s happiness as a matter of course. I think most parents are way behind their children’s development- in other words, they are saying, “Oh He’s not old enough for that. He can’t understand that yet,” when the truth is that the child is well able to understand and perform much better than his parents give him credit for. I’ve seen evidence of this on occasions when I have taken care of other people’s children. They’ve done for me (simply because they saw that I expected it) what they “could not” do for their parents (because they knew that the parents did not expect it). This lesson is one the Indian mother taught me years ago in the jungle. Survival demanded that the children take far more responsibility than is ever required of them in our country. They did it. They did it without complaint or protest of any kind. They took care of baby brothers and sisters, went hunting or fishing or gathering food when food was needed, crossed rivers, climbed steep hills, made their way on rugged and muddy trails, built fires, carried water. It was expected. Children generally live up to expectations. Expect them to be helpless- they will be.

1983 May/June issue Part 1

The Weapon of Prayer

News came one day recently which indicated that a matter I had been praying about had deteriorated rather than improved. What good are my prayers, anyway? I was tempted to ask. Why bother? It’s becoming a mere charade. But the words of Jesus occurred in my bible reading that very morning (and wasn’t it a good thing I’d taken time to hear Him?): “if you, bad as you are, know how to give your children what is good for them, how much more will your heavenly father give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:11)

Are you as often tempted as I am to doubt the effectiveness of prayer? But Jesus prayed. He told us to pray. We can be sure the answer will come, and it will be good. If it is not exactly what we expected, chances are we are not asking for quite the right thing. Our heavenly Father hears the prayer, but wants to give us bread rather than stones.

Prayer is a weapon. Paul speaks of the “weapons we wield” in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5. They are “not merely human, but divinely potent to demolish strongholds.” The source of my doubts about its potency that morning was certainly not the Holy Spirit. It was the unholy spirit, the Destroyer himself, urging me to quit using the weapon he fears so intently.

Satan trembles when he sees

The weakest saint upon his knees. 

1983 March/April issue Part 4

Letters received

From a young mother: "In Discipline: the glad surrender I especially love the chapter, 'The discipline of work.' Homemaking can sometimes entail mundane tasks that need to be done. Contending with three small children day in and day out also may not be glamorous in the eyes of the world, but i lettered and hung up the Scripture you quoted from Colossians, 'whatever you are doing, put your whole heart into it, as if you were doing it for the Lord and not fro men.' (Colossians 3:23) The Lord has given me much joy! I am blessed with a wonderful husband who loves the Lord. He is a police officer in the New York subway system. Your chapter on 'The Discipline of Place' made me think of him and the way he treats people he comes in contact with honor (even those the other officers call 'skells'). He has many opportunities to share Christ."

1983 March/April issue Part 3

A little lesson about things temporal and eternal

I am upset when things are lost. Even small things. I like to know that things have places and are in them. It’s much worst when something like a manuscript is lost. I had worked for a number of weeks on a certain piece, and when I went to do the final rewriting it was gone. It just wasn’t anywhere. I looked, then Lars looked, then we both looked. In all the likely and all the unlikely places.  We prayed about it of course, together and separately, but we could not find it. At last I told the Lord that if a I did not find it today I would begin again from scratch, as the deadline was closing in. that day Uncle Tom, who is 89 and was staying with us, became very ill. There was no time to think of manuscripts. The next day we happened to move a piece of furniture and discovered that moths were doing their dastardly work underneath it. Lars went out and bought a can of moth spray and proceeded to fumigate every nook and cranny. The manuscript was behind a desk. It had fallen down and lodged standing up on the baseboard. If Uncle Tom had not gotten sick I would have done a day’s unnecessary work on that piece that I was so worried about. If the moths had not taken it into their tiny heads to chew up my carpet, we probably would not have turned up that sheaf of papers until next spring. It was not for nothing that the collect in my church that Sunday (the eighth after Pentecost) was: ‘O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply upon us your mercy, that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we not lose the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who loves and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.'

1983 March/April issue Part 2

What do you mean by submission?

People are always asking me this. What is this business of “submission” you’re always talking about? We’re not really very comfortable with this. Seems kind of negative. Sounds as though women are not worth as much as men. Aren’t woman supposed to exercise their gifts? Can’t they even open their mouths?

