Patient Endurance

I have been reading a book entitled Passion and Purity written by Elizabeth Elliot, missionary to the Quichua Indians in the 1950s and wife to Jim Elliot, who was killed by the spears of the Auca Indians.  Although her book is written mainly for singles that desire to be married, the underlying theme is contentment in all circumstances in which God has placed you.  I wanted to share several passages from the book that have really encouraged me over the past two weeks.

First, I am discovering how to be happy and joyful in circumstance that I would not choose for myself. 

“The problem starts when we make up our own minds what will give us happiness and then decide, if we don’t get exactly that, that God doesn’t love us.”

“I wished that my wishes were what God wished, and if my wishes were not what God wished, I wished that I could wish that my wishes would go away, but the wishes were still there.”

“I wait. Dear Lord, Thy ways are past finding out, Thy love too high. O hold me still beneath Thy shadow. It is enough that Thou lift up the light of Thy countenance. I wait because I am commanded so to do. My mind is filled with my wonderings. My soul asks ”Why?” But then the quiet word, “Wait thou only upon God.” And so, not even for the light to show a step ahead, But for thee, dear Lord, I wait.”

I also learned that I must not wish away the time I have with my husband right now.  There are so many things that he and I can do with one another and for others right now that we will not be able to do once the Lord does bless us with biological or adopted children.  Elizabeth explains this same underlying principle in her book.

“The important thing is to receive this moment’s experience with both hands.  Don’t waste it.  “Wherever you are, be all there,” Jim once wrote.  “Live to the hilt of every situation you believe to be the will of God.” A lovely moonlit night, but I am alone.  Shall I resent the very moonlight itself because my lover is somewhere else? A cozy candlelit supper with friends- couples except for me.  Shall I be miserable all evening because they are together and I am single?  Have I been “cheated”?  Who cheated me? The phone rings.  Oh!  Maybe it will be he! It is somebody selling light bulbs.  Shall I be rude because he ought to have been somebody else? A letter in the mailbox that (for once) doesn’t look like junk mail or a bill.  I snatch it eagerly.  It’s from Aunt Susie.  Do I throw it aside in disgust?

I know all about this kind of response.  I’ve been there many times. Something I wrote to Jim once must have revealed my resentment, for he wrote, “Let not our longings slay the appetite for our living.”  That was exactly what I had let it do.

There were times, I’m sure, when if anyone had tried to talk to me of the happiness of heaven I would have turned away in a huff.  The painful thing was that the other folks had not only heaven to look forward to, but they had “all this and heave too,”  “this” being engagement or marriage.  I was covetous.  When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians about the happy certainty of heaven, he went on to say, “This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys- we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.”

Even when I’m feeling most alone- on that moonlit night, in the middle of a candlelit supper, when the phone call and the letter don’t come- can I be “full of joy, here and now”?  Yes.  That is what the Bible says.  That means it must not be true, but possible, and possible for me.”

And finally, how I respond to my current situation will either glorify God or destroy my witness.  I pray that God is magnified in how I respond to any situation.

“The effect of my trouble depends not on the nature of the troubles themselves but on how I receive them.”

“What matters is making the right use of it [suffering], taking advantage of the sense of helplessness it brings to turn one’s thoughts to God.  Trust is the lesson.”

“The deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by his letting us have our own way in the end, but by making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are honestly able to pray what he taught his disciples to pray:  Thy will be done.  Acceptance of whatever that means is the great victory of faith that overcomes the world.”

“If the yearnings went away, what would we have to offer to the Lord?  Aren’t they given to us to offer?  It is control of passion, not its eradication, that is needed.  How would we learn to submit to the authority of Christ if we had nothing to submit?”

I hope in some way these passages from Elizabeth Elliot’s book has been an encouragement to you too in whatever circumstance the Lord has you in.