Five Missionary Heroes

The Anniversary of “Through Gates of Splendor”

The Life Story of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCulley,

Pete Fleming, and Roger Youderian

A message preached at Faith Baptist Church on January 8, 2006

on the 50^th anniversary of the martyrdom of these 5 missionary heroes.

TEXT:  Psalm 40:8 = “I delight to do thy will, O my God…”

INTRODUCTION:  Here is a quotation from the journal of one of America’s most famous missionaries: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose.”

Today I want to share with you the story of the man who wrote these famous words. 

·         It’s the story of 5 families: 5 men; their 5 wives, and their combined 9 children.

·         It’s a story of 5 missionaries who, 50 years ago today, (January 8, 1956) gave their lives to spread the Gospel to a savage Indian tribe in Ecuador, South America.

These 5 men were not the 1^st missionaries to give their lives for their Savior. 

(Just 12 years before that) In 1944, five missionaries working with New Tribes Missions in Bolivia were killed trying to reach the fierce Ayores Tribe. The five were probably murdered weeks before the search party even left to look for them. Their bodies were never found, and the entire event received little notice by the world press. After all, this news item was buried beneath the happenings of World War II. Today, if someone mentions the five missionary martyrs of Bolivia few recall the names of Cecil and Bob Dye, Dave Bacon, George Hosbach, or Eldon Hunter.

However, I’m sure many of you (if not all of you) have heard the story of missionaries Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Pete Fleming, Ed McCulley, and Roger Youderian.

·         It was a pretty famous story in the 50s!

-          The story I am about to share with you made the headlines around the world.

-          When they were killed, the US Navy and the Ecuadorian Army flew in to find their bodies.

-          Life Magazine and Reader’s Digest published detailed accounts of what had happened.

·         This is a story of courage.

·         This is a story about commitment to the will of God.

·         This is a story about selfless compassion!

·         This is a story about the power of forgiveness.

·         This is a remarkable story about the powerful grace of God!

(INTRODUCTION)  It could be that you don’t know much about Jim, Nate, Pete, Ed, and Roger --- so let me introduce you to these men and their families….

THE FIRST MAN: Roger Youderian came off a Montana ranch.

1. He was an airborne ranger (paratrooper) who fought at the Battle of the Bulge and was in General Eisenhower’s honor guard.
2. He later went to Northwestern School in Minneapolis, where he met his wife, Barbara.
3. He graduated from the College in 1950, and from the department of missionary medicine in 1951.
4. By 1955, he and his wife, Barbara (Orton '50), and two children, Jerry and Beth, were serving with Gospel Missionary Union to the headhunting Jivaro people in Ecuador.
5. The Jivaros were another savage tribe in south Ecuador who were famous at the time for the practice of shrinking heads.
6. Roger & Barbara actually worked out of another missionary station south of the Elliots, but were introduced to the other 4 families by Nate Saint, the jungle pilot.
7. The 4 men asked Roger to help them in their secret endeavor to reach the Auca Indians because he had some experience with savage tribes already.

THE SECOND MAN: Peter Fleming was from Seattle, Washington.

1. At 27, he was a year younger than Jim Elliot.
2. Pete had recently received his M.A. in literature.
3. BUT… the Lord called him into Missions…
4. In 1952, he sailed with Jim Elliot for Ecuador.
5. At the time, both men were bachelors.  Peter had broken off his relationship with his childhood sweetheart when he felt God’s call to missions – But the Lord directed them back to each other.
6. In 1954, he was married to his childhood sweetheart, Olive.
7. Peter had written in his journal these words: “I would gladly give my life for that tribe.”

