Made for the Journey - By Elisabeth Elliot

Made for the Journey by Elizabeth Elliot is an account of her first year as a missionary to Ecuador.  I've read it before as it was previously published as These Strange Ashes. 

Elliot started her missionary full of excitement and triumphal expectation.  She was heading out the jungle to attempt to learn the Colorado Indian language in order to reduce it to writing and translate the Bible into that language. There is a note of underlying criticism throughout of the 'traditional' missionary way of doing things. Having started her work, she fights to have success in even figuring out the language.  She combats laziness in herself, but does start making some progress with the language.  Then everything falls apart.  People die, in tragic ways, including her main language informant.  She has difficulty continuing the study, but does have a good amount of language information to leave with those who would stay while she moved on to different work.  And then, after she leaves, the suitcase she entrusted to the missionary left behind with all (yes, ALL) of the language information is stolen and never recovered.  All of her work seemingly for nothing.

Elliot grappled with the thought, does God actually want these people saved? She came face to face with the sovereignty of God.  As she comments, "Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain." Now, I want to note here that though Elliot seems to believe in the overall sovereignty of God, she seems to have some trouble with the particular sovereignty of God, God's work inside of us. At the beginning of the book, in contemplating mankind she says, "Why did He give them in the first place freedom of will, power to choose, when surely He knew that their choices would be evil?...The power to exercise the will has been delegated to us and God will not usurp it."  But God does usurp our wills.  Changing someone into a completely new person is a very drastic act, a very personally invasive act. When we become Christians God changes our will, He makes us New Creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), we are taken out of slavery to sin and we become the slaves of God(Romans 6:22).  I think that Elliot unconsciously acknowledges this in her writings as she seems to contradict herself in places.

There are a few other things I had trouble with, for instance, she talks about the hard part of a missionary trying to figure out how to convert people to Christianity without changing their culture.  I don't completely understand this fear of changing the culture of those we witness to.  Yes, we don’t want to convert people to our ethnic culture, but the culture of those who convert to Christianity will inevitably change. For instance, If people have a culture where they do not wear clothes, they will find in the Bible that God is the One who instituted the wearing of clothing. They will realize that wearing clothing is an acknowledgement of humanity's fallenness. That after the Fall, public nakedness is presented in the Bible as a shameful thing.  Even after we become Christians, though our inner man is renewed, our outward flesh is not yet glorified (2 Cor 4:16, Rom 8:10-11,23).  Though, interestingly, it looks as though clothing will be worn even in the New Heaven and new earth (Rev 6:11, 7:9).  Any practice of any particular culture that is not in accordance with God's will, will disappear in the lives of people who grow in Christlikeness.  And that's not a bad thing.

That said, I still really liked this book.  I just needed to get those things out of my system.  Elliot writes very, very well and really pulls you into the account. You feel as though you are in the jungle with her, experiencing her excitement, exhaustion and confusion. You can "see" and "feel", as it were, the jungle around you and the strange sites and the different people she comes in contact with, her descriptions are so vivid. She portrays clearly her own bewilderment with the acts of God in her work as a missionary, but then pulls the perspective back to submission to God's sovereignty and rightness, whether or not one sees the "why" or the "rightness" of things, we believe in the righteousness of the God who allowed them and so submit. I'll end with a quote from the book, "Faith, prayer, and obedience are our requirements.  We are not offered in exchange immunity and exemption from the world's woes.  What we are offered has to do with another world altogether."

Many thanks to the folks at Revell Reads (A division of Baker Publishing Group) for sending me a free review copy of this book! (My review did not have to be favorable)

My Rating:  5 out of 5 Stars

*****

This book may be purchased at Christianbook.com and Amazon.com

Mrs. Oswald Chambers - by Michelle Ule

The only thing I knew about Oswald Chambers was that he wrote the devotional, My Utmost For His Highest, which I looked through some years ago (I don't remember if I read it all the way through) and liked some of the concepts that I found in it.  When I saw this biography of his wife I thought that it would be a good way to know more about the couple. It  really informed me quite a bit and gave me a better picture of these two people, or a rather it gave me the only picture I've had so far as I didn't know really anything at all about them.

Gertrude Annie Hobbes, known as "Biddy" (Oswald's nickname for her), was not expecting the life that God had planned for her. She had trained for and had become excellent at taking shorthand notes and was a good typist as well.  Her goal was to be the first female secretary to the prime minister of England. God had other plans.  She and Oswald Chambers initially 'fell' in love on a ten day voyage to America.   Oswald was a  volunteer circuit lecturer for the League of Prayer and had been asked by her mother to look after her daughter on the trip.  He was already acquainted with Biddy, but this trip solidified a friendship between the two and initiated a correspondence between them and visits, which led to their becoming engaged and then married. 