I wouldn’t be very comfortable with that kind of submission either. As a matter of fact I’m not particularly comfortable with any kind, but since it was God’s idea and not mine, I had better come to terms with what the bible says about it and stop rejecting the whole thing just because it is so often misunderstood and wrongly defined. I came across a lucid example of what it means in 1 Chronicles 11:10:’of David’s heroes these were the chief, men who lent their full strength to his government and, with all Israel, joined in making him king.’ There it is. The recognition, first of all, of God-given authority. Recognizing it, accepting it, they then lent their full strength to it , and did everything in their power to make him-not them- King.

1983 March/April issue Part 1

The taking of human life

In a relentless effort to keep the world from squeezing me into its won mold (see Romans 12:1-2) my mind is always making comparisons and connections and trying to test the world’s reasoning by the straightedge of scripture. Recently, when I read of the execution in Texas of Charles Brook, Jr., by lethal injection, I made one of those connections. I remember another news story a few months ago about an unborn twin who was quietly dispatched, while still in its mother’s womb, by means of a needle in its heart. Medical science has advanced to the stage where it is possible to remove human beings from this world’s scene cleanly and kindly (we tell ourselves) and without too much trauma to the executioners and the consenting public. Of the trauma to the victim we prefer not to let ourselves think too much.

1983 January/February issue Part 4

Response from a seminar a few months ago in New Jersey

“Wish I could say thank you, but I can’t. Oh gosh- thank you for that? You talked about forgiveness, and my mother, my sister, my neighbor, are all sitting there looking at me. They knew why I needed that talk! My husband is a gambler and am I bitter!  Bitter, resentful, anxious- all the things you talked about! I’m telling you, God had a funnel from your mouth to my ear. I couldn’t believe it. Who told you, I’m saying to myself, who told you about me and my husband? I was taking notes, and I put a box around that word forgiveness. That’s for my sister, I said, that’s not for me. She’s the one that needs that! But it’s really for me. God’s telling me it’s for me. And to think my neighbor gave me the ticket for this seminar for a birthday present. What kind of a friend is that? A Birthday present! But thanks, Elisabeth.” 

1983 January/February issue Part 3

New Zealand Trip

Last August Lars and I spent three weeks in that indescribably beautiful little country of New Zealand. I was speaking for the Church Missionary Society’s “Spring Schools”, one in Hamilton on the north island for four days, another in Christchurch on the south island. It was springtime, of course.  New Zealand is about the same latitude south that Massachusetts is north, so the seasons are reverse of ours, and everything was in glorious bloom. Thousands upon thousands of new born lambs capered and gamboled in the pastures (called paddocks there). We missed witnessing the birth of one of them by about thirty seconds. It was just staggering on its little rubber hoofs. The ewe was busy cleaning it. We’ve seen the Rockies and the Andes and the Alps. We’ve been to Whales and to Norway and Ecuador and Peru, Hawaii and a few other places, but we agreed we’d seen nothing to beat New Zealand. Such miles and miles of lush velvet green pasture land, such sweeping plains, such rank upon rank of awesome snowcapped jagged peaks, such pearly smooth sheets of turquoise glacial lakes. We traveled for six days after the speaking was finished, having hired a small Japanese car (a Daihatsu!). From Christchurch we drove west into a beautiful forest, through the Rakia Gorge, across the Canterbury Plains and up into the high brown grass similar to the moors and highlands of Scotland, then into the Southern Alps. Flew in a small plain around the highest peak, Mt. Cook, and over three or four glaciers (pronounced “glassyuhs” by the natives), then down the Haas Pass to the Tasman Sea. Drove to Queenstown, lake Te Anua, and a fjord improperly named Milford Sound (we were taught the difference between a fjord and a sound) where we took a boat trip through towering mountains to the sea. A little crested penguin obliged us by waddling primly up a rock very near the boat, and two seals yawned with ennui to see another crowd of tourists. On the west coast we picked up drift wood on a lonely wild beach, gathered ferns in a very wet jungle 9rainfall is 300 inches per year in that section), and climbed over rocks to the foot of Fox Glacier.

