Lessons From a Woman Who Suffered

There is a page and a half in one of my favorite books where I underlined nothing and took no notes, not for lack of interest, but because I didn’t have words for what I read.

The Elliots and the Huaorani People

The book was David Platt’s “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream.” While reading pages 177–178, I encountered an overview of the story of Jim Elliot for the first time. The story, at first glance, is one of tragedy and great suffering.

Mr. Elliot

Jim Elliot was a missionary who was speared to death while trying to share the Gospel with the Huaorani people of eastern Ecuador in January 1956. The facts are hard to swallow: He was only 28. His four companions died too, their bodies found in a river. They had been warned not to seek out contact with the Huaorani, but went anyway and lost their lives.

In an otherwise marked-up book, that’s where my lack of underlining came in while reading “Radical.” What do you say to that? Where in that story is there a Instagram-worthy chunk to underline and commit to memory?

On the subject, Platt did have a few words to say. He wrote “Should Elliot have listened to those who told him not to take the risk? You be the judge.”

“Well, yeah,” human nature says. “He died. They were right. He should have listened.” But that perspective isn’t the one the five missionaries held. They knew the risks and went anyway.

Maybe you’ve heard the quote: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” These were the words of Jim Elliot, who gave the life he could not keep forever in exchange for something eternal.

Mrs. Elliot

What further struck me about this story was the wife he left behind. Elisabeth Elliot, 29 at the time, had waited five-and-a-half years to marry her husband, yet was abruptly widowed after only 823 days of marriage. She would now care for their ten month old daughter and continue their ministry as a widow. Her suffering was great, as was the responsibility left on her shoulders.

“Jim’s absence thrust me, forced me, hurried me to God, my hope and my only refuge,” she later wrote.

In “Radical,” Platt went on to explain how ministry to the Huaorani continued after Jim’s death: “In the days to come, Elliot’s wife, Elisabeth, would be part of leading to Christ the very men who speared her husband, and since that day the peace of Christ has come to reign in this tribe.”

Read those words again and understand what happened: The martyr’s wife stays. She confronts the murderers, not with revenge, but with Jesus. Their entire community is transformed.

The question of “Should Elliot have listened to those who told him not to take the risk?” is painted in a different light now. There was redemption on earth in a sad story. Something great happened out of something terrible.

Three Lessons From Elisabeth Elliot

All of this to say, reading about the martyred missionaries was what first put Elisabeth Elliot, a woman who suffered much, on my radar.

Since reading that short excerpt on Mr. and Mrs. Elliot, I have filled in more and more gaps about the lives of these missionaries, especially Mrs. Elliot. My research and understanding so far of Elisabeth has settled her in my mind as a woman to be admired and imitated, as she herself imitated Christ. Here are three lessons I have, in part, learned by her life.

Great Suffering

The glory brought to God by the proclamation of the Gospel did not change the fact that Elisabeth Elliot was a woman who suffered much. The life of the young widow continued after the death of her husband. It also continued after the death of her second husband, lost to cancer in 1973 after just four years together. She would live on to marry a third time and fight dementia for a decade before her death at the age of 88.

Does that sound like a fun life? Would any of us pray “God, make me like Betty Elliot” and ask for the plate of suffering she endured? Likely not. No bride on her wedding day asks God to martyr her husband. No mother holds her baby and prays to raise her alone. No college student studies and hopes her brain will be lost slowly to dementia.

Although she may not have asked for it by name preemptively, Elisabeth Elliot came to see these sufferings in light of eternity. “Suffering is an irreplaceable medium through which I learned an indispensable truth: God is God,” she wrote.

In other words, Elisabeth believed that God showed her who He is through suffering.

Perhaps not many of us have suffered to her caliber, but even the most careful and cowardly of us has seen pain. We wait long for something good, only to have it stripped from us. We lose our earthly treasures. Even at our lowest points, if we have time left in this life, we know it could hold deeper hurt and pain atop the hurt and pain we have already experienced.

This is to be expected. In 1 Peter 4:12–13, we are warned that being a Christian means suffering and told to rejoice in it: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”

In a way, this suffering is what we really pray for when we ask God to make us more Christ-like. It might be what we plea for when we ask to know Him more. After all, Psalm 34:18 says “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” So long as we respond by hurrying ourselves to God in suffering, that is the result.

