Giving What You Cannot Keep
‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.’ Thus wrote a young college student in 1949 by the name of Jim Elliot. While on an expedition to spread the Gospel some seven years later, Jim lost his life on earth—‘what he cannot keep’—to gain a home in Heaven—‘what he cannot lose’.
A Heart for Jesus
One evening at about the age of six, Jim told his mother on the way home from a Christian meeting, ‘Now, mama, the Lord Jesus can come whenever he wants. He could take our whole family, because I’m saved now, and Janie,’ he said, referring to his younger sister , ‘is too young to know about Him yet.’ Born in 1927 to a Christian family in Portland, Oregon, Jim made an early decision to follow Christ and began ‘preaching’ to his young friends from the lawn swing.
As he grew up, Jim sought to honour Jesus in his daily life. Once while eating lunch in the high school cafeteria, the six-foot-three student body president approached Jim’s table. He was selling tickets for an upcoming student dance and was eager that Jim—an influential student—should purchase one. The president ended his argument by saying, ‘Jim, you’re in this student body as much as I am, and ought to support it.’ Jim’s answer was bold and straight: ‘Yes,’ said Jim, ‘I’m in the student body but not the way you are. I’m a Christian and the Bible says that I’m in the world but not of it. That’s why I’m not going to the dance.’
After high school, Jim studied in Illinois where he sought to follow the Lord wholeheartedly. Writing home in February 1947, he described how he had begun to pray with several housemates in their ‘den’. ‘[S]uch times we do have! The first fruits of Glory itself,’ he wrote, and ‘as soon as we hit a subject that has a need God can fill, we dive for our knees and tell Him about it. These are times I’ll remember about college when all the philosophy has slipped out memory’s back gate. God is still on His throne, we’re still on His footstool, and there’s only a knee’s distance between!’ As for the degree Jim was seeking, that was A.U.G., ‘approved unto God.’
A Heart for Missions
During his first two years at college, Jim became aware of the personal implications of Jesus’ command to go and preach the gospel. He noted down statistics such as the following: ‘There is one Christian worker for every 50,000 people in foreign lands, while there is one to every 500 in the United States.’ Jesus’ command and such facts combined to make an impression on Jim. If he remained in the United States, he would need to prove that such a decision was really justified. In 1952, Jim set out for Ecuador desiring to help spread the good news of Jesus.
On his twenty-sixth birthday, Jim finally married Elisabeth Howard in Quito after years of correspondence and a willingness to remain single in accordance with God’s will. ‘No one warns young people to follow Adam’s example,’ he once wrote to his parents, ‘He waited till God saw his need. Then God made Adam sleep, prepared for his mate, and brought her to him. We need more of this “being asleep” in the will of God. Then we can receive what He brings us in His own time, if at all. Instead we are set as blood-hounds after a partner’.
Jim and Elisabeth eventually made Shandia their home base in the eastern rainforest, seeking to reach out to the jungle Indians for Christ’s sake. In addition to other meetings, a small nucleus of baptized believers began to meet specially in a schoolroom of bamboo walls and backless benches for the ‘breaking of bread’, sharing bread and wine as reminders of Christ’s broken body and shed blood on the cross. They began to understand the meaning of worship, simply and sincerely offering their hearts’ love to the Lord. Often they ended the meeting singing ‘kirikgunaga, kushiyanguichi—Cristo shamunmi!’ (‘Be happy, believers—Christ is coming!’)
Soon several young Indians took over the task of the Sunday morning meeting, showing that God’s Word is God’s oracle—regardless of who was preaching it.
Ever conscious of lost souls, Jim had hoped some years earlier for Christian work among a tribe called the Aucas: they had never heard of Jesus, their only contact with white men had been by killing, and they were feared by other Indians. Then one day in September 1955, information arrived that a missionary friend (Ed) and missionary pilot (Nate) had spotted Auca houses a short flight from Arajuno. Jim was desperate to reach this savage people with the news of Christ.
After making friendly contact from an aeroplane for the second time, Jim noted in his dairy, ‘God, send me soon to the Aucas.’ God granted that wish when Jim finally shook the hand of an Auca man in early January 1956—but two days later, he and his four companions were killed. Although Elisabeth later laboured among this very tribe, for Jim, an earlier prayer he once wrote was answered: ‘God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn up for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.’
—See Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty
