For those of you who have asked about getting Pilipinto's H. again, it is not in print, and I would very much like to get it in print this coming year. I need to find a new publisher and need to shorten it a little for younger readers, as well as put a few more drawings in by my Uncle Jim. I'm open to any suggestions as to a publisher. Please write to shepelliot@gmail.com. My friend who answers that email will let me know when I have comments that I need to do something about! With the writing of Devotedly, I had completely dropped doing anything on the blog, and now checking the comments, I'm sorry to those of you who had written and I had not answered back!
Please pray that I can find a publisher who is willing to do this book.
And here's a quote that I recently discovered from C.S. Lewis.
"Remember, tho' we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is often the other way round -- we get afraid BECAUSE we struggle...Our Lord says to you, 'Peace, child, peace. Relax. Let go. Underneath are the everlasting arms. Let go, I will catch you." he wrote this in a letter to Mary Shelburne on June 17, 1963
That helped me, and I hope it helps you too!
Live Life to the Hilt
Devotionals, quotes from parents or other loved writers, thoughts, experiences
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Wednesday, September 19, 2018
no news about Pilipinto's Happiness!
Saturday, September 15, 2018
Jim Elliot to Elisabeth Howard, Oct. 1952
My father and mother were writing fast and furiously across the Andes mountains, first while she was still in Quito, in October of 1952, praying about going to the western jungles, and he from a Quichua settlement in the Amazon jungle. Here's a small excerpt, after she had written to say she thinks that she's supposed to go to the Colorado Indians in San Miguel.
"The needing of a place to rest. Could it be that we are crossing the same river, but far enough apart to be at different depths, wisely kept so that we would not sink together? I seem to feel it all much more keenly out here. There comes a sighing even as I write."
This is one year before they married in Quito, and the longing was intense, but they both still were completely committed to doing what God wanted before they would have the privilege of knowing when they would "be rewarded" with marriage. Writing, seeing each other for very short periods of time, and sometimes talking in code on the radio, was quite distracting, (or their work was distracted by their love!) but they continued working hard on the two languages.
How we all need to be focused on what God wants us to be doing.....and my job this week is to finish my part of the writing or editing of Devotedly, the love story of my parents.
It's coming out in February and is now available for pre-order on Amazon!
Encouragement for Younger moms
Well, over a year has gone by since I last added a post! This over 60 brain is challenged with making group emails and writing new blogs- I apologize.
Hi friends,
Some of you are older moms who
have grown children, and I'm only writing this for you to do
with it what you want- send to younger moms you know, but also to tell
me if I'm way off track!
You younger moms just need
to tell me if I am encouraging or helping, and if NOT, please let me
know what it is that you didn't "like" so that you won't be bothered by
this occasional email!
I am sorry it has been
such a long time since I last wrote! Moving and finishing the book
(which I thought was done, but my editor has given me a couple more
small assignments) took all of my attention from April through now. .
I hear moms say
"she doesn't like it," or "he won't do it" and then they may roll their eyes
or shrug their shoulders as if there's absolutely nothing to be done
about it. Indulge me in my being as earnest and serious as I can when I
say, "Something CAN be done!"
Here's what I suggest:
For
an example, when you are offering food to a baby who is beginning to
eat table food, and they try one bite and then spit it out, don't say a
word, but simply put the idea of trying that food to wait till 2 months
later. Children's tastes change with every month almost, so any food you
really want them to learn to like, keep trying it on them until they
are at the age where you can say, you will eat 2 bites of it even if you
don't like it because I know it will help your body to be healthy!" I
would NOT say, "Oh you don't like that, do you!?" Just smile cheerfully
and don't say anything! Give the next food option and keep trying it
at least 2x in one meal. As long as a baby or toddler continues to hear
her mother or dad or caregiver say "Oh you don't like that!" it will
become ingrained in that child's head that Yes, she certainly doesn't,
and it if appears again, she/he won't like it! Beware of what you say to
your child or even to another person with you because they pick up on
everything and especially when you talk about them in front of them, it
lodges in their little brains that what their mother says about them is
Truth! What comes out of your mouth to your children should be wise and
truthful, but also sparing, and the more words you use, the more
tendency to say too much (which may be just your frustration) which will
become the truth to them, and depending on their age, they will be
saying the same things to others about themselves!
