ELISABETH ELLIOT: Has anyone a question?
This gentleman right here.
MAN: How many years did you spend with the Indians following the death of Jim Elliot?
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Okay.
How many years did I spend with the Indians following the death of Jim Elliot?
He died in '56, I came back to the States in '63, so I was there seven years.
That was not all with the Auca Indians.
The ones who killed him, I spent two years with them.
I spent about eight years altogether with Quechua Indians, and I worked with another
tribe, too.
Another question?
Sir?
Back there?
MAN: What -- How do you avoid -- I'm not sure how to phrase the question.
How do you avoid slipping into despair after a long-term suffering?
You know, when you, when you pray, and you ask God for, for a healing or a change in
the circumstances and they don't change, how do you handle that?
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Well the first chapter -- Excuse me.
Yes.
How do I handle suffering after a long period?
I guess the word was "depression" or "despair" -- after a long period of suffering when God
doesn't seem to be changing the situation?
I would think of the first chapter of James, where he says, "When all kinds of trials and
temptations come into your lives, my brothers, don't resent them as intruders, but welcome
them as friends.
Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance."
But then he says this important thing.
He says, "Let the process go on."
And God does let the process go on.
Remember that Israel had to go through that wilderness.
Daniel had to go into the lion's den.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had to go into the furnace.
And sometimes the furnace lasts a long time.
So the principles that I've been trying to articulate here would be exactly what I would
say: I don't know a better therapy for depression and despair and grief itself than this formula
from Isaiah 58:10.
Start pouring yourself out for somebody else, because there are a lot of people in much
worse shape than you are.
You cannot do it alone.
It's only by the grace of God, and He will help you.
When you start doing that, something amazing happens.
This principle of exchange starts to go into operation and, as he promises here, then you
will be satisfied.
Your own hungers, your own needs will be met when you start meeting somebody else's.
Lady back here?
WOMAN: I'm interested that you haven't brought up Satan at all.
What part do you think he plays in suffering?
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Okay, the question is: You haven't brought up Satan at all.
What part does he play in suffering?
Well, I did bring him up very briefly at one point but, I admit, very briefly.
In the passage describing Paul's thorn in the flesh, he says that it was not only a
gift given to him to prevent spiritual pride -- which clearly means that it had to be a
gift from God -- but he said it was also a messenger of Satan given to buffet him.
So that has settled my mind forever in trying to figure out whether something that comes
to me is from God or from Satan, because we live in a fallen world in which Satan is the
prince of the power of the air -- and he apparently has tremendous authority because he offered
to Jesus all the kingdoms of the world.
Now, that temptation would have no meaning whatsoever if Satan had not had the power
to do that.
So, there is a tremendous lot of mystery here in who's in charge of what.
But there's a verse in the last part of the fourteenth chapter of John where Jesus says,
"The prince of this world is on his way.
He has no rights over me, but the world must be shown that I love the Father and will do
exactly what He says."
He was referring, of course, to His coming crucifixion.
Satan had a lot to do with the crucifixion.
It says that Jesus was put in the hands of evil men and nailed to a cross -- the worst
thing that ever happened -- but God had the best things that ever happened in mind.
So that's always the way it is.
We are at the mercy of Satan up to a point, but he has no rights over us any more than
he had over Job, any more than he has over Jesus, and yet God gives him permission.
We can't plumb the mysteries, but we can recognize that we belong to God, and "greater is He
that is in me than he that is in the world."
Another question?
This lady?
WOMAN: Yes.
Did you, in the process of all your suffering, lose friends who couldn't cope with your losses?
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Did I lose friends?
WOMAN: Yes, and what's the correct response?
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Okay, the question is: In your sufferings, did you lose friends who
could not cope with -- what was the last word there?
WOMAN: Your suffering or your losses.
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Could not cope with my suffering and my losses.
I don't think I did.
I think I'd have to say "no" to that question as I certainly don't remember losing friends.
WOMAN: Is there a correct response?
