Elisabeth Elliot: What do you want more than anything else in the world? Is it your happiness or your sanctification that you really want?

Lisa Barry: As Christians, we all know the right words to say when someone asks what is most important to us. We quickly declare that we seek God first and everything else comes second. But do our thoughts and actions really agree with our words? Many times they don't. In fact, what a great many people want to do more than anything else is to fall in love, get married and have a family. Is that so wrong? Today on Gateway To Joy, Elisabeth Elliot helps us to harmonize our desire for a relationship with a desire for God's will in our lives. Let's get started.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, continuing today with talks on my book, which is called Quest for Love.

What do you want more than anything else in the world? That's a question that I often like to ask young people. It's amazing how seldom they can come up with a quick answer. I suppose they may be a little shy to admit what that thing is. They don't want to admit it to me, but deep down in their hearts they know what it is that they want more than anything else in the world. But many of them don't, really.

Ask yourself, "Am I praying for my will to be done or thy will to be done?" Is it your happiness, or your sanctification--your holiness, that you really want? Let's be honest with ourselves and honest before God with whatever our deepest desire may be. Many young women very unhesitatingly would tell me that their deepest desire is to have a husband and children. God may or may not have that in mind for them.

In Psalm 66:10 we read, "For you, O God, tested us. You refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads. We went through fire and water. But you brought us to a place of abundance. I will come to your temple with burnt offerings and fulfill my vows to you." The last verse in that psalm says, "Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me."

Proverbs also speaks of the crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, "but the Lord tests the heart." What has to be purified out of the gold and the silver is called dross, dregs, slag, refuse, scum, which is partly due to the rising of dirt and impurities to the surface. The refiner sits at his fire and refines the gold and the silver.

George MacDonald wrote, "Master, look and see thy face, else here I lie forever, blank as any stone." He's referring there, to the fact that the refiner sits until he can see his own reflection in the silver or the gold. Then he knows that it has been adequately refined. So MacDonald says, "Master, look and see thy face, else here I lie forever, blank as any stone."

The refiner will tolerate no flaw because He is gracious, full of grace, and wants the purest silver that his face may be reflected. May I suggest that the quest, or search, or desire for human love is perhaps the strongest desire of most men and women, naturally speaking. But there is a more important quest, and that's holiness.

It may well be that your loneliness, your sense of unfulfillment, your rejection and dejection, are elements in the Refiner's fire. I can hear you say, "There's no comfort in that." Don't you believe that the Refiner wants to make the purest gold and the purest silver? He wants to create from you that which is perfect. Of course, we're not going to reach that stage on this earth, but He is in the process. If we miss the testings here on earth, we'll not find them in any other world. If we evade the cross here on earth, we're not going to find it in another world.

Women often ask me, "Don't you think that God wants to give me a husband, since He hasn't taken away my hunger for marriage?" They often say that they've been praying for years that God would give them a husband and children. Because they have prayed that God would remove that hunger unless He was going to give them a spouse, then since He has not removed it, therefore they conclude that God most certainly has a spouse, a husband, for them.

I can refute that argument from Deuteronomy 8. When Moses is speaking to the people of Israel, he tells them that they are to "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years," speaking of rejection and dejection and aridity. What did He do this for? "To humble you and to test you, in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."

So the Lord not only allowed them to hunger, He actually caused them to hunger. He didn't give them the leeks, and onions, and watermelon, and fish that they were longing for. He gave them His choice of nourishment, which was manna. Can't you imagine the moaning and grumbling? "This is all we get, three times a day. Same old stuff. Manna." Yes, it was a test. It was a refining process. It was in order to show what was in their hearts. "He caused you to hunger and fed you with manna, in order to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you."

This is where the hard truth has to be faced. It was when I was a senior in college that I entered into the period that we jokingly called "Senior Panic." If a senior girl hadn't found a mate on a Christian College campus, where there were all these hundreds of unattached and attractive males, she was panicking, thinking, "There will never be any other place where I can find a husband." Well, I know what it's like. Yes, I am an old lady, but I'm not so old that I can't remember the agonies that I went through, begging the Lord to at least give me a little hint as to whether or not He might some day have a husband for me. I did have a particular man in mind that I very much hoped the Lord might bring me together with, but I had no foundation for that hope whatsoever. This man had not shown an interest in me. I was just interested in him from a distance, like a whole lot of other girls on the campus.

This was a hard, hard lesson for me to learn when I was a senior in college. It was very clear that this was a very acid test, a crucial test. You know the word "crucial" comes from the Latin word for "cross." Would I be willing to relinquish my will, which was to get married, and take up the cross of singleness, perhaps for the rest of my life? Of course, we don't know that it's going to be for the rest of our lives. When a young woman says to me, "I don't think I have the gift of singleness. How do you know if you have the gift of singleness?" My answer is a very simple one, "Are you single today?" "Yes." "Well, if you're single on this particular day, you have the gift of singleness for now. God can change that if God wants to."

But this is where trust comes in. Can God be trusted? In every age, there have been thousands who have patterned their lives on Christ. They have married poverty, conquered sexual hunger. In heroic ages past, they have laughed at the flames. They have told jokes while they were on the rack. Not because they believed that Jesus was good, but because they believed that Jesus was God. The Bible says, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing." If you stop and think about that list, I think it comprises absolutely everything that people ever long for--power, riches, wisdom, strength, honor, glory and blessing.

But the Lamb is also worthy to receive my heart's allegiance. Are you prepared to leave the whole matter in the hands that were wounded for you? Will you trust Him? Will you stop feeling sorry for yourself and undergo the Refiner's fire, the test of hunger in the wilderness, in order that God might find in you a true, humble, trusting heart?

All our problems in life are theological ones. We have to deal with God about them. They have something to do with our spiritual life. It is in these testings, in the winds and the storms, that the Lord is constantly saying, "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying with you. