After studying Spanish in Quito, Jim and Elisabeth went their separate ways to their different tribes in the jungle hinterland of the country, and remained in intermittent contact. Called to service ← ⤒ 🔗Īs it turned out, both were called to missionary service in Ecuador, to work with Indian tribes which had recently been reached by Protestant missionaries. How many of us today would sacrifice self in such a way? How many would defer, or even deny themselves marriage to one we loved with all the intensity that Jim and Elisabeth loved each other? And their self-denial was no asceticism – it was real flesh-and-blood living for the only thing worth dying for. It was a remarkable story of painful, but trusting, putting of God first in two young people’s lives. Elisabeth records these years of waiting in her book Passion and Purity. What followed was five and a half years of waiting on God while they continued their preparations for missionary life, and worked out where they should serve – singly.

Faithful to the call to purity, they decided – with struggling hearts – to “lay on the altar” their love for each other. Both of them, serious about the calling to pioneer missionary work, had grave doubts about the possibility of marriage. However, Jim was also falling in love with Elisabeth and one day at the end of her final year he confessed it to her – not knowing what they should do about it. “How long do you think it took”, she later asked, “for me to get to my room and open my Bible and find that verse?”!! It was not the cryptic message she had been hoping for. In actual fact, he thought girls delightful – but expensive and distracting! On coming to college, having made it his priority to serve God, he decided to “delete them from his life.” When Elisabeth once asked him to sign her college yearbook, he added “2 Timothy 2:4” with his signature. As she wrote much later, many girls found Jim Elliott – a handsome and athletic man – intensely attractive, but seemingly unattainable. This young Brethren man, Jim Elliott, was also preparing for pioneer missionary work, and was in many ways as steely in his commitment to Christ as was Elisabeth. In her senior (final) year, a classmate attracted her attention. So she took courses in the Bible, including Greek and Hebrew, as preparation for translation work. She was already deeply and steadfastly committed to Christ, and was prepared for sacrifice. That meant taking the gospel to previously unreached people, and often, living in primitive conditions. When she went to Wheaton College (a Christian undergraduate college in Chicago) in the 1940s, Elisabeth intended to prepare for service overseas as a “pioneer” missionary. As a little girl, she thought the calling of overseas missions work to be the highest possible. Her parents had a deep passion for missionary work and in her home in New Jersey (just over the river from the city of Philadelphia) the children grew up on news of overseas missionaries, prayer for missionaries, and interest in the cause of the gospel all over the world. Her background ⤒ 🔗Įlisabeth was born in Brussels to American missionaries serving on a short-term assignment in Europe in the 1920s.

Soon I discovered that I was being shown the story of her whole life, glimpse by glimpse, as she revealed, through her words of wisdom to others, what God had taught her in the crucible of her own sufferings. Being the type of reader who tends to ‘binge” on finding a good author, I quickly read most of the rest of Elisabeth’s books. Yes, I had a treat in store for me when someone urged me to read Through Gates of Splendour, Elisabeth’s first book. And her writings have quietened, encouraged and instructed many fellow believers weathering the storms of life for over forty years. Among Christian women of the late twentieth century she deserves special honour for the witness of her life.

I don’t know why I never read Elisabeth Elliott’s books until a few months ago.

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