So,
you can take this example and apply it to anything you have to deal
with in your children. "A wise woman builds her house but a foolish
woman tears it down." The teaching of kindness is on your tongues, but
the teaching of the world (whatever the child wants he/she gets) has to
be carefully watched for in your own words. There are a lot of
parenting tips on the internet that are not Biblical, so be careful what
you are reading or listening to. I was often "scolded gently" by my
husband if I talked about my children when they were within earshot,
because they do pick up on anything, and if you are disappointed or
frustrated with them, they will begin to be insecure and frustrated with
themselves. Even when we are holding a baby that doesn't talk yet, we
should not talk about them in front of them- they will sense your focus
on them and it will encourage more self-centered-ness, and more
self-consciousness. It may encourage worry and fearfulness too.
What
CAN be done? Train them with your loving voice from the time they are
tiny, so that they hear your voice as their authority, and when you say
good, kind, loving things, and expect obedience, they will want to
follow what you say....of course there are some children who are more
wilful and recalcitrant than others, and I have 4 out of 8! But I had
to learn that persistence in training with consequences to disobedience
or disrespect will pay off, and you will be grateful later on that they
learned your voice meant exactly what you said! ONLY by depending on the
Lord for wisdom, patience, and self-discipline, can anyone train their
children in righteousness. So, my last bit to say is, Walt and I
didn't do it perfectly or consistently, but we both agreed that respect
and obedience were the two necessary areas we had to constantly be on
top of. God's grace covered and still covers all our sins and
mistakes....it REALLY DOES!!
May
God give you
the grace, persistence, and faith to raise up your children to glorify
HIM, not themselves, which is the way of the world. Only the Holy Spirit
can help you be godly in your reactions to them and in training your
children....I hope to only give hints on how the Lord helped me. Please
talk and pray with your husbands in this process.
Only By His Grace,
Val
And
here's an older mom's tips after reading mine to you all. This is a
grandma who has taken care of her 2 grands since they were babies, (and
they are about 6 and 4 now) while going through uterine cancer
treatment.
"Your example in offering food to a
child, works well if the mom and dad both agree. But in today’s world
there are nannies and multiple caretakers of young children. My thought
when that is the case with a working parent, that all caretakers even
grandparents do what the parent requests. They are to follow and not
talk about the child in front of them.
Communicate to the parent via text, or phone later.
Secondly
when you are with the child eating, sit at the table together- no
multitasking. And TURN OFF ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES. Focus on the meal."
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Live Life to the Hilt
Hi friends,
I am sorry that I have not answered many comments or emails sent to me....I've not been a good regular blogger! So, if you sent something to my gmail, I've probably missed it simply because I changed my email to yahoo, and I had too many business and website emails coming in which I could not keep up with in deleting. You can comment on this blog site as it doesn't get published unless I publish it. Another way of communicating, if you want to write a longer email is to send it to shepelliot@gmail.com because I have a dear friend who fields these, as well as sends out books of my mother's to those who would like to order. She will send the email on to me, if she sees that I do need to answer it.
Thank you for understanding.
Hi friends,
I am sorry that I have not answered many comments or emails sent to me....I've not been a good regular blogger! So, if you sent something to my gmail, I've probably missed it simply because I changed my email to yahoo, and I had too many business and website emails coming in which I could not keep up with in deleting. You can comment on this blog site as it doesn't get published unless I publish it. Another way of communicating, if you want to write a longer email is to send it to shepelliot@gmail.com because I have a dear friend who fields these, as well as sends out books of my mother's to those who would like to order. She will send the email on to me, if she sees that I do need to answer it.
Thank you for understanding.
