Elizabeth Elliot met her precious Jesus this week.
She has been one of my favourite authors for over 30 years.
She lived on this earth for 88 years.
She lived well.
She spoke well.
She wrote well.
She loved well.
In times of sadness and despair she encouraged her readers to 'just do the next thing'.
This simple, and profound wisdom has been such a gift many times.
This article below is from Desiring God blog.
Do the Next Thing
Adrien
Segal / June 18, 2015
This job has been given to me to do.
Therefore, it is a gift. Therefore, it is a privilege. Therefore, it is an
offering I may make to God. Therefore, it is to be done gladly, if it is done
for Him. Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God’s way. In this job, not in
some other, God looks for faithfulness. ―Elisabeth Elliot
Elisabeth Elliot was my spiritual
mother, and this week she died.
I was raised by a wonderful earthly
mother and father who were practical, down-to-earth, gracious, and
hard-working. Sadly, my parents, by their own admission, were not born again.
The things my parents taught me, though often right and important, were
simply about developing character and strength, civility and manners, hard
work and independence so that I would contribute positively to society. These
lessons are good and right, and probably needed today more than ever, but
after I was born again in 1982, I began to see that there was much more to
learn about life and my place in it.
When I was awakened to new life in
Jesus, I began to appreciate that my life was not simply about being the best
person I could be or about building a happy life for myself. Quite simply, my
life was not my own. It belonged to God, the one who created me and sent his
Son to die for my sins so that I might have new life in him. I was to live
for him — for his
glory.
My church back then taught about God’s
love, but it did not teach the Bible well. I got my best Bible teaching in
those days from radio preaching and from Elisabeth Elliot. As a young wife
and mother, I would try to listen every day. Her program, as I recall, was
only 15 minutes a day, but so much was packed into those few minutes.
A Woman Who Knew God
Here was a woman who knew the Lord.
Here was a woman willing to serve the Lord no matter where he called her.
Here was a woman who suffered the loss of her young husband as a martyr on
the mission field, and then
stayed for several years to share the good news of Jesus Christ
with the same people who killed her beloved Jim. A few years later, she lost
a second husband to cancer. Elisabeth Elliot suffered beyond what I could
even have imagined as a wife and mother. And her response to it all? Trust in
God, obey him, and do the next thing.
“Do the next thing” became a mantra at
our house. My husband and I still use it more than twenty years later to
encourage each other. Elisabeth would always have a Scriptural basis for her
counsel which was straight-forward, no-nonsense, and unsentimental. It was
easy for young, exhausted, me-generation mothers of toddlers to fall into
self pity, but each day Elisabeth Elliot would graciously, but firmly, pick
me back up. She’d remind me that my lot was a calling from God, and that it
was nothing that millions of women hadn’t done before me with fewer resources
and conveniences.
Obedience and Happiness
She stressed consistency in discipline,
and affirmed regularly that even small children are capable of obeying if
parents, especially mothers, are firm but loving. I learned that the happiest
children are the ones whose mothers and fathers have the courage and strength
to lovingly discipline well. And I learned the importance of obedience, not
simply for my children, but for myself.
Before I became a mother, as I got to
college in the seventies, the social climate had turned upside down and it
seemed everyone rebelled against obeying anything but your own “inner voice.”
To my and millions of others’ eternal benefit, Elisabeth Elliot boldly
confronted that lie. A life of obedience to a God who created, saved, and
loved me would never harm me. My obedience to him would never make me miss
happiness and satisfaction. To the contrary, obedience was the surest,
fastest path to my greatest joy.
A Call to Older Women
The Bible stresses the importance of
older women speaking into the lives of younger women:
Older women likewise are to be reverent
in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is
good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be
self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own
husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (Titus 2:3–5)
I am grateful Elisabeth Elliot devoted
her life to doing this for women in my generation. In just minutes a day, she
helped me love my husband better. She helped me raise happy and obedient
children who love the Lord. She helped me see that my greatest calling is to
live each day, each moment, doing
the next thing to the glory of the Lord. That’s a pretty
wonderful legacy.
May I and others like me be obedient to
God’s call to do the same for the generations of women that follow us.
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Thursday, June 18, 2015
Elisabeth Elliot - Just Do The Next Thing
