Passion & Purity by Elisabeth Elliot

God is amazing. Haha. He knows exactly what I'm concerned about and at the best timing, He just brings the answer.

Was in Jang's dorm on Tuesday and saw this book on her table, "Passion & Purity" By Elisabeth Elliot. First heard of the title from Sarah. Was curious so I picked it up and read it. To think that God spoke to me through a few chapters of the book with such clarity. A book that is of the same age as me. lol.

Here are some excerpts that I thought applied A LOT to me:

God was still sifting hearts in New Testament times.

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"

"No man is worthy of me who cares more for father or mother than for me; no man is worthy of me who cares more for son or daughter. And anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

"I count everything sheer loss because all is outweighed by the gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."

God's spiritual principles. Unarguable. To all of them, my intellect gave full consent. A giant of the faithlike Abraham or Paul the apostle - of course they had to be tested with great tests. I was only a college girl, trying to do well in my studies, praying for direction in my life, attracted to a very appealing man whose primary interest was in the Kingdom of God. Anything wrong with that?

"If you wish to go the whole way..." It was not to the intellect alone that the question came. My heart and my feelings were involved now, and I must give an answer. God was sifting me this time. Did I want to go the "whole way"? Yes Lord.

"Do you want to be worthy of me?" Yes, Lord.
"Do you want to know Christ Jesus as Lord?" Certainly, Lord.

In Lilias Trotter's beautifully illustrated book, Parables of the Cross, she describes the death-life cycle of plants, which illustrates the spiritual processes that must go on in us if we are to die to self and live to God. In the love life, as well in other areas:

"The fair new petals must fall, and for no visible reason. No one seems enriched by the stripping.

And the first step into the realm of giving is like surrender-not manward but Godward: an utter yielding of our best. So long as our idea of surrender is limited to the renouncing of unlawful things, we have never grasped its true meaning: that is not worthy of the name for 'no unpolluted thing' can be offered.

The life lost on the Cross was not a sinful one - the treasure poured forth there was God-given, God-blessed treasure, lawful and right to be kept: only that there was the life of the world at stake."

What kind of a God is it who asks everything of us? The same God who '... did not keep his own son, but gave him up for us all; and with this gift how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?'

He gives all.
He asks all.

"April 2 - I am seized with fear that my own will be given place, and I will thus ruin my usableness for God. It would be easy to follow my feelings... to interfere with the voice of the Lord when He says, 'This is the way, walk ye in it.' "

I wanted to be loved. Nothing unusual about that, nothing to separate my generation from any other.

But I wanted something deeper. Down among all the foolishness in my diary, thoughts like chaff which the wind of the Spirit can drive away, there is some wheat. There was an honest-to-God longing for the "fixed heart" that the collect speaks of. A thousand questions cluttered my mind, the same ones I find today in the letters I receive. I had thought some of mine were new. My correspondents think the same. They aren't. But the question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives, is What do I really want?

Was it to love what God commands, in the words of the collect, and to desire what He promises? Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?

Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone accept, His lordship. The Cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart's truth. My heart, I knew, would be forever a lonely hunter's unless settled "where true joys are to be found."

One morning I was reading the story of Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. The disciples could find only five loaves of bread and two fishes. "Let me have them," said Jesus. He asked for all. He took them, said the blessing, and broke them before He gave them out. I remembered what a chapel speaker, Ruth Stull of Peru, had said:
"If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will only satisfy a little lad."

Pg. 45

I was certainly in a state!
"Clogged with wishes." I was wishing that my wishes were what God wished, I wished that I could wish that my wishes would go away, but the wishes were still there.

Pg. 47

There is another way: to love what God commands and desire what He promises. It can't be found except through prayer and obedience. It cuts quite across the other way, takes us where things are not at the means of changing fashions and opinions. it is a place where a man's heart may safely rest - and a woman's heart, too.

1 Peter 5:7 (NEB) "Cast all your cares on him, for you are his charge."
Philippians 4:6 (NEB) "Have no anxiety, but in everything make your requests known to God."
Matthew 6:25 (NEB) "I bid you put away anxious thoughts."

"I will teach you and guide you in the way you should go.
I will keep you under my eye. Do not behave like horse or mule, unreasoning creatures, whose course must be checked with bit and bridle. Many are the torments of the ungodly, but unfailing love enfolds him who trusts in the Lord.
Rejoice in the Lord and be glad..."

Pg. 72

Life requires countless "little deaths".
"Where the will of God crosses the will of man," Addison Leitch said, "somebody has to die."
Occasions when we are given the chance to say no to self and yes to God. Every reminder that aroused a longing had to be offered up.
But we die in order to live.

Thoughts that ran through my mind when I read the book:

1) I'm feeling exactly the same way as the author did even though we live in two totally different eras (1940s vs. 2000s). But I know God is telling me that this is not the right time.

2) I'm scared of letting my own desires take precedence over what God wants me to do. I'm fearful that I become so blind to the extent that I can't see that all I am doing is for my own selfish motives. I don't want to become like that again. I don't want to become that fool again.

3) I long for more of God to be in my life. The honest-to-God longing that the author mentioned.

4) What do I really want? To indulge in satisfying my own desires or to look to what God has promised and to do His will?

5) What is more important? My own desires or God's plans? What is at stake? My own desires vs. the life of the entire world.

Help me, O God. To listen to Your will and obey You.