THE THIRD MAN: Ed McCully was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin

1. He was president of his senior class at Wheaton College.
2. He won the National Hearst Oratorical Contest in San Francisco in 1949 and went on to Marquette University Law School. His goal was to be a lawyer!
3. One day shortly after Ed had won the national oratorical championship, he came into the locker room following an athletic workout. Jim Elliot was in the locker room as well and a classmate recalls seeing Jim go up to Ed, grab him by the scruff of the neck, and say, "Well, McCully, so you won the national oratory championship, did you? Great stuff, McCully. You have a lot of talent. But who gave you that talent? God did, and you know it. So what are you going to do with it? Spend it on yourself all your life? You have no business doing that, McCully. You owe it to God to give it back to Him. You should be a missionary, and I'm praying that God will make you one."
4. Ed went to Law School for one year, but felt God calling him into Missions.  On the day before registration of his 2^nd year, he surrendered to be a missionary. 
5. On that same day (Sept. 22, 1950) he wrote Jim Elliot a letter: “I have one desire now - to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it, Maybe He will send me someplace where the Name of Jesus Christ is unknown. It’s kind of like putting all your eggs in one basket. But we’ve already put our trust in Christ for salvation, why not do it as far as our life is concerned?”
6. Ed and his wife, Marilou came to Ecuador in 1952 with their 8 mo. old son.
7. When he died on January 8^th, he and his wife, Marilou, had two sons (3 & 1) and they were expecting a third in about a month.

THE FOURTH MAN: Nate Saint was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1. Nate Saint had flown missionaries in and out of the Ecuadorean jungle since 1948 for Missionary Aviation Fellowship.
2. Nate was a builder, inventor, and a skilled pilot.
3. Nate had devised an ingeniously simple back up fuel system for single-engine planes.
4. Nate was married to a nurse, Marj, whom he had met in the service. They had three children at the time he was killed.
5. Nate Saint was only seven years old in 1930, when his older brother, Sam, a pilot, took him on his first airplane ride. At ten, Sam even allowed Nate to help fly the plane on a short flight. And guess what? Nate decided that day that he wanted to be a pilot when he grew up, just like his big brother.
6. When Nate was 14 years old, he became very ill. The doctor noticed a small, red cut on his leg from sledding the week before. The doctor said an infection had spread from the cut to the bone in Nate's leg. Because there was no cure for infections back then, (penicillin had not yet been discovered) the doctor prescribed plenty of rest and hoped Nate's body would be strong enough to fight off the infection. Otherwise, he could die.
7. Nate's leg ached so badly, he could not get out of bed for weeks. He spent a lot of time praying, reading his Bible and thinking of inventions. The infection eventually went away, but it would return later and change Nate's life.
8. After graduating from high school, Nate joined the Army. It was WWII and he hoped to become a fighter pilot. But just one day before he was to begin pilot's training, he began to feel sick. He noticed that the old scar on his leg had turned red. The infection had come back after five years. Can you believe that? The army told Nate he was no longer fit to be a fighter pilot.
9. He was very sad, but he didn't stay sad long. Instead, he used his time learning to fix airplanes. He would look for another way to learn to fly.
10. After leaving the armed forces, Nate got his commercial pilot's license, hoping to become an airline pilot like his brother Sam.
11. However, one day a missionary called Nate and asked him to come to Mexico to fix a plane that had crashed in the jungle. Nate went, fixed the badly damaged plane and decided to become a missionary pilot instead.
12. As a missionary supply pilot, Nate spent a lot of time delivering food and medical supplies to missionary families. He also flew the missionaries to villages that would have taken them many days to walk to in the thick jungle.
13. Nate often had to drop supplies out of the plane while he was flying over a village, because there was no place to land the plane. The goods would often get stuck in the treetops or end up broken on the ground. So Nate invented a way to lower supplies in a bucket attached to his plane by a rope. The bucket would hang completely still as Nate circled overhead, allowing the missionaries to remove their supplies.
14. On December 30, 1948, missionary supply pilot Nate Saint was involved in a terrible plane crash.
15. Nate slowly awakened in an Ecuadorian hospital. His passengers were not seriously hurt, but Nate had a broken back, a badly sprained ankle, and he was temporarily blinded for several days. He would spend the next month in the hospital and five months after that in a body cast.
16. Can you imagine wanting to fly again after that? The accident did not stop Nate. He could not wait to get back in his plane. He knew being a jungle pilot was dangerous: (fifty-one people died in jungle plane crashes within six months after his accident.) Even still, Nate was sure God had called him to do this work – and he just refused to quit!!
17. His sister, Rachel Saint, was also a missionary in Ecuador at this time.

THE FIFTH MAN: JIM ELLIOT was born in Portland, Oregon.

1.      Jim attended Wheaton Bible College --- where he and his roommate, Peter Fleming, devoted their lives to Christ.

2.      While in Bible College, he heard a statistic that profoundly challenged him: "There is one Christian worker for every 50,000 people in foreign lands, while there is one to every 500 in the United States."

3.      God began to burden his heart for people who had never heard the Gospel.  He used to preach about the importance of Missions and argue, “Why should some hear the Gospel twice, when there are others who have never heard the Gospel once?”

4.      One summer he went on a mission’s trip to Mexico where he stayed with a missionary family to learn Spanish for six weeks. Here, he felt his missionary call to South America.

5.      On February 4, 1952, Jim Elliot and Ed McCully (2 bachelors) sailed for Ecuador on an 18-day trip from California.

6.      The two men stayed with another missionary family for 6 months until they learned the language.

7.      They then moved further inland to minister at a Quichua (Kee-chew-wah) Indian village to take the place of a retiring missionary.

8.      During his college years, Jim had met a young lady named Elizabeth Howard.  They talked about marriage, but he just couldn’t get peace about getting married at that time -- his heart was focused on getting to the mission field! In her journal Elizabeth wrote, "Agreeing…the matter was too big for us to handle, we decided to pray about it separately.”  They said their "good-byes", and wrote to each other.

9.      Amazingly, Elisabeth Howard also had been called to do missionary work. She ended up on the opposite side of Ecuador from where Jim was –and they later got married on October 8, 1953!

10.  Jim & Elizabeth worked together in translating the New Testament into the Quechua Indian language at the new mission station.

11.  God had led the two couples (Jim & Elizabeth Elliot AND Ed & Marilou McCully) to set up a Missions Station at an abandoned oil station called Shell Mera.  The Shell Oil Company had opened it up, but after 12 of their men were killed by the Auca Indians they had abandoned it because it was too dangerous!

12.  God gave them a little girl, Valerie, on February 27, 1955.  She was not quite 1 year old when her father was killed.

13.  It was during the year 1955 that God really began to burden the hearts of these missionaries about the nearby Auca Indian Tribe.

14.  Actually, it was Nate Saint, who on September 19, 1995, discovered that they had a village pretty close by. (One day while flying over the jungle, Nate noticed a village that he had not seen before – which belonged to these Auca Indians.)

THE AUCA INDIANS:

1. They were a Stone Age Indian tribe known then as the Aucas (Ow-cuz), known now as the Waodani (Wah-oh-dah-nee).
2. They were a violent and murderous tribe that had never had any peaceable contact with the outside world. The Aucas hated all outsiders and had killed all outsiders ever caught in their area.
3. They had never been subjugated by soldiers or won over by missionaries.
4. Groups of Aucas even turned on each other, setting up a chain of terror with no end.  Surprise attacks split and scattered their own families.
5. By 1955, there were only about 500 Waorani left. They lived in four groups: the Gikitaidi, Piyaemoidi, Baiwaidi and Wepeidi.
6. Few Auca men lived beyond their twenties.
7. The Aucas had killed many Quichuas. In fact, the Aucas were so fierce that the Quichua people who surrounded them, named them "Aucas" --- their Indian word for 'savages'

Jim and Nate, Ed & Pete began praying about a way to tell the Aucas about Jesus.  No one knew their language!!  They did not accept any outsiders!!

How could they possibly take the Gospel to these people??

DAYUMA:  By the miraculous Providence of Almighty God, the missionaries came into contact with one young Auca woman --- named Dayuma.

1.      Dayuma had fled the tribe after her family had been killed.

2.      Dayuma had somehow ended up in the Mission Station where Nate’s sister, Rachel Saint was working. 

3.      After she had fled from her tribe, she had lived with the Quechua Indians – and had married one of them and had 2 sons. 

4.      An epidemic had taken her husband and one of her two sons.  She was literally wanting / wishing to die when the missionary ladies found her.  They comforted and cared for her – and found out she was really an Auca. 

