Over the last week, at every moment I could get away with it, I've been soaking up this memoir of Jim Elliot. Soaking up like a sponge! This book challenges and exhorts and encourages and comfirms. Its words inspire and cause one to question himself, especially in light of the Lord. There was very little wasted in Elliot's life, not time, not energy, not things- his was a life lived with deliberate and prayerful purpose.I started Shadow by borrowing a friend's copy, and quickly realized that I needed my own, to mark and go back and reference.
Here's just one thought from Elliot, of many, that impresses me. Wife Elisabeth writes:
"Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." God had given us that desire, and perhaps in the sense in which Jim had interpreted it in a letter to me written in 1949:
"It does not say He will give you what you want. It does say He will give you the want. Delight in Christ brings desire for Christ. He gives the heart its desires- that is, He works in us the willing (Philippians 2:13). This is why He can say in John 15:7 'Ye shall ask what ye will... if ye abide.' The branch takes its sap from the vine, the same surges the vine feels then become the surges of the branch. My will becomes His, and I can ask what I will, if I delight myself in Him. Only then can my desire be attained, when it is His desire."
2 comments:
Exactly. This is what I tell my children. Delight yourself in God. Seek Him and then do what you want. Because in making Him my delight, HE WILL give me the desires of my heart. My desires are his. I'm so glad God woke that in my heart all those years ago in college when I first became AWARE of that verse. Great book, too!
hey kristi! nice to see you in cyberspace! jim elliott's bio has been a longtime favorite read of mine. thanks for the quote pointing me back to john 15 (another longtime favorite passage). good to recall that there IS a vine, when the branch is feeling dry...
love you!
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