Ah, but the people! What dear, lovely people we met. Warm, responsive, and we did not feel rejected for being American (except when our fellow travelers on the fjord boat began to play loud country music on a tape recorder and square dance on the deck).

One women, a missionary from East Africa, told me she had been saved just nine months at the time of the death of the five men in Ecuador. The testimony of Jim Elliot had a powerful effect in her life. Three times she had put her willingness to become a missionary. Then she came across Jim’s not in a diary, “Ananias was not slain for not giving, but for not giving what he said he’d given.” That word was a link in a chain of her actually going to Africa.

1983 January/February issue Part 2

What on earth is happening?

What on earth is happening? I asked on page one. The answer is plain, I’m afraid, in Romans 1 and 2. Men render truth dumb and inoperative by their wickedness. They refuse to acknowledge God or to thank Him for what He is or does. They become fatuous in their argumentations. Behind a façade of wisdom they become fools. They give up God. They forfeit the truth of God and accept a lie. They overflow with insolent pride; their minds teem with diabolical invention. They recognize no obligations to honor, lose all natural affection, and have no use for mercy. They do not hesitate to give their thorough approval to others who do the same (Rom1:18-2:5)

Can we condemn them without subjection ourselves to the same standard of judgment by which we condemn? Of course we can’t. Judgment must be righteous judgment (John 7:24), based on the Word of God.

“There is no doubt at all that He will ‘render to every man according to his works’, and that means eternal life to those who, in patiently doing good, aim at the unseen….It also means anger and wrath for those who rebel against God’s plan for life…But there is glory and honor and peace for every worker on the side of good.” (Romans 2:6-10)

1983 January/February issue Part 1

Give them parking space but let them starve to death.

Another moral threshold was crossed last April when a tiny baby boy, at the specific requests of his parents and with the sanction of the Supreme Court of Indiana, was starved to death in hospital. “Infant Doe” (he was not allowed the usual recognition of being human by being named), born with Down’s syndrome and a malfunctioning esophagus (the latter could have been corrected with surgery), died, as the Washington Post (April 18) stated, “not because he couldn’t sustain life without a million dollars worth of medical machinery, but because no one fed him.” For six days the nurses in that Bloomington hospital went about their usual routines of bathing and changing and feeding all the newborns except one. They changed and bathed Baby Doe but never gave him a bottle. Over his crib was a notice, DO NOT FEED. Several couples came forward, begging to be allowed to adopt him. They were turned down.

1982 Premier Issue Part 4

Letters received

A mother in Tuscan writes about her little boy Chris; “ After hearing you, Chris got into the car and announced, ‘What I know now that I have to do is to love my enemies.’ Since then he’s been praying about his specific enemies and acting on this principle.” On the back of the same letter was a drawing of a four-year old with this dictated message: “I liked your talk too. I have laid with my sister to help her fall asleep, so im laying down my life for her. Chris is trying to help his enemies."

A twelve-year old boy writes that he has decided to get up ten minutes early each morning to read his Bible, and has decided to stay at home this summer in order to help his mother when she has a new baby. 

1982 Premier Issue Part 3

From Discipline; The glad surrender

The bodies we are given are sexual bodies, equipped for sexual intercourse. Modern advertising never lets us forget about this. Popular songs refer to nothing else. The fashion business thrives on sexual provocation through dress. But being sexually equipped is not a license for us to use the equipment in any way we choose. Like every other good gift which comes down from the Father of Lights, the gift of sexual activity is meant to be used as He intended, within the clearly defined limits of His purpose, which is marriage. If marriage is not included in God’s will for any individual, then sexual activity is not included either.

1982 Premier Issue Part 2

Contexts


A writer in the New Yorker some months ago analyzed television as "the context of non-context." Think about that one. The only context in which the words are coming at us from the tube is our living room or kitchen, which has nothing whatever to do with the speaker. The speakers backdrop is usually a TV studio, which we know is a mock up. So we are excused from evaluating what is said in terms of context. There is none.
In what context does a Christian live, move, act, think, decide? It must be the context of God's kingdom. We live either in that kingdom or we live in the world, taking out cues from the bible or from the media, setting our goals according what is going to matter forever or according to the quotation of the day.
Think in the context of the kingdom of God, about this recent incident in a public school classroom: The teacher asked the child what his mother did. There was only one child whose mother did not work outside the home.


Teacher: Oh, so what does your mother do?
Child: She-um, well you know, she does, um, stuff around the house.
Teacher: You mean she cooks and cleans? She irons clothes, makes beds?
Child: Yes
Teacher: So you could say, then, that you have a traditional mother, is that right? 
Child: Yes
Teacher: (with a long, searching look) And do you like that?


Consider the context from which the teacher's questions come from. It is not one which recognizes any divine design for the home, any glory in service, any joyful willingness to do humble work without thought of gain or appreciation. Consider the pressure put on a little child to question the only context his life has had, the context which has still now meant security, normalcy and happiness for him. He will be wondering if his mother is some sort of an oddity, his home not an ordinary one.
It is not for nothing that the classic page of the warfare of the Christian immediately follows Paul's specific instructions on human relationships: wives, submit; husbands, love; fathers do not goad your children to resentment. These are the areas of most vicious and relentless attack. The Christian home is a stronghold, and the enemy will never let up his attempts to undermine it or breach it's sanctity.
"Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God...." Ephesians 6:12-13.
Prayer is a powerful weapon. It is an indispensable weapon. It takes practice to wield it. It takes courage and time and spiritual energy.

1982 Premier Issue Part 1

Why Another Newsletter?


People have actually asked for a newsletter. The suggestion has been made a number of times over the years but i've balked. Who would want to read it? What in the world would i say? And the mechanics of the thing, alas. How to put it together, who would help, where would it be printed, what would i do about mailing? Several members of the Word Of God, a Christian
community in Ann Arbor, Michigan, came to me about a year ago and out of the blue told me i ought to be writing a newsletter and offered there services of every kind to make it possible. They are a group founded in the sixties, comprising about 500 families, doing ordinary work like ordinary folks (they don't live in a compound), but trying earnestly to live the life of Christ and to stand against what they see as a an 'escalation of evil' in the world today. They are committed also to standing with any who are fighting the same battles. I was awed and humbled to be counted among this latter group, and i gratefully accepted their suggestion and offer of help.
Not very much of what i have to say applies exclusively to women (can't think of a thing that just now would). I hope that my being a women won't limit too seriously the readership of my letter. The bible is a book for men and women. Like jews and Gentiles we are fellow-citizens with Gods people, members of Gods household bonded together, being built with all the rest into a spiritual dwelling for God (Ephesians 2:19,21,22)
Encouragement comes to me from many different sources, and i would like to pass some of it on to some others part of the "Household". It'll be one way of "bonding" us. Not the least of the sources of encouragement are the letters that come to me. Instead of just throwing them away or filing them, i can give you some of the more toothsome bits.
Lessons I'm trying to learn, lessons I'm thinking about (and asking God to bring every thought onto captivity to Christ), and maybe some news about a recent book or tpae will be part of the letter. Could you stand a story every now and then about one of my three grandchildren? How about my husband? Here's one from him- the other day he said to me, "Now dahlin" (he's from Georgia you know) "I'm going to explain what i plan to do about this matter. I really want your opinion. Be perfectly frank. Then if you think the whole idea is absolutely asinine [long pause, expression of deep study], why, i'd probably just go ahead and do it anyway."
Finally-and this, i guess, is the primary reason why those men from the word of God convinced me-I need prayer. I need more pray-ers.-people who know whats going on and are willing to give themselves to God for me. Of course, i have no special claim on anybody's prayers. I'm just one individual, but one to whom much has been given in the way of opportunities i never sought, platforms i never asked for, and influence i hardly ever know about. What do i have that i have not received? Not a thing. But "where a man has been given much, much will be expected of him, and the more a man has had entrusted to him the more he will be required to repay." Luke 12:48
The work we do for/with God must be done my the power of the Holy Spirit. That kind of work demands prayer. C.S Lewis said in one of his letters to a friend Arther Greeves that in a sense we can paddle every canoe except our own. I think the principle applies here. I can pray, of course, for help in the things God asks me to do. I do pray. But i can't do it alone. Each of us needs to have other people praying for him, paddling his canoe, as it were.
May i ask you then, most earnestly to pray for me? For every book, every article, every talk, every tape- that Christ may be lifted up.