5.      After many months of patient labor, Dayuma got saved.  She wrote a Christmas card to one of the missionary pilots that said:

GOD’S SON HE GAVE,
MY SAVIOUR HE IS!
Dayuma
Hallelujah!

6.      Through Dayuma, the missionaries were able to learn enough phrases of the Auca language to initiate contact.

7.      From Dayuma they learned that these Indians did not even have a word in their language for “God”!!

8.      Later on Dayuma would be instrumental in reaching her people for Christ.

OPERATION AUCA:

1. On October 1, 1955 --- Jim, Nate, Pete, Ed, & (now) Roger …began to work on a plan to make contact with the Aucas.
2. They kept their plan a secret. They used the code name “Terminal City” for the nearby Auca village that Nate had spotted from the air. They spoke in code over the radio because they didn’t want the Ecuadorian Army to locate the Aucas and attack them.
3. What they decided to do was fly over the villages and lower gifts to the people.
4. Nate was not only a skilled pilot but also an inventor. He discovered that if he flew his Piper in a tight circle with the door off, he could reel out a long nylon line with a bucket on the end holding a gift. He thought this would be a perfect way to win the trust of the Aucas without putting anyone in danger.
5. October 6, 1955: Nate circled over the Auca village in his Piper plane, reeled out the nylon line and dropped an aluminum kettle. Marked with streamers, it contained 20 brightly colored buttons and a bag of rock salt.
6. Every week after that, Nate dropped gifts: machetes, axe-heads, shirts, shorts, kettles. . .
7. Using a public address system, they repeated friendly phrases that Jim had collected from Dayuma: "Biti miti punimupa: I like you; I want to be your friend."
8. Soon large numbers of Aucas were converging for the gift drops.
9. November 12, 1955, was a turning point. The Aucas took their gift of an axe head and returned a feather crown in the bucket. The five missionaries were ecstatic.
10. Jim and the other missionaries felt the time had come to meet the Aucas face-to-face.
11. First, a landing spot had to be found. One of the sand bars on the Curaray River would have to do. Nate found a good one about four and a half miles from Terminal City. He ran simulated landings on it, touching his wheels to the sand to test its firmness. It seemed okay. They called the landing strip “Palm Beach”.

12. In January 1956, after months of preparation, everything was ready for the big meeting!!

Day 1 [Tuesday, January 3rd]

1. After the 7am radio contact with Nate's wife, Marj, back in Shell Mera, the five had breakfast.
2. They had a brief Prayer Service. Each one prayed aloud, then they sang a favorite hymn: “We Rest on Thee” – which is based on II Chronicles 14:11.  The last verse goes like this:

"We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender,
Thine is the battle, Thine shall be the praise
When passing through the gates of pearly splendour
Victors, we rest with Thee through endless days."

3. Nate flew 5 flights into their new base on the sandbar they called “Palm Beach”.

-          Flight 1 = Nate brought Ed McCully in with some supplies

-          Flight 2 = Nate brought Jim & Roger in. Jim brought a harmonica, a View-Master with picture reels and a yo-yo to entertain Waorani visitors. He also had a flashlight, snakebite kit and his notebook full of Wao words learned from Dayuma.

-          Flights 3-5 = were for more supplies: two-way radios, food, boards and aluminum for a pre-fabricated tree house

-          They decided to take the plane out for the night in case the river flooded or they were attacked.

Day 2 [Wednesday, January 4th]:

1.      Nate shuttled Pete in.

2.      The men spent hours walking on the edge of the jungle, holding out gifts, and calling Auca phrases towards the jungle – but nothing happened!

3.      Nate and Pete flew out to stay overnight at the Mission Station.

Day 3 [Thursday, January 5th] started with a disappointment - Ed, Jim and Roger found the gift they had left at the foot of the tree house for the Aucas, the night before, untaken. They called into the jungle.  They even circled the village in the plane inviting the Indians to come to the river BUT, again, nothing happened.