ELISABETH ELLIOT: To those friends?
WOMAN: Yes.
ELISABETH ELLIOT: My husband seems to want to clarify that.
LARS GREN: Yes, can you speak maybe to death -- when Ad died -- of people who cannot face
the suffering you were going through and sort of avoided you, that might be one aspect.
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Okay.
One aspect of anyone who is bereaved, I suppose, experiences the fact that their friends -- many
of their friends -- sort of fade away into the woodwork because they don't know what
to do.
They don't know how to respond to this.
Has this got something to do with your question?
WOMAN: Yes.
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Okay.
And I -- come to think about it, I do remember people actually avoiding me, and I didn't
take it hardly.
I took it simply that they did not know how to respond.
And this brings to mind a friend of mine who, whom I mentioned earlier.
She's totally quadriplegic.
And when she was paraplegic -- had not yet reached that stage of quadriplegic, she was
in a wheelchair, and she said to me one time, she said, "You know, people really don't care.
They don't help you.
They don't do anything.
They sort of avoid anybody in a wheelchair."
And I said, "Jan, please don't think it's that they don't care.
A lot of people care, but they don't -- they really are not sure what they're supposed
to do."
And I think we've all had this difficulty of knowing how to respond.
And Nate Saint, the pilot who was in Ecuador and was killed along with my husband -- he
was a very remarkable man in a lot of ways -- and one thing that he taught me years ago,
he said, "If a man has a very obvious scar or handicap," he said, "I always make it a
practice to ask him about it.
And that gives him a chance to tell me something that I need to learn."
And I have tried to make that a practice, too.
And I, so far, I've never had anybody offended by it, as far as I know.
But we are often at a loss, and I would say that the proper response is to let that person
know, if you can, if you know the person, and you can just say, "Look, I really would
like to talk about my husband.
You don't have to try to get me off the subject."
Most of my friends tried to change the subject every time.
And I said, "Look, when a person has been bereaved, usually, the most important thing
they want to talk about is that.
So if you'll listen -- " Lars, did you have something to say again?
Oh, you keep putting your hand up.
You have a question?
Let -- you can ask your wife at home!
Yes?
MAN: I wanted to know in -- in giving up something or accepting something, sometimes the emotions
or feelings don't seem to go along, or we even have them to continue with us, or we
can't get rid of them, and I thought maybe you could -- in your situation, how did you
handle some of your feelings?
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Well, as I've tried to make -- Oh, here, I have to -- I'm sorry, I keep
forgetting to repeat the question.
In my sufferings, my troubles, how did I handle my feelings?
I've tried to make it as plain as I can that I can't handle bad emotions.
I can't handle loneliness, I can't handle despair and discouragement.
So it becomes material for sacrifice.
It's something which I literally have to offer to God.
And, if you want me to give you a -- my own very simple formula, and it's not the way
you have to do it, but it has been of, of a great help to me, to just get alone somewhere,
get down on my knees, and say, "Lord, you know how I'm feeling" about this thing, whatever
it is.
You get a piece of bad news; this happened to me a couple of years ago.
It was so bad that I felt I could not cope.
So I just went into a room alone, got down on my knees, and I put that thing, invisibly,
in my hands, and I just lifted up my hands to the Lord, and I said, "Here is this thing,
Lord, and I can't do anything with this myself.
You take it and transfigure it for my blessing and for the good of others."
Now, I want to make it clear -- and I think this is the question that Lars was getting
at -- that does not mean that God instantly whips that thing completely out of your life.
I had to come back again, and again, and again.
Just as a widow, for example, every night of the rest of her life, she has to go to
bed alone.
Every morning she wakes up alone.
All the little things that you do during the day, when you realize, as I did, that I had
really lived for Jim.
I had done everything for Jim.
When Ad died, I had done everything for Ad.
And I'm doing things for Lars now.
When that person is gone, then there are a thousand reminders.
And each time I was stabbed to the heart with the reminders.
That was material for sacrifice.
So I offered up again.