Live Life to the Hilt: Elisabeth Elliot, my dear mother
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
2 of Heidi and Gilbert Krahn's children
I met this sweet family in March of this year... Gibson and Elli are two of the 3. The 3rd (Eden) was sleeping when this pic was taken. Please pray for Gibson as he has an undiagnosed disorder which has kept him from muscular and speech development. They are a committed Christian family and I loved meeting them!
Sad, sweet, stinking selves!
Who are we anyway?! Here's an excerpt from a letter of my mom's to my dad, as they discuss in a letter how wherever they are they will have the same sins to deal with, and on the mission field it's not going to get any easier, though they long to be there. But on the other hand, it is the same Presence and Power that accompanies and indwells us, the same necessity for drawing from the Source.
"And, as old Pike used to say, “You’re STUCK with yourself.” It is the same “sad, sweet, stinking selves” that we shall have to deal with, and the more trying the circumstances, the sweet, the more stinking that self! MacDonald says, “All that is not God is death.” So, for us it must be God—first, last, always."
Friday, January 27, 2017
Saints and sin
Here is an excerpt from my Dad's journal, which I hope you all know is still available - The Journals of Jim Elliot. It's deep because there's a lot of commentary on his own Bible reading, and covers from 1948-1955, before the month that he was killed. Those of you who are real readers of books would enjoy it and be inspired by his sincere desire to glorify Christ.
"Only by looking upon sin exactly as God looks upon it, can saints glory in the devastation of the wicked. Our attitude toward sin is an indication of the degree to which we have allowed the “mind of Christ” to possess us. O Lord Jesus, my Lord and Master—I do long that Thou shalt be all in all to me. I thank Thee that I have the mind of Christ, since I am “in Christ” and He in me. So let me dwell upon this truth, accepting it moment by moment from Thee, that Christ may be magnified in me."
I pray also that I would have the mind of Christ, that I would look upon all events and circumstances as allowed and directed by His hand, so that I can continually give thanks and be completely and perfectly satisfied with Him alone!
Friday, January 20, 2017
Wow, it's been over a year since I last posted in this blog! I'm sorry to those who had hoped I might post more...but maybe in this next year, I'll have more to offer. I've been reading the letters of my parents to each other from 1948-1953, and there are so many gems of truth throughout that I have been grateful for the idea which came to me about 4 years ago, to put them into a book. I have also been reading all their journals (of course, my father's is published- The Journals of Jim Elliot.) My mother's have not been published, so it is a special privilege to be able to soak in what she wrote privately, and as I add them to the book, I hope that her words, as well as my father's in his letters, will be a catalyst to many, to live for Him alone.
Here's an example of her writing to him in the spring of 1951, when he was working with Ed McCully in Chester, Illinois. They were reaching out to the down and outers, teens, and had attempted a once a week radio ministry, where one of them preached, and Ed played his trumpet before and after the preaching. They also had to work to pay for food, a $40 a month apt (!) and a car. They wanted to "see souls saved" but felt pretty discouraged, since there was very little response.
First is his letter to her about their discouragement, and then is her answer.
3/15/51 [My mother was in Moorestown, NJ at this time]
Here's an example of her writing to him in the spring of 1951, when he was working with Ed McCully in Chester, Illinois. They were reaching out to the down and outers, teens, and had attempted a once a week radio ministry, where one of them preached, and Ed played his trumpet before and after the preaching. They also had to work to pay for food, a $40 a month apt (!) and a car. They wanted to "see souls saved" but felt pretty discouraged, since there was very little response.
First is his letter to her about their discouragement, and then is her answer.
1951_2_22
Box 242, Chester, IL
"Many thanks for writing Mom.
She noted her appreciation of your letter in my last from 7272, [Elliot home in Portland, Oregon] and I am
confident that she was sincere. Her
attitude toward you has been decidedly better since I have been away from
home—I cannot tell why.
Things are not any easier here. Discouragement has
hemmed us sharply this past week, for, although we have known no lack in the
outward things, there has been a strong sense of not
having possessed boldly as we should have.