Day 4 [Friday, January 6th]  11.15am: Nate and Pete were at their cooking shelter, while Roger, Ed and Jim were shouting Auca phrases at the trees. Suddenly, a man's voice replied and a young man [Naenkiwi], a teenage girl [Gimari] and a woman [Mintaka] appeared.

NOTE: What the missionaries did not know then – and wasn’t found out until almost 2 years later – was that this was Duyama’s younger sister and her aunt!!

1.      It was not easy for them to understand each other since the missionaries only knew a few Auca phrases.

2.      Finally after a little persuasion, they were able to convince the 3 Indians to come into their camp.

3.      One of the missionaries gave them knives that greatly pleased them.

4.      The younger Auca woman went up to the plane and started making motions with her hands at the plane. The man also moved toward the plane examining it intently.

5.      The missionaries promptly named the man "George" and the young girl "Delilah."

6.      By the signs that they made they understood that the Indians were interested in a ride, so Nate started up the engine and flew off the narrow strip with "George" in the back of the plane. Nate steered the plane in the direction of the village realizing his opportunity to use his passenger as propaganda. "George," who was wild with delight, was hanging out the plane window screaming Auca phrases to his fellow villagers.

7.      When they got back to their campsite, the missionaries showed the Indians modern things such as rubber bands, balloons and balls.

8.      Then they had lunch of hamburgers with mustard.

9.      Toward the end of the visit, the Indians showed signs that they wanted to stay the night on the beach with them. The missionaries hospitably set up a hut and said that they could sleep there for the night. All of a sudden, Delilah gave a shrill cry and headed off toward the jungle with George following close behind. Soon after, the older woman left.

10.  They had no idea why they left, but the 5 missionaries were encouraged by the visit!

Day 5 [Saturday, January 7th]: No Waorani came to Palm Beach. The five read, wrote, swam and practiced the Auca language for when their visitors returned.

Day 6 [Sunday, January 8th]:

1. Nate flew alone over Gikita's village, seeing only a handful of women and children there but then he spotted a pack of about ten men that looked like they were headed toward Palm Beach.
2. At 12.30, Nate radioed Marj, "Looks like they'll be here for the early afternoon service. Pray for us. This is the day! Will contact you next at four-thirty."
3. At 4.30pm, Marj tuned in to Nate's frequency on their two-way radio. Only static. She waited. There was no sound. The minutes passed, lengthened into hours. Silence.

ALL 5 MISSIONARIES HAD BEEN KILLED BY THE AUCAS…

THEY REFUSED TO USE THEIR GUNS:  The 5 missionaries had carried guns with them into the jungle.  In fact, Jim Elliot had a gun in his pocket when his body was found.  But they had agreed amongst themselves that they would not use them on an unsaved Indian.  They had felt that since they were there to bring them the Gospel there was no way they would be instrumental in sending one of them to hell for all eternity…..  so, in the end, they refused to use their guns!

The next morning another missionary pilot flew over the beach to look for the men. He saw only the badly damaged plane on the beach.

News quickly spread around the world about the five missing missionaries. A United States military search team went to the beach, found the missionaries' bodies, and buried them. The Funeral Service on the beach lasted only 3 minutes – because of fear that they would be attacked!

BUT… that was NOT the end of Operation Auca!!!  

1.      Four of the widows went back home for a brief time.

2.      Marilou McCully returned 8 months later (after having her baby) to work in a home/school for missionary children)

3.      Marj Saint came back to work with the Indians for awhile.

4.      Elizabeth Elliot and her 1-year old daughter, Valerie, stayed on to continue the work with Nate Saint’s sister, Rachel.

HOW DID THEY REACH THOSE SAVAGE INDIANS?

HOW THEY REACHED THE AUCAS:

1. At this time, Dayuma was the only Auca Indian that the missionaries knew.

2. Dayuma was all torn up when she learned her people had killed the five missionaries. She longed to share with the her people how God could teach them to live well, that God could erase their hearts and forgive them the awful sin of killing. But she feared they would kill her and fought God's tugs at her heart to go back to her people.