In other words, God may give me the same thing a thousand times to give back to Him, and
He keeps exchanging it and giving it back to me.
And He is working in mysterious, unseen ways which, ultimately, I think we're going to
see -- just as the poem about the weaver tells -- He is at work.
And the day is going to come when He will unfold the pattern, and it will be your responses
that are going to make the difference there.
Another question?
Bonnie?
WOMAN: Elisabeth, more and more, as you share, I'm hearing how important it is to know God
as a person.
What I would like to ask is, can you give us practical ways in which we can pursue that
goal of knowing God as a person?
ELIZABETH ELLIOT: Thank you.
Bonnie's question is: give us practical ways in which we can know God as a person.
And the most practical book in the world is the Bible, and I can give you a verse from
John 14, and then I'll try to bring it down to earth maybe, if it's not practical enough
to suit you.
It says, in verse 21, John 14: "The man who has received My commands and obeys them, he
it is who loves Me.
And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and disclose myself to
him."
In other words, the knowledge of God is not an intellectual exercise.
It is the reward of obedience.
And I gave you the story of my friend Terry, who decided to obey God and honor her mother.
And, instead of arguing, and fussing, and whining, and howling, and creating a scene,
when her mother said, "No, you can't go," she said, "Okay."
Now, I don't know how to be any more practical than that.
Very often, young people -- college students, high school students -- come to me and they
say, "I really want to do the will of God.
I really want to know God.
Now, how do you get there?"
You know, they think I'm way up here on some kind of a pedestal that they've got to struggle
to get to, and how did I get there?
And I try to show them that I'm still right down here in kindergarten struggling the same
way they are.
But you do the next thing that God is telling you to do.
And I say to them, "Are you a student?"
The answer is, "Yes."
"Okay," I say, "I can tell you what the will of God for a student is.
It's to study."
Now, they didn't want to hear that.
They want me to tell them something spiritual, and I say, "Look, quit plagiarizing.
Quit cheating.
Quit putting off, till the night before the exam, your studying.
Write the paper.
Do the assignment.
Clean your room.
Be nice to your roommate.
That's how you get to know God.
You do it for His sake."
And if they say to me, "Well, but I need to know which college to go to, and I've been
asking God for guidance about this, and I have to know by next March, and this is October
and I don't know yet.
So how am I going to know?"
And my answer, usually, is, "God has something for you to do in October that doesn't look
to you as though it has anything to do with next March.
It might be, write a letter to your mother this week.
It might be, make an apology to your roommate."
You see, that's, I think, what Jesus is talking about right here.
"The one who does what I say will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and disclose
Myself to him."
Another verse in the next chapter: "Jesus said, 'If you heed My commands, you will dwell
in My love.'"
Now, what is dwelling in His love if it's not learning to know God?
"You will dwell in My love, as I have heeded My Father's commands and dwell in His love."
What was the secret of the union between the Son and the Father?
Obedience.
The most practical way to get to know God -- the only way, as far as I know.
"Trust and obey, for there's" -- what does it say?
-- "no other way."
One minute.
That's got to be a short one.
WOMAN: Sometimes, when people are, to the best of their ability, under the leading of
the Holy Spirit, trying to become broken bread and poured-out wine, they become very, very
exhausted.
What is the remedy?
ELISABETH ELLIOT: Sometimes, when people are trying to be obedient to God and become broken
bread and poured-out wine, they become very, very exhausted.
What is the remedy?
Our pattern is Jesus, again.
He was a very busy man, and yet He, He moved in perfect serenity from one thing to the
next.
And I think the secret of the peace that He gives is to do the work that God has given
us to do.
And that's, of course, the tension that you and I have to deal with.
I constantly pray, "Lord, Thy list be done."
I cannot do everything that's on my list or on everybody else's.
And I don't believe it's God's will for us to be totally exhausted and burned out.
I hate that word "burnout."
We are to do the work of God without haste and without sloth, and only God can help us
to sort out what is His will and what is ours or somebody else's.
God bless you.