My Dear Wife,
Your presence and countenance is my blessing. Do you know how much I love to look at your face? I enjoy it most when you don't know I'm looking. I love the curve of your cheek, the shape of your chin, the form of your lips. I love the color of your eyes and the way your lashes flutter softly, like butterflies. I love the way your brows lift and your mouth puckers slightly when you are considering something.
I love to touch your face, to feel the smoothness of your skin beneath my hands. I long to run my fingers over your long, silky hair, and I love to run the same fingers over your closed eyelids, down your neck, over your lips, and above your shape nose. I thank God for these little things that bring so much pleasure to our lives. This little but familiar expressions everyday are a source of joy to me constantly. Oh my darling, how I love your face.
Because I Love You,
Your Husband
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Jim Elliot - The Degree of A.U.G. Part II
Jim set his alarm every night to awaken him in time for prayer and the study of the Bible. “None of it gets to be old stuff”, he wrote, “for it is Christ in print, the Living Word. We wouldn’t think of rising in the morning without a facewash, but we often neglect that purgative cleansing of the Word of the Lord. It wakes us up to our responsibilities.”
In one of the letters written to his parents, he wrote of the struggles he faced:
December 6.
“I am finding my study load heavy just now, and its almost impossible to split the sheets before 11 p.m. I would much appreciate your prayers here, for it is difficult to keep from becoming drowsy in 7: 30 Greek class in the morning, much more to keep one’s mind in sincere morning prayer and study before that time. This though, is what Paul meant when speaking of the rigor which must be sustained if one is to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ, enduring hardness (2Tim 2:3).”
Jim had gone out for wrestling during his freshman year, believeing that participation in some sport contributed to his training as a soldier of Jesus Christ. As the apostle wrote, ‘But I beat my body and subdue it, least after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified (1Cor 9:27).’
“It’s sure a good feeling,” Jim had written his mother, “not to be water-logged and flabby while one is studying. I think it definitely stimulates the entire body processes, including thinking to be physically alert. Like the horse in Job, one can rejoice in his strength.”
Excerpts from further letters to his parents:
February 8.
"My Father knows best, and I am confident that He has placed me here; my task is to labor quietly until the *pillar of cloud removes (Ex 13:21), and leads further, working out God’s purposes in God’s time.”
February 22.
“Several of my housemates and I have begun prayer together here in our ‘den’ and such times we do have...These are times I will remember about college when all the philosophy has slipped out memory’s back gate. God is still on His Throne, we are still at His footstool, and there is only a knee distance between!”
“My grades came through this week, and were, as expected, lower than last semester. However, I make no apologies, and admit I have let them drop a bit for study of the Bible, in which I seal the degree of A.U.G., ‘Approved Unto God’.”
March 29.
“Hour before we again rise from our knees, feeling as if our faces should be veiled for the small glimpse of glory the Lord has given us. This, to me, is real Christianity, when fellows pray and see miracles work on campus the following day. Each day becomes a time of wrought wonders.”
IT WAS SOMETIME DURING THESE FIRST TWO YEARS AT COLLEGE THAT JIM BECAME
CONSCIOUS OF THE DIRECT, PERSONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE LORD JESUS’ COMMAND
TO GO AND PREACH THE GOSPEL. HE DECIDED THAT THE COMMAND WAS DIRECTED
TO HIM.
This decision to obey the Lord cost Jim his life....
“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the price? Run in such a way that you may win. And everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, not as beating the air; but I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.”
1Cor 9:24-27, St Paul
* The visible symbol of God’s presence among His people.
In one of the letters written to his parents, he wrote of the struggles he faced:
December 6.
“I am finding my study load heavy just now, and its almost impossible to split the sheets before 11 p.m. I would much appreciate your prayers here, for it is difficult to keep from becoming drowsy in 7: 30 Greek class in the morning, much more to keep one’s mind in sincere morning prayer and study before that time. This though, is what Paul meant when speaking of the rigor which must be sustained if one is to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ, enduring hardness (2Tim 2:3).”
Jim had gone out for wrestling during his freshman year, believeing that participation in some sport contributed to his training as a soldier of Jesus Christ. As the apostle wrote, ‘But I beat my body and subdue it, least after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified (1Cor 9:27).’
“It’s sure a good feeling,” Jim had written his mother, “not to be water-logged and flabby while one is studying. I think it definitely stimulates the entire body processes, including thinking to be physically alert. Like the horse in Job, one can rejoice in his strength.”
Excerpts from further letters to his parents:
February 8.
