Words to Live By... Book #3

Book #3 --- Passion and Purity
by Elisabeth Elliot

I have to admit that this is one book even I didn't expect to be on my list, but after thinking about all the books I've read over the years, I realized the influence that Passion & Purity had on my life has been long-lasting. The concept of Christ’s Lordship over my life began to be an adult reality around the time I first read this book. So much so that many of the quotes from this book were posted over the walls of my dorm room, my cubicle at Eastman, and my little apartment in Longview.

I stumbled upon this book during the spring quarter of my junior year of college (I think... that was such a long time ago!), after a few of us from the BSU went down to New Orleans for a missions conference at NOBTS. We arrived late and walked into a huge room where everyone was already engrossed in a movie that I didn't recognize. We joined in and watched the tale end of the movie which involved the story of a group of missionaries who were killed in Ecuador. I never caught the name of the movie nor the names of the missionaries, but the story stuck with me and I couldn't get it out of my mind. Some time later, I encountered Passion and Purity, and as I read through this book, I began to put the pieces together.

So… yes… at a time when I began to truly accept and try to live out Christ’s Lordship over my life, this book left some serous footprints all over my life! While this book is often read for it’s insight into dating, courtship, and marriage, the lasting lessons have mostly to do with surrendering our will to the Lord’s and following Him whole-heartedly down whatever road He chooses to take us on. This is how the book is described on the back cover:

“In Passion and Purity, [Elisabeth Elliot] emphasizes the need to commit daily to Christ all matters of the heart and to wait upon Him. She teaches this often-painful, yet rewarding discipline by candidly tracing her love story with Jim Elliot to ‘serve as evidence that I’ve been there.’ Through letters, diary entries, and recollections, she shares the temptations, difficulties, victories, and sacrifices of two young people whose commitment to Christ takes priority over their love for each other. These revealing personal glimpses, combined with relevant biblical teaching, may help to remind you that only by putting your human passion and desire through His fire can God purify your love.”

But here are some of the quotes that made their way onto the “walls” in my life…

“Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His lordship.”

“I do know that waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts.”

“God’s time for further revelations of the heart might come later. Tomorrow was not our business; it was His. Letting it rest with Him was the discipline for the day, and it was enough.”

“But the things we feel most deeply about we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.”

“We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures for whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.”

“Wherever you are, be all there… Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”
~ Jim Elliot

“Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering. The love of God did not protect His own Son. That was the proof of His love --- that He gave that Son, that He let Him go to Calvary’s cross, though ‘legions of angels’ might have rescued Him. He will not necessarily protect us --- not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.”

“The disposition… to leave the dearest objects of our hearts in the sublime keeping of the general and unspecific belief that God is now answering our prayers in his own time and way, and in the best manner, involves a present process of inward crucifixion which is not obviously favorable to the growth and even the existence of the life of self.”
~ T. C. Upham Inward Divine Guidance