​If you read my blog from earlier this month, you know I promised to post part two on Becoming Elisabeth Elliot. As much as I was struck by the level of obedience to the Savior that Betty exemplified, I was drawn at the same time to how she faced suffering. To say that this book was a journey for me is an understatement. It convicted and challenged me, since I have experienced my own varying degrees of suffering and have come to know Jesus in a way I never would have had God not allowed those times in my life.
 
Betty’s suffering through various trials and difficulties resulted in her concluding that “suffering is never for nothing.” In my own periods of suffering, I have struggled to make sense of them. At times, quite honestly, I felt like God had left me, even though I knew in my heart Jesus promised He would “never leave [me] or forsake [me] (Hebrews 13:5 quoting Joshua 1:5).” Reading Betty’s perspective on suffering has radically changed mine.

“For Betty, the sad days weren’t times to be denied, suppressed, or avoided. Betty’s medical training, and her theology, did not allow her to deny the existence of pain. It was a symptom. It showed God was at work. If she walked the path of obedience, He would in fact use her very pain for His good purposes. But the problem with pain is that it hurts. Many of us, particularly if we live in North America, are culturally programmed to avoid pain at all costs. We’re subliminally taught to think that our lives will be like a trip down a long, peaceful river of productivity, peace, and purpose. We expect occasional rapids, rocks, and other perils, but for the most part, the assumption is that the river will be smooth. God keeps our souls safe, secure for eternity. He may give riches in this world, yes, to some. But to all His children who hide in Him, He gives security and riches to the soul. Suffering in this world somehow refines our character and marvels in the next world; the one that lasts forever, the one with joys beyond human conception. And suffering is one of God’s sanctifying tools. God is not a cosmic plumber who shows up to make things run smoothly for us. When He doesn’t fix broken situations in our lives, it’s usually because He is fixing us through them.”

I dealt for over ten years with a chronic disease, oftentimes isolated at home, in great pain and unable to leave the house. I would often ask God “why” I was afflicted with it or “how” it could possibly be glorifying Him when I couldn’t even leave the house for weeks or even months at a time. I felt like my quality of life was far from the abundant life Jesus promised in John 10:10. Betty’s life and writings taught me the question I needed to be asking instead was “what?”

“The only problem to be solved, really, is that of obedience. As Betty noted, futility—that spirit-numbing sense of despair—does not come from the thing itself, but from the demand to know “why.” It is the question of the child, like little Valerie’s endless “whys?” in the jungle. For Betty, the adult question is “what?” As in, Lord, show me what You want me to do. And I’ll do it. And in that acceptance—“I’ll obey, whatever it is”—there is peace.”

I feel like my faith and trust in God is on a far lesser level than Elisabeth Elliot’s, but then I catch myself and know I shouldn’t be comparing myself. Betty walked the road Christ led her on in obedience and in the way she felt called, even though she had her moments of selfishness and pride, times when she struggled to be strong and stay true to the calling she felt. Becoming Elisabeth Elliot shows Betty was an ordinary person who lived out her life in an extraordinary way.

You and I are no different. We all must make the same decision—how do we live out the calling we each have from God, and can we daily pick up our cross and carry it faithfully? I am not a person who puts others on a pedestal, but when I encounter someone whose life has been lived out in total sacrifice to Jesus Christ, it humbles me and drives me to my knees because I know it’s only about the degree of faith I have and the level of obedience I am willing to commit to.

“To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss. The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact.”

Elisabeth lived her life radically submitted to Christ. She endured tragedy, but many of us do at one time or another. It may not be the murder of a spouse; it could be the death of a child, a horrible accident leaving us forever changed, or abuse at the hands of another. However it looks, God doesn’t leave us to walk through it alone.

“Many years later, Betty would write more dispassionately about the process of grieving terrible loss. “[Jesus] carried our sorrows. He suffered . . . not that we might not suffer, but that our sufferings might be like His. To hell, then, with self-pity . . . Every stage on the pilgrimage is a chance to know Him, to be brought to Him. Loneliness is a stage (and, thank God, only a stage) when we are terribly aware of our own helplessness . . . We may accept this, thankful that it brings us to the Very Present Help.”