"My Father knows best, and I am confident that He has placed me here; my task is to labor quietly until the *pillar of cloud removes (Ex 13:21), and leads further, working out God’s purposes in God’s time.”
February 22.
“Several of my housemates and I have begun prayer together here in our ‘den’ and such times we do have...These are times I will remember about college when all the philosophy has slipped out memory’s back gate. God is still on His Throne, we are still at His footstool, and there is only a knee distance between!”
“My grades came through this week, and were, as expected, lower than last semester. However, I make no apologies, and admit I have let them drop a bit for study of the Bible, in which I seal the degree of A.U.G., ‘Approved Unto God’.”
March 29.
“Hour before we again rise from our knees, feeling as if our faces should be veiled for the small glimpse of glory the Lord has given us. This, to me, is real Christianity, when fellows pray and see miracles work on campus the following day. Each day becomes a time of wrought wonders.”
IT WAS SOMETIME DURING THESE FIRST TWO YEARS AT COLLEGE THAT JIM BECAME
CONSCIOUS OF THE DIRECT, PERSONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE LORD JESUS’ COMMAND
TO GO AND PREACH THE GOSPEL. HE DECIDED THAT THE COMMAND WAS DIRECTED
TO HIM.
This decision to obey the Lord cost Jim his life....
“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the price? Run in such a way that you may win. And everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, not as beating the air; but I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.”
1Cor 9:24-27, St Paul
* The visible symbol of God’s presence among His people.
Jim Elliot - The Degree of A.U.G. Part I
When Jim was a college student in 1949 he wrote these words, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Seven years later, deep in Ecuador, the quiet waters of the Curaray flowed over the bodies of Jim and his four comrades, slained by the men they had come to win for Christ. The book ‘Shadow of the Almighty’ relates the martyrdom of these missionaries at the hands of the Auca Indians. Jim’s diary exposes the roots of what makes a person at the threshold of life commit his very being to a God who he felt might call him to unexpected death at any time. Reproduced below are extracts from a chapter in the book entitled: Degree of A.U.G.
We should remember that while knowledge may make a man look big, it is only love that can make him grow to his full stature. For whatever a man may know, he still has a lot to learn, but if he loves God, he is opening his whole life to the spirit of God.
Many a freshman entering college has no clear idea of what he is there for. Vaguely, it is ‘to get an education’, but many have done it without going to college, and many have gone to college without getting educated. The idea of an education presents itself to the freshman in a bewilderingly vast variety of forms - the orientation programs, with its lectures, and examinations, and faculty receptions: the confusion of registration day, with its lines of frantic students trying to sign up for the course they have chosen before the loud-speaker crackles to announce that Section B of History 115 has closed: catalogues, with its listings of professors who are only names to him so fat, and courses electives and requisites; the booths representing organizations; athlete fees, somehow included in that broad term ‘education’, and the student whose value scale places social acceptance and reputation high may be sucked into a world of ECA from which he finds it difficult to extricate himself.
When Jim Elliot entered Wheaton College in Illonois in the fall of 1945, his goal was clear. First of all, he had committed himself entirely to God and recognized the disciplines this commitment would involve. “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who had chosen him to be a soldier (2Tim 2:4)”. This automatically eliminated many problems, and many ‘good’ things, in order to give place to those which furthered his purpose. Other students, however, lacking a defined primary aim, often pursued too many of the secondary ones presented to them.
It was this singleness of purpose which his fellow students noticed especially. If some thought he had a ‘one track mind’ becos’ he talked so freely about Christ, there were others who, for the same reason, regarded him as especially ‘spiritual’ and wanted him to be ‘prayer chairman’ of the freshman class. Neither opinion moved him. A frequent prayer of his was “O God, my heart is fixed”.
Jim was sure that God had led him to Wheaton. He had not come simply becos’ father had sent him. Nobody was ‘putting him through’. In fact, he did not know where the money would come from. God honored this faith, however, and funds were supplied, through a friend, thru’a scholarship, and through a part-time employment, so that in November he was able to write:
“This schooling experience is one wherein I can perpetually celebrate that all has been supplied by His ever-tender loving kindness. To Him be all the glory and thanks”.
The only record we have of his freshman and sophomore years is in his letters to his family, which, aside from very brief notes on what he was doing, were heavily sprinkled with thoughts of eternity, and occasionally a bit of advice to a brother or a sister, of which the following is a sample, written to his sister Jane early that fall:
“Begin each day with private reading of the Word and prayer (Ps 5:3). Bunyan has well said, ‘Sin will keep you from this Book, or this Book will keep you from sin’. From the very start, as you begin high school, gives out gospel tracts to those you meet. Make a bold start - its easier that way, rather than trying to begin halfway through. Memorize scriptures on the street car. Buy up the time! It’s costly becos’ it’s so fleeting. These are terse remarks, and trite, but I wish someone had said them to me about Labor Day 1941. ‘Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed’ (2Tim 2:15).”