They served the Lord together, starting a Bible training college for the League of Prayer and after some years, during World War I they left England to work with the YMCA in Egypt ministering to soldiers stationed there. They brought their only child, Kathleen, with them.  I really appreciated that instead of seeing Kathleen as secondary to the primary work of ministering to other people, and sending her off to boarding school or having her live with relatives or another family (as other couples involved in mission work sometimes did), they saw her as their own God given responsibility and another person whom God gave them to minister to and so they took her with them.  While there, Biddy transcribed Oswald's messages in shorthand, as she had done in England.

After some time of ministering in Egypt Oswald died and Biddy was left a widow and with a young child to look after.  Biddy didn't despair and kept on with the work that she believed God still wanted her to do.  She took over some of the teaching sessions Oswald had held and often used his works, reading out loud from them.  Some time after World War I ended Biddy and Kathleen returned home and Biddy continued the work she had started while in Egypt, of typing up and translating her shorthand notes of Oswald's lectures  (she had trunks/boxes full of them) and sorting through and compiling them into pamphlets and books.  She saw it as a God-ordained ministry granted to her, to organize and publish her husband's preaching.  Late in life Biddy ended up having some mental problems (not fully explained) and she died in 1966 at the age of eighty two.

 I want to mention that I had some concerns about Biddy and Oswald's beliefs.  But let me say first that this biography seems more like an overview of the couple and their faith,  so I am not sure the extent of their beliefs in most of these things.  I'll mention a few of my concerns.  First, they were associated with the Holiness movement, and from what I understand that is associated with believing that Christians can attain perfect sinless lives on this earth despite having yet unglorified bodies.  But Biddy and Oswald never seemed to think that they ever attained that perfection, at least from what I learned of them in this book. 

Second, they had some weird views of how God directs His people.  They used isolated verses from the Bible to confirm some of their decisions. For instance, while in Egypt, having gone there before sending for Biddy and Kathleen, Oswald was trying to figure out where they would live. I quote from the book,  "Oswald possessed no funds to build but expected God to supply what he required.  God confirmed the decision when Oswald dread the Daily Light verse that night, taken from 2 Chronicles 6:18: 'Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built!'"  That was just plain weird. I think that Chambers was highly in error in treating the Scriptures that way and that he was treading on dangerous ground.  That type of hermeneutics seems to make people lean toward becoming modern false 'prophets'.  Saying, "thus sayeth the Lord!" when the Lord has not said it (see Ezek 22:28).  If the context of the Scriptures do not matter, and if we do not use a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic then the Scriptures can be made to say anything we want them to say!

And lastly, Biddy 'preached' at times, and that to men.  She led some of the study sessions through the Bible (including leading some of the Sunday sessions), and had other studies while in Egypt.  I am not sure if she used Oswald's lectures (reading them out loud as she often did for the classes she took over) or if she came up with her own.  I felt rather uncomfortable with that as it goes against what the Bible says about women not speaking in a teaching position in an assembly of the church that includes men (and she mainly would have had men as her audience out there in Egypt).

Despite concerns like the above I still liked this biography, it was well written and quite interesting.  And I still liked Biddy and Oswald overall and thought that they were good examples, especially in realizing the sovereignty of God in life, and their submission to whatever He ordained to happen in their lives (even recognizing His hand in the interruptions of daily life).  I'll end with a quote (from Oswald I think) that I particularly liked, "We have to trust in God whether He sends us money or not, whether He gives us health or not.  We must have faith in God, not in His gifts."

Many thanks to the folks at Baker Books for sending me a free review copy of this book (My review did not have to be favorable)!  

My Rating: 4 Out of 5 Stars

****

This book may be purchased at places like Amazon and Christianbook.com

Daily Readings from: The Christian in Complete Armour - by William Gurnall

I have read a good chunk of the unabridged Christian in Complete Armour by William Gurnall, it is very good but HUGE, you kind of need to plough through it. This book, Daily Readings from The Christian in Complete Armour, was an excellent idea!  Breaking it up into small chunks for daily reading makes it a much easier read, and gives you a good taste of Gurnall's great skill of teaching and illustrating various spiritual warfare concepts.