Elisabeth, in part, taught me how to suffer. Reading about her life changed the paradigm through which I viewed my own and provided me with an example of a woman suffered well. She chose to do the next thing.

“When you don’t know what to do,” she wrote, “do the thing in front of you.”

Great Forgiveness

Amidst all her great suffering, Elisabeth also exhibited great forgiveness. She, in part, taught me how to forgive.

Imagine your husband, who you love dearly, has just been murdered. What do you do? Do you march up to the killer and seek revenge? Do you run from the killer and seek safety?

Neither. As mentioned before, Elisabeth continued the mission. Rather than harboring bitterness, she harbored love. Mrs. Elliot stayed put and sought a way to share the Gospel, in spite of her pain, for two more years.

In her July/August 2010 newsletter, she provided counsel on how to forgive:

“Lay down all rights. Forgiveness is the unconditional laying down of the self (see 1 Corinthians 6). This includes the desire for vindication, pleasure at the other person’s humiliation, keeping accounts of evil, the right to an apology, and bringing every thought under obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).”

She also encouraged readers to “Ask for grace to treat him as if nothing had ever come between you (see Psalm 119:78) and stand with Christ for him.”

Like Jesus, washing the feet of Judas right before His betrayal, Elisabeth gave an example of forgiveness and love through her unhindered service to the Huaorani people. She did not define them by their murder of her husband, but rather stood with Christ for them, allowing many to be saved.

Consider the testimony: You have done one of the worst things imaginable to someone and you know it. Yet there she is, loving you anyway and pouring her life out for your people. What great forgiveness.

Great Faithfulness

Through her great suffering and her great forgiveness, Elisabeth showed grit and determination to continue. She believed in the faithfulness of God and responded to it with her own faithfulness and devotion. She, in part, taught me how to be faithful.

In her book “Let Me Be a Woman,” Elisabeth wrote “The life of faith is lived one day at a time.” One day at a time, it seems, is how she lived out the 21,709 days between the martyring of Jim Elliot and her own death.

“I came to Ecuador to serve the Lord and not Jim, and with him gone, my duty did not change,” Elisabeth told Life Magazine in 1957. Just as before, she did what God required of her and supported others to do what God required of them. In Jim’s absence, she did not take over duties that were not hers, rather she exhorted the men around her to live out their calling and continued her own.

Elisabeth had a simple habit that helped her to remain faithful, day after day: “When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.” And truly, her faithfulness to God’s mission for her in Ecuador and beyond shows she did indeed love Him. She would go on to write 24 books, host a radio show, speak to crowds, and share an eternity-minded newsletter.

Imagine, instead, had she been like the wife of Job, who, in response to suffering abandoned her integrity, cursed God, and sought to die (Job 2:9). What a loss that would have been for Elisabeth herself and all of us who are encouraged or brought near to Christ by her testimony.

Lars Gren, her third husband, reflected on her sufferings, both dementia and the loss of her first two husbands by saying “She accepted those things, [knowing] they were no surprise to God. It was something she would rather not have experienced, but she received it.”

A Legacy

Elisabeth Elliot passed away on June 15, 2015, a year before I knew she existed. Still, she taught me many things about how to live the Christian life faithfully through suffering and forgiveness.

These lessons, which can be learned in part by witnessing the life of Elisabeth, are not meant to glorify her in an undue way, but to show an example of a person who God brought through tragedy. Looking at her life, as a good and faithful servant of God, helps me to see my own in a new light. Though loss or dementia or other sufferings may plague us a while, God is God.

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Next Steps

1. Find a biography to read about someone who lived a faithful life. Like Hebrews 13:7 advises, “consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” What can this person’s life teach you about God? How can his or her testimony teach you to follow God?
2. Consider your own testimony. How has God shown Himself to you? Share that with someone.

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Resources Used to Compile this Article Include:

• 9 Things You Should Know About Elisabeth Elliot by Joe Carter
• Elisabeth Elliot Quotes Facebook Page
• Elisabeth Elliot Website
• “Life Magazine: The Martyrs’ story“
• “Radical: Taking Your Faith Back From The American Dream” by David Platt
• “Peaches in Paradise: Why I Loved Elisabeth Elliot” by John Piper
• “Walking Through Fire” an interview with Lars Gren by Tiffany Owens
• “Your Suffering Is Never for Nothing” by Elisabeth Elliot