We should remember that while knowledge may make a man look big, it is only love that can make him grow to his full stature. For whatever a man may know, he still has a lot to learn, but if he loves God, he is opening his whole life to the spirit of God.
Many a freshman entering college has no clear idea of what he is there for. Vaguely, it is ‘to get an education’, but many have done it without going to college, and many have gone to college without getting educated. The idea of an education presents itself to the freshman in a bewilderingly vast variety of forms - the orientation programs, with its lectures, and examinations, and faculty receptions: the confusion of registration day, with its lines of frantic students trying to sign up for the course they have chosen before the loud-speaker crackles to announce that Section B of History 115 has closed: catalogues, with its listings of professors who are only names to him so fat, and courses electives and requisites; the booths representing organizations; athlete fees, somehow included in that broad term ‘education’, and the student whose value scale places social acceptance and reputation high may be sucked into a world of ECA from which he finds it difficult to extricate himself.
When Jim Elliot entered Wheaton College in Illonois in the fall of 1945, his goal was clear. First of all, he had committed himself entirely to God and recognized the disciplines this commitment would involve. “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who had chosen him to be a soldier (2Tim 2:4)”. This automatically eliminated many problems, and many ‘good’ things, in order to give place to those which furthered his purpose. Other students, however, lacking a defined primary aim, often pursued too many of the secondary ones presented to them.
It was this singleness of purpose which his fellow students noticed especially. If some thought he had a ‘one track mind’ becos’ he talked so freely about Christ, there were others who, for the same reason, regarded him as especially ‘spiritual’ and wanted him to be ‘prayer chairman’ of the freshman class. Neither opinion moved him. A frequent prayer of his was “O God, my heart is fixed”.
Jim was sure that God had led him to Wheaton. He had not come simply becos’ father had sent him. Nobody was ‘putting him through’. In fact, he did not know where the money would come from. God honored this faith, however, and funds were supplied, through a friend, thru’a scholarship, and through a part-time employment, so that in November he was able to write:
“This schooling experience is one wherein I can perpetually celebrate that all has been supplied by His ever-tender loving kindness. To Him be all the glory and thanks”.
The only record we have of his freshman and sophomore years is in his letters to his family, which, aside from very brief notes on what he was doing, were heavily sprinkled with thoughts of eternity, and occasionally a bit of advice to a brother or a sister, of which the following is a sample, written to his sister Jane early that fall:
“Begin each day with private reading of the Word and prayer (Ps 5:3). Bunyan has well said, ‘Sin will keep you from this Book, or this Book will keep you from sin’. From the very start, as you begin high school, gives out gospel tracts to those you meet. Make a bold start - its easier that way, rather than trying to begin halfway through. Memorize scriptures on the street car. Buy up the time! It’s costly becos’ it’s so fleeting. These are terse remarks, and trite, but I wish someone had said them to me about Labor Day 1941. ‘Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed’ (2Tim 2:15).”
Part-Time Servant
Pieces of promises, parts of a prayer-
No real commitment to stay or to care.
Partly believing, and partly in doubt-
Not quite in the kingdom, but not really out.
Tied to your words Lord, just by a thread-
The need in my heart, and the world in my head.
So long in confusion that I couldn’t see-
Full time not part time.
So Lord come on in, cos’
I want to start all over again.
From this day on, my life is an open door-
I won’t be your part time servant anymore.
I’ve sat on thr fence, lingering still-
Just on the edge of, my word and your will.
But now for the first time I know what to do-
I’m ready, I’m coming full time to you.
So Lord come on in,
cos’ I want to start all over again.
From this day on, my life is an open door-
I won’t be your part time servant anymore.
- Author Unknown
No real commitment to stay or to care.
Partly believing, and partly in doubt-
Not quite in the kingdom, but not really out.
Tied to your words Lord, just by a thread-
The need in my heart, and the world in my head.
So long in confusion that I couldn’t see-
Full time not part time.
So Lord come on in, cos’
I want to start all over again.
From this day on, my life is an open door-
I won’t be your part time servant anymore.
I’ve sat on thr fence, lingering still-
Just on the edge of, my word and your will.
But now for the first time I know what to do-
I’m ready, I’m coming full time to you.
So Lord come on in,
cos’ I want to start all over again.
From this day on, my life is an open door-
I won’t be your part time servant anymore.
- Author Unknown
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