The best summary that I can come up with is that this book is like having a spiritual commanding officer giving you a rousing speech each day to be ready to fight the battles to come.  Gurnall talks about the armor our General has provided for us and each individual piece's purpose,  he instructs us to keep in  mind that we should 'wrestle' with the enemy in the way our General has instructed us to do so, not merely in the way that we think we can defeat him,  he also examines the strategy of our spiritual enemy, and gives many warnings about his tactics

Every day Gurnall will warn you about the enemy's deceptive tactics, alerting you with statements like, "When Satan cannot hide the truth, he works to hinder the practical application of it."  and  "If you wish to stand firm in the midst of suffering, forewarn yourself of this fact:  Temptation is never stronger than when relief seems to dress itself in the very sin that Satan is suggesting."  He'll remind you to be ready to follow the Commander's orders at any moment, "Sometimes soldiers do not have as much as an hour's warning before they  must take the field.  And so you, too, might be called out to suffer for God …. Abraham, for example, had very little time to deal with his heart and persuade it to obey God by offering his child.  'Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest' - not in a year, not a month or week, but now (Genesis 22:2).  This command came during the night and 'early in the morning' he was on his way to the mountain (v.3). .....Sometimes God makes very sudden changes in our personal lives."  He will remind you to keep your focus during suffering, "Let those who will, mock and scorn your faith.  What is Heaven worth if you cannot bear a little shame?  If they spit in your face, Christ will wipe it off.  They may laugh at you now, but not later.  The final outcome has already been declared, and you have sided with the victor."  And reminds us that our Commander is invincible, "Let Lucifer choose his way; God is a match for him at every weapon.  If he assaults the saint by persecution, God will oppose him.  If he works by a subtlety, God is ready there also.  The devil and his whole council are mere fools to God.  The more wit and craft in sin, the worse, because it is employed against an all-wise God who cannot be outwitted."

But remember, this book shouldn't be used to replace the Word of God, if you are going to ready any book every day that book should be the Bible.  Like any book, besides the Bible, this book has its flaws, to  name a few, the author may give a bit too much credit to Satan in our spiritual warfare and even in this world in general (he seemed to think that Satan can control the weather), and I don't agree necessarily with all of his advice or application of certain texts, but overall I thought the book was very good, It's now one of my favorite books.  It is VERY motivating and thought-provoking, it is a very good sort of 'push' to have in the mornings to get out and do the work, and fight the battles, that God has ordained for us to face. 

I'll end with one of my favorite, motivating, go out and fight the good fight type of quotes from the book:

 "You should find great strength and encouragement in the knowledge that your commission is divine.  God Himself underwrites your battle and has appointed His own Son "the captain of [your] salvation" (Hebrews 2:10).  He will lead you on to the field with courage, and bring you off with honor.......For bravery none compares with our Lord.  He never turned  His head from danger, not even when hell's hatred and heaven's justice appeared against Him.  Knowing all that was about to happen, Jesus went forth and said, "Whom seek ye?" (John 18:4).  Satan could not overcome Him - our Savior never lost a battle, not even when he lost His life.  He won the victory, carrying His spoils to heaven in the triumphant chariot of His ascension.  There He makes an open show of them, to the unspeakable joy of saints and angels.    As part of Christ's army, you march in the ranks of gallant spirits.  Every one of your fellow soldiers is a child of a King.  Some, like you, are in the midst of battle, besieged on every side by affliction and temptation.  Others, after many assaults, repulses and rallyings of their faith, are already standing upon the wall as conquerors.  From there they look down and urge you, their comrades on earth, to march up the hill after them.  This is their cry: "Fight to the death , and the City is your own, as now it is ours! For the waging of a few days' conflict, you will be rewarded with Heaven's glory.  One moment of this celestial joy will dry up all your tears, heal all your wounds, and erase the sharpness of the fight with all the joy of your permanent victory"

Many thanks to Moody Publishers for sending me a complimentary copy of this book to review (My review did not have to be favorable).

One of the websites where you may purchase this book is Amazon.com

Short Answers to Big Questions about God, the Bible and Christianity - by Clinton E. Arnold and Jeff Arnold

Short Answers to Big Questions about God, the Bible and Christianity by Clinton E. Arnold and Jeff Arnold is just what its title declares it to be, it is an endeavor to answer, in only a few pages, many questions new Christians, or unbelievers, have about God, the Bible or Christianity.  The book is not as good as I had hoped it would be.  My main problem with it is its presentation of the relationship/interaction between God and mankind. 