3. All the missionaries could do was pray.  They were praying that somehow God would use Dayuma to reach her people.

4. Many times Rachel would come with the news that Dayuma had disappeared again. Often, she would disappear for a week, two weeks, sometimes three, into the jungle to wrestle with God.

5. Finally, Dayuma returned to say, 'I'm ready to go!'

6. Dayuma and Rachel held hands and prayed for God’s protection while they stood by the plane which was taking her back to her people. They knew that she might be walking straight into the jaws of death.
7. They flew to the former Shell Oil strip, as close to Auca territory as they could land.

8. At the Missions Station they were shocked to find 2 other Auca ladies!  One was Dayuma’s aunt Mintaka [the older lady who had visited on Palm Beach] and Gikita's wife, Maengamo. The two Auca women had left their people. They had been helping Elisabeth Elliot learn their language.

9. Dayuma and the two older ladies, Mintaka and Maengamo, went back to their village to share the Gospel and see if they could invite the missionaries in.

10. Dayuma had been absent from her people and living with outsiders for twelve years. What would happen to this brave Auca woman? Would they ever see her again? Only God knew.

11. They were gone for 2 weeks. They didn’t hear anything from them. They didn’t even see any sign of her when they flew the plane over the village.  What was happening?

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE VILLAGE:

1. Dayuma’s relatives were amazed when she returned to their village safe.
2. They assumed she had been cannibalized by the strangers.
3. She explained that the missionaries had come peaceably.
4. Dayuma also had an object lesson to help them understand how Jesus died as the sacrifice for sin. “Just as you killed the foreigners on the beach, Jesus was killed for you.”

September 25, 1958

1. …18 months after their husbands had been murdered…

2. Elizabeth Elliot, Rachel Saint, and Marj Saint were at the Missions Station on the edge of the jungle.

3. They heard a voice singing – it was coming from the jungle!  They listened – Whoever it was, was singing, 'Jesus loves me.'

4. Dayuma came out of the jungle!! But she wasn't alone!! Behind her were 5 other Auca ladies with 4 children!!!

5. The ten Aucas brought with them an almost unbelievable invitation from their people. “We did wrong to kill those five "cuwoody" ['outsiders']. We want to learn to live well. We want to learn to know God. Tell the two "cuwoody" (outsider) women we'll build a house for them. Tell them to come!"

6. In the fall of 1958, Rachel Saint and Elizabeth “Betty” Elliot and her toddler, Valerie, went to live with the Aucas. While Valerie played with the children of her father’s murderers, Rachel and Betty became acquainted with the murderers themselves: Gikita, Kimo, Nimonga, Dyuwi, Minkayi, and Tona.

7. Many of the Aucas became Christians.

8. Of the men who led the killing party that fateful day (50 years ago today), three of them got saved and became leaders of the Waodani church.

9. Nine years later, the first copies of the Gospel of Mark in Waorani were dedicated at “God’s Speaking House.” Kimo (one of the murderers) prayed, “Father God, You are alive. This is Your day and all of us have come to worship You. They brought us copies of Your Carving, enough for everybody. We accept it, saying, ‘This is the truth.’ We want all of your carving.”

10. The leader of the tribe was a man named Gikita.  He led the party that killed Jim, Nate, Ed. Roger, & Pete.  He got saved and became a missionary to his own people.

11. Not long after he got saved, he told Rachel: “I used to hate and kill but now the Lord has healed my heart…My heart was black with sin, but Jesus' blood having dripped and dripped, God has erased my heart. Now I want to live loving Him.”

12. When Rachel Saint went to be with the Lord in 1994, they came and told Gikita, and here is what he said: "Dying I will again see my sister Nemo (Star) in God's place. I will see her little brother (Nate) whom I myself speared and, laughing and happy, we will live together in peace."

13. Before Gikita died  (Feb. 13, 1997) at close to 80 years: "When we killed Nemo's brother and Gikadi's husband and their three friends, we did not do well, but dying we will see them again. I will just wrap my arms around them and laughing and happy we will live together in peace."