Ed grows depressed more easily than I, and the scarcity of blessing
hereabouts has not been easy to take. He said yesterday, “Brother, everything I do
here is putting out the fleece; if souls aren’t saved and this isn’t my
calling, I see no point in putting my life into it.” I couldn’t find words somehow and there was a
long silence after.
The radio work, a joy in itself, has yielded only one card of encouragement, and that from
believers. We have asked, and are asking
for a witness that will divide the whole city on the TRUE ISSUE. But as yet there is no sign.
The Thursday night Bible study goes on fairly well over in
Sparta—20 miles distant. All I know is
that God sent us to Chester—to that I am resigned...or is that the right
word? I wrote to Billy about the
situation and he responded with this a week ago which I thought was of help:
Again we
circled ‘round in search of door;
A jeering
voice said, “Fools! You’ve come for naught.”
In vain we
knocked, and pled, and searched the more
And leaned
upon our only cheering thought:
In honesty
of heart we moved where Spirit Taught.
So, weary
now, we rested; stillness rose
And led us
to acknowledge: He is God
Who is our
banner; opens, none may close!
Ascended
swift our spirits ‘bove the sod:
These
walls, this Jericho will fall beneath His rod!
So it must be. Integrity, simplicity have been our guides
under God and are now our defense before Him. This Jericho must fall or I shall
be unable to go on in the path of faith. Pray for us, as Jesus for Peter, that
our faith fail not.
Today we got access to a store front in the slums down along
the riverfront. We hope to use it for
children’s meetings but it must have some work done on it first. It has fallen into a terrible state, and will
probably take time to recondition. There
are many of the little “raggedies” about who will be our first fruits in
Chester, we trust.
Thus far I have had no word from the Selective Service
outfit. So far as I know, nothing has
been stated as to the status of boys with 4E classifications. Waiting is living
these days.
There is a certain despairful loneliness snooping about
these days and I can almost hear the streets and building bristling with the
note that haunted David—“Where is thy God?”
I don’t mean to sound dismal, but there is a certain bleakness about a
place like this where no liberating truth is being sounded out. The “synagogues” are full, but still hollow
with unreality. Oh, Bett, if earth in
its brighter shades be so drear, what must its denser ones be? Thank God for that sense of “looking for a
city which has foundations”, which prevails when one sees the basis of these.
The business world is a crude one, almost animal in certain aspects, and
powerfully affecting to a newcomer—as I regard myself. The very principle of
making money by selling things at a profit is distasteful at times, yet it
seems to be my job for now.
I made a couple of big sales on Wednesday amounting to
nearly $700 turnover of funds.
Exhilarating but emptying. Ed’s
folks were here that day on their way home from a few days in “Floriday”. There were an encouragement. Almost anybody from outside would be now.
We went visiting in the slums last Monday night. Not easy,
but comforting to be among those blessed poor…with
Jesus in a sense we are not when among the self-sufficient. We must go again soon…it makes one scornful
of vanity and not much I love with life…especially this life of banks
and bills and rates and percentages. I think Service somewhere sings a
derogatory dirge called the song of Fire-percent. I never caught the meaning of it until now.
With all this sound of shadow the word came to minister this
morning. Check the Rensed marginal
renderings of Isaiah 42:1-4. Quoted
concerning Christ in the gospels the passage speaks
beautifully of Him in His seething, contrasting Him as servant with Jacob (41:8)
the fearful and Cyrus the frightful (44:27, 45:1). “He shall not strive nor cry…a bruised reed
will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will He not quench…He will not fail
(burn dimly, same word as above) nor be
discouraged” (be bruised). Not despairful or failing Himself, still He
does not crush those who are such. This
is the grace of the Flesh-God, the one with eyes
who sees and, hearing ears, hears, and possessing heart, feels. Not like any God
conceived is the Man-God. It is
here that the Moslems miss Him. Their creed, “There is no god but Allah, and
Mohammed is his prophet,” fails in its first postulate, for Allah is not the
breasted God (El Shaddai) of Israel. He
is one, but coldly, austerely so. Our
God is one but vibrantly, lovingly,
warmly so! Praise be to that name Jesus!"
