Ellen Vaughn - Becoming Elisabeth Elliot

Mincaye with Ellen Vaughn, Amazon jungle, July 2019

Foreword

I was lying in a hotel bed late at night, paralyzed with crumpled sheets half-covering my useless limbs. It felt strange to welcome my heroine of the faith into the room. As she approached my bed, her Bible pressed to her chest, Elisabeth Elliots commanding demeanor softened with her smile. I was twenty-six years old and seasoned by a decade of quadriplegia, but still, I was awestruck.

We were both speaking at the same conference, and after my talk, Elisabeth had asked to meet with me. She wanted to hear more. She had said, Is it all that extraordinary for others to see the stamp of Christ on your life? If we feel it is, what shall we then say of the state of Christendom?

Im not all that extraordinary, I thought as Elisabeth smoothed her skirt and sat on the bed opposite me. But her comment did cut to the heart of things... and thats what I admired about her. I loved her matter-of-fact way of living by daily dying for Christ. It was a no-nonsense way of looking at things. Just pull-yourself-up by the grace of God, hoist your cross on your shoulder, and follow your Savior down the bloodstained path to Calvary. And dont complain about it.

I was first introduced to Elisabeth Elliot in 1965 when, in high school, I read her book Through Gates of Splendor . I was mesmerized by the haunting photo of the twenty-nine-year-old jungle missionary holding her baby and staring out a window through a cloud of grief. Her husband of less than three years had just been savagely speared to death by the very Stone-Age people he had tried to reach for Christ. What drove her to remain on the mission field, and then to bring the gospel to the very people who had murdered Jim and his colleagues? Was Jesus worth it?

I had a chance to ask myself the same question right after high school graduation, when a broken neck landed me in those dark valleys Elisabeth wrote about. Sitting in my wheelchair and turning pages with the eraser-tip end of a pencil, I worked my way through her second book, Shadow of the Almighty . In this woman, I knew Id get the unvarnished truth about God and suffering. I wanted to know if Jesus was worth it. True to form, her writings did not skate the surface. I discovered that she unflinchingly believed her Savior to be ecstasy beyond compare. And after reading more of her books, I heard the Spirit of Jesus whisper in my heart, Be like her.

So now, to have a private audience with my role model was an incredible treasure. In that hotel room, we talked of many things, but landed on the shared satisfaction that neither of us felt all that extraordinary. We were simply followers of Christ who had plumbed the depths of His joy by tasting His afflictions. Those afflictions had cut deep gashes in our hearts through which grace and joy had poured in, stretching and filling our souls with an abundance of our Lord. That night, we relished the loveliness of Jesus, convinced that He was more than worth it.

The hour drew late. Elisabeth was to speak at the conference the next morning, so she stood and gathered her things. But before she left, she turned and said with her chin high, Suffering is never for nothing, Joni.

Its a different era now. Many young people I know dont recognize the name of Elisabeth Elliot. They live in an egalitarian culture where everyones story is extraordinary, whether it has the stamp of Christ or not. The leaders they look up to lack heroic qualities. Courage is rare. Good character, rarer. Moral purity feels arcane. Suffering should be mitigated at all costs. And if it cannot be avoided, it must be drugged, divorced, escaped from, or prayed away.

The timing of this book couldnt be better. We may not know it, but in an age of antiheroes, our souls crave an authentic witness. We long to see a follower of Christ square off against sin and stand firm against the winds of adversity; one whose ironclad character cannot be dismantled. We want to see someone in whom living for Christ and dying for Him is indistinguishable. We crave a visceral story that has meat on it. A story that rises above the average. That soars and inspires.

Becoming Elisabeth Elliot is that story. And no one can tell it better than my old friend Ellen Vaughn. She excels in writing a biographyher meticulous research skills are coupled with an ability to write that is utterly matchless. The first time I read the book you hold in your hands, it blew me away, a little like the house that flew apart when scientists first tested the atomic bomb. I was in awe of her masterly way with words, her intellect; here was a womanthough very different in personality from my herowho wrote and thought like Elisabeth Elliot.

On the following pages, you will come to know the most remarkable Christian woman of the last centurywhat shaped her convictions, forged her faith, and honed an unyielding passion to win souls for Christ. To those who knew her well, she was Betty. To the world, she was Elisabeth, a captain and not a private in the army of God; a soldier among a gallery of heroes, all of them content to leave home and country in order to waste their lives in jungles and caves for the sake of gaining souls for the heavenly kingdom.

That is the husky stuff of which Elisabeth Elliot was made. This book is the story of how she became that way; Ellens second volume will continue with the rest of her story. But what youll read here shows clearly Elisabeths ordinariness , how she was subject to the same temptations and distractions that plague us all, and what she embraced, through Christ, to become extraordinary .