14. Mrs. Elliot stayed there in that village for 2 years!

15. Rachel stayed there for 40 years – until she died in 1994.

16. Nate Saint’s son, Steve, is a missionary pilot there today!!

17. After her husband was killed, Marilou McCully returned to her family’s home in Michigan for Matt’s birth. She spent the next several months traveling around the country to different church groups, telling the story of what had happened, speaking more than 100 times.

18. Eight months later she returned to Ecuador with her 3 children, where she ran a home for missionaries’ children for six years.

19. In the year 2000, Ed’s son, Matt (who was about to be born when his father was martyred) went back to Ecuador with his own children to visit the tribe and introduce his daughters to the natives.  His oldest daughter, Abby (17) got baptized in the same river -- near where her grandfather was martyred.

NOTE: It took a lot of grace and courage and compassion AND FORGIVENESS – for those ladies to go into that village and help teach those Indians about Jesus!!

What made these men and women do what they did? 

THE ANSWER = in their own journals and writings and messages…

1.      In a recorded message, Nate Saint made this statement: “During the last war we were taught to recognize that, in order to obtain our objective, we had to be willing to be expendable … Yet, when the Lord Jesus asks us to pay the price for world evangelization, we often answer…It costs too much…(BUT) God didn’t hold back His only Son…”

2.      In 1948, Jim Elliot wrote in one of his notebooks: "God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus."

3.      While in Bible College Jim Elliot also wrote: “O God, save me from a life of barrenness, following a formal pattern of ethics, and give instead that vital contact of soul with Thy divine life that fruit may be produced, and Life-abundant living-may be known again as the final proof for Christ’s message and work.”

4.      In another journal, Jim wrote: “He makes His ministers a flame of fire.’ Am I ignitable?”  “God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be aflame. But a flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul short life? In me there dwells the Spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him.”

5.      One of my favorite lines that Jim wrote was this one: “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

·         They were NOT trying to become heroes.

·         They had no longing to become martyrs.

·         They simply wanted to please God – whatever the cost!

What made these men and women do what they did? 

THE ANSWER = in the Scripture….

Psalm 40:8 = “I delight to do thy will, O my God…”

·         This is a story of courage.

·         This is a story about selfless compassion!

·         This is a story about the power of forgiveness.

·         This is a remarkable story about the powerful grace of God!

·         This is a story about commitment to the will of God.

·         This is a story that leaves us with a question today: How committed are you to doing the will of God?

1. You may or may not be called to the mission field, but each Christian is called to the delightful adventure of knowing and doing the will of God.
2. Are you seeking God's will for your life? ---- for your family, your finances, your work, your relationships, your service, your life.

3. God's will is best.

4. God is ready and willing to reveal His plan to those men and women who desire Him above all else and delight in Him.

5. It means setting aside your agenda, your ambitions, your plans and dreams and surrendering EVERYTHING to God!

EXAMPLE OF THE PICTURE:

·            An unsaved lady was working in Ecuador as a translator. She had read everything she could about the story of these 5 missionary martyrs. 

·            She had the privilege of meeting Rachel Saint and Elizabeth Eliot – and she just could not understand how these ladies could forgive as they had done.

·            Her own husband had walked out on her right after her baby girl was born -- and she hated him for it.

·            She got a chance to go up and visit the Mission Station at Shell Mera.  The missionaries there, Cecil and Colleen Davis, invited her to spend the holiday with them.

·            On the living room wall of the guest house that Nate Saint had built was something that captured her attention!  This, along with the testimonies of the missionaries she had talked to, brought her under conviction – and she got saved!!

·            What did she see on the wall?  What kind of picture could bring such conviction upon this unsaved woman?

·            It was simply a large blank canvass.

·            On the lower edge of the white paper, Cecil had lettered 1 Peter 1:8, “Whom having not seen, ye love…”

CONCLUSION:

1. You have not seen Jesus Christ; do you love Him?
2. Do you know Jesus Christ as your Saviour?
3. Are you surrendered to do God’s will for your life?
4. Jim Elliot wrote: “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.” Are you living for Jesus with everything you’ve got??
5. Are you struggling to forgive another?  Think of these widows. And how God gave them the grace to choose forgiveness rather than bitterness – you can do the same!!