3/15/51 [My mother was in Moorestown, NJ at this time]
"It
was not hard to detect the discouragement in your last letter—it seemed to drag
each word back. In a letter from your
mother she says she sensed the same in your letters home. Jim, dear brother, it is just here that the
nature of your consecration—which is the same as saying the nature of your love
to God—is test. The decisions which are
made in “green pastures” are tested (a good word, isn’t it? Think of the test
tubes in a lab, etc.) in the “valley of the shadow” – for it is here that He is
most vitally with us, if I may use the expression, although He is forever
equally “with us,” since He tabernacles within us! You say “This Jericho must fall or I shall be
unable to go on in the path of faith.”
Surely you were not really thinking when you made that statement. The very principle of faith precludes any and
all necessity of dependency upon anything but God Himself. When He has left us, in actuality, then, and
only then, may we be unable to believe.
Ah—He will never leave us or forsake us!
(And remember the 5 negatives of Heb. 13:5) Do you love God for Himself alone?
Or do you love Him for His gifts, His conscious presence, His love to
you, His evident blessing upon what you do, etc.? Jim, I truly believe there comes a time in
the progress of the soul who truly desires to be conformable to Christ’s image,
when God strips him not only of earthly props in the form of
friends, possessions, talents, or whatever he may have outside of God—but
also a time when the all-wise, all-loving Father strips that soul of even His
own conscious and evident blessings and gifts (these may include an infinite
variety of forms—joy, a sense of His nearness, conscious grace in prayer,
fruits which may be seen or definitely enumerated, experience, etc. etc.). This process, however devastating it may
seem, must be recognized as another further providence. Another gracious answer to our supreme cry of
faith – “Thy will be done.” Oh,
far, very far above us are His purposes.
Far beyond our expectations are the methods used by the Master-Potter in
molding His vessels after the fashion of His Son. When He declares His ability to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think this includes the accomplishment of
His sanctifying word in the soul. When
we ask in the most entire honesty of our hearts to be made like Christ, we ask
usually with certain more or less vague ideas as to just what that means. Christ takes us at our word, and indeed, why
shouldn’t He, for it is He who inspired that very prayer in our hearts! --and does exceeding abundantly above all
that we asked or thought? And He
purposes holiness—nothing less—in His child.
So He sets about to produce just that in us, by His own methods. No truth stands out more clearly and forcibly
to me just now than the fact that the whole work of sanctification in the
believer is accomplished exactly as was the whole work of salvation—namely, the
simple principle of FAITH. It is the
duty of the Christians to receive. He
receives the initial step of salvation, which of course includes the Scriptural
truth of immediate sanctification, but he also receives just as truly thereafter
each new step in his progress of conformity to Christ. It is wonderful to know that it is not only
required that we love God with a pure heart, but is also possible. The soul who loves God only for Himself,
apart from His gifts, knows indescribable peace.
I
find that I have written one paragraph of three pages! I feel that I could write a book, just about
now. Forgive me. How I wish I could talk to you. The Lord has been so merciful, in leading me,
in teaching me to trust in a way I never dreamed possible. I want you to trust Him wholly, Jim, for the
accomplishment of His will in you there in Chester He will be glorified—only
believe. And I am trusting Him for you
and Ed. Perhaps He does not purpose that
you should ever see “results” (oh earthy word!
Not in Scripture!) --in order
that you may the more clearly see Him, who is “before all things.” So long as
the object of your faith does not fail, your faith need not fail. If that object however, is the visible gifts
of God, it may fail. If the object is
God Himself, it will never fail!
I
thank God for your friendship, and I praise Him over and over for the way in
which He has directed our paths and our relationship. I can’t get over how wise and loving and
merciful and Father-like He has been!"
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
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