 First, its discussions of the love of God toward people are presented too much like the modern concept of "falling in love", an uncontrolled, "couldn't help it" type of thing.  Here are a few quotes to demonstrate what I mean:  "God isn't just loving, he is love……And he isn't just a loving person 'in theory'; he literally, at this very moment, is aware of his deep love for you. "and, "he loves you because he created  you…If  you have a child,  you have felt this love before; you don't love your child because of what they've accomplished; you love them because they are your child.  This is how God sees you. …"  I don't remember anywhere in the Bible where God's love is declared to have been bestowed on us simply because we are His creations.  God created Satan too but He doesn't love him even though he is His creation. "The problem of sin created a serious dilemma for God…It is his nature to hate sin….yet he earnestly wants a relationship with his people…..", "In his perfect purity, holiness, and righteousness, God is deeply offended by our sin.  Yet he longs to have a close relationship with us.  Since he cannot simply overlook our offenses, he devised a merciful and loving plan to deal with this problem…"  To me, this makes God's love come across as a human loving a pitiable sickly little child, but God's love isn't generally presented that way (unless you count the picture of God's love towards Israel, but even then, it was His choice), it's more like God choosing to love a corpse, or a zombie…those dead in their sins and yet using their decaying faculties to rage against God and His attributes and desires. God CHOSE to have pity on us, God CHOSE to love us detestable creatures, creatures who naturally choose to despise Him and His laws in favor of their own selves and desires.  He chose to make us New Creations, breathing spiritual life into us. 

Second, in answering the question "Why Bad things happen to good people", part of the explanation is given like this, "God gave us the free will to make our own decisions.  Without this freedom, we would be unable to truly love God - or each other, for that matter; we would simply be robots following commands.  So when we ask how an all-powerful God could allow someone else to wrong us, the problem with what we're asking is that God's power has nothing to do with it;….God could, if he wished, end all pain on this earth right now.  He could step in and directly control everyone's actions, thoughts, and feelings in order to keep anyone from doing anything that causes harm.  But imagine the cost:  an entire world full of people who move around like puppets, never saying or doing anything that wasn't controlled for them.  No one wants that." So will we be robots in Heaven, not able to choose evil?  When God makes us into New Creations, Christians, does that make us puppets?  Is it really more loving for God to let a person choose to make choices that will lead to condemnation for eternity than it is for Him to change their dispositions to desire the right and accept Him so that they will live in the New Heaven and the New earth for eternity?  That logic doesn't come from the Bible.  That logic doesn't even make sense when it comes to parents with their children, it would not be loving for a parent to let their child slap their brothers and sisters around and then also give them the option to choose to stick their finger into a light-socket.  The loving thing to do would be to stop them from doing both of those things, not giving them a choice in the matter, even if they aren't happy in the process of being stopped.  "…without this freedom, we would be unable to truly love God.." really? Where does the Bible say that?  True love comes from God (see 1 John), it doesn't originate with human beings.  God defines love, and we learn in the Bible that true love is selfless.  So to rephrase the above statement, "Without the freedom to be selfish, we wouldn't be able to truly be selfless?"  As you can see, I don't believe that question about why bad things happen to good people was answered biblically in this book. 

Things like the above really bothered me.  This is not to say that there weren't good things in the book, there were.  I just don't think that this book would necessarily be the best to give an unbeliever or an immature Christian because some of the answers given do not match up with what the Bible says.  I really liked their section on why we don't always sense the presence of God. That chapter contains many statements that I really like, actually, I think they're excellent! So I'll end on a positive note with my favorite excerpt from the book:

 
Soon after I stopped feeling this intense love and presence of God, I started grasping for things that normally brought that passion back.  I would drive almost an hour away to find churches with great worship bands and speakers……I knew on some level that there was something off about the way I was approaching this, but I felt like I needed to do whatever it took to get that feeling back.  And then one day it struck me:  my faith had stopped being about God and had become about how I felt.  That was really selfish of me.  It shouldn't have mattered how I felt if I trusted that God was real.  At that point the best thing for someone like me was to remove those feelings so that my faith would once again become about God, not myself. ….the end result was that I began learning how  to center my life around God with or without the feelings that I once had…….To make Christianity purely about feelings is to make it about ourselves rather than God.  God doesn't promise to constantly flood us with intense emotion…From the earliest days of the church, Christians have based their closeness to God on theology - on what they knew about God from Scripture - rather than feelings.  Many of the first Christians shed blood for believing in God.  If anyone had the right to feel distant from God, wouldn’t it be the people suffering for his sake? Instead, the early disciples rejoiced at the chance to suffer for Christ (Acts 5:41)."


I received a free review copy of this book from the Baker Books Blogger Program and my review did not have to be favorable.