How thankful I am that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1).” My prayer for you is that when you face a time of suffering, you might remember Betty and how faithful God was to her. He “shows no partiality (Romans 2:11).” If He was faithful to her, He will be faithful to you and me!

​Blessings to you!
Lori 

​I have always been fascinated by the tragic events of January 8, 1956, when five Christian missionaries were brutally speared to death in Ecuador by warriors from the Huaorani tribe they’d hoped to befriend and ultimately lead to Christ. One of the missionaries killed was Jim Elliot, who left behind Elisabeth, his wife of less than three years, and daughter, Valerie, who was two months shy of her first birthday.
 
I had the privilege of hearing Elisabeth Elliot speak at a women’s conference years ago, and was struck by her strength, wisdom, and trust in God. I wondered how someone could lose their spouse so early in their marriage, in such a horrific way, and still have the courage and fortitude to go back to the same tribe and not only live with them, but witness to bring them to salvation in Christ and translate the Bible into their language so they would have God’s Word to read on their own.

Becoming Elisabeth Elliot is a biography written by Ellen Vaughn and authorized by Elisabeth (or Betty as she was known). The author used Betty’s private, unpublished journals and interviews with family and friends to tell her life’s story—how God worked in her life to shape her into one of the most influential women in modern church history. The introduction is by Joni Erickson Tada, another amazing woman of God, who wrote of Betty: “I loved her matter-of-fact way of living by daily dying for Christ. It was a no-nonsense way of looking at things. Just pull-yourself-up by the grace of God, hoist your cross on your shoulder, and follow your Savior down the bloodstained path to Calvary. And don’t complain about it.”

Betty was ordinary in so many ways and yet, by becoming obedient to God in all things, she rose to such a place of influence that later in life she struggled with the attention it brought her. To the world, she “was ‘the world-renowned missionary who brought the gospel to a savage tribe,’ the ‘gifted linguist,’ the brave and heroic widow, the wife of a martyr. In her eyes, these things were so much dust.”

She wrote in one of her many journals: “The search for recognition hinders faith. We cannot believe so long as we are concerned with the ‘image’ we present to others. When we think in terms of ‘roles’ for ourselves and others, instead of simply doing the task given us to do, we are thinking as the world thinks, not as God thinks. The thought of Jesus was always and only for the Father. He did what He saw the Father do. He spoke what He heard the Father say. His will was submitted to the Father’s will.”

This calls to mind Hebrews 5:8, speaking of Jesus: “Although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered.” If even Jesus had to learn obedience, how much more do we! In Matthew 10:38-39, Jesus tells us, “And whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Elisabeth understood this verse very well. “She really did see dying to self, and taking up her cross to follow Jesus—at all costs—as a biblical mandate to be obeyed. Period.”

Another journal entry explains her thoughts on what obedience meant: "Faith’s most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain. If God were God, if He were omnipotent, if He had cared, would this have happened? Is this that I face now the ratification of my calling, the reward of obedience? One turns in disbelief again from the circumstances and looks into the abyss. But in the abyss, there is only blackness, no glimmer of light, no answering echo…It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself. Even the Son of God had to learn obedience by the things that He suffered…And His reward was desolation, crucifixion.”

I pray you’ll be challenged to examine your commitment to Christ as you read over this post, especially as we are in the season of Lent, with Easter coming in a few weeks. Reading the gospel accounts of the days leading up to Jesus’ death has affected me this year as they never have before. I was moved with how sorrowful and troubled Jesus was as He prayed to His Father and struggled with what awaited Him, even asking the Father to “let this cup pass” from Him (Matthew 26:39).

Based on Matthew 10 above, all of us who call ourselves believers in Christ should weigh the cost of following Him, taking up our own crosses, and what obedience truly means to us. We see in Jesus’ life that obedience and suffering were inseparable, and the same was true in Betty’s life. I’ll end this post here and concentrate on Elisabeth’s views on suffering in a second post later this month.

​Blessings to you!
Lori