How Jim Elliot's Story Speaks to Parents Today
This past weekend marked the 60th anniversary of the martyrdom of Jim Elliot, a story that inspired a generation of missionaries and continues to speak challenging words to the church and to families today.
On January 8, 1956, five American missionaries were martyred for their faith in the Ecuadorian jungles of South America. One of these men, the one whose name has become the most recognizable over the past 50 years, was a 29-year-old man named Jim Elliot. Just a few years after I gave my life to the Lord, I chanced upon the published journals of Jim Elliot. I was challenged by his spiritual devotions and inspired by his heart for the unreached. When the Lord called me to be a missionary to an unreached tribe in the South American jungles, I turned my attention even more to Elliot’s journals and biographies.
In his biography I read about his parents. They were Christians but struggled with the idea of sending their young son to an unknown, dangerous place. It’s easy to discuss Family Missions and advocate the idea of being blessed to be a blessing while calling one another to obey the Great Commission inside and outside the home. It’s much more difficult when a Great Commission Family is led to go to the unknown or even send their children there alone.
Jim Elliot wrote a letter to his parents, encouraging them in their call to be a Great Commission Family. He wrote:
“I do not wonder that you were saddened at the word of my going to South
America. This is nothing else than what the Lord Jesus warned us of when he told the disciples that they must become so infatuated with the kingdom and following him that all other allegiances must become as though they were not. And he never excluded the family tie. In fact, those loves which we regard as closest, He told us must become as hate in comparison with our desires to uphold His cause. Grieve not, then, if your sons seem to desert you, but rejoice, rather, seeing the will of God done gladly. Remember how the Psalmist described children? He said that they were as an heritage from the Lord, and that every man should be happy who had his quiver full of them. And what is a quiver full of but arrows? And what are arrows for but to shoot? So, with the strong arms of prayer, draw the bowstring back and let the arrows fly–all of them, straight at the Enemy’s hosts.”[i]
Elliot’s parents embraced the vision of a Great Commission Family and sent their son like an arrow. Elliot and his wife, along with four other families, gave everything to make disciples of an unreached nation and bless a native tribe with the Gospel of Jesus. That tribe drove spears through the young missionaries before they could ever talk about Jesus. But the Lord’s arrow did not return void, for Elliot’s wife and other relatives of the martyred men persevered, brought the Good News to the Huaorani, and saw a harvest of souls.
Let our prayer for our family be more than safety. Let us dream beyond the American Dream. Let us join a story bigger than ourselves, and let us passionately resist the temptation to forsake the Great Commission simply because it is difficult or counter-culture or uncomfortable or unfamiliar or unknown. Let us guard our families against the Enemy’s schemes as we seek to cultivate Family Missions, for as one author writes, “The Enemy wishes nothing more than to coax our kids, if not into rebellion, into pursuing passionless, insignificant, and potentially empty lives. As long as he can hamstring them with apathy, he need not worry about them doing damage to his kingdom.”[ii]
[i]Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY: 1989), p. 132.
[ii]Julie Ferwerda, One Million Arrows: Raising your Children to Change the World (Wine Press Publishing: 2009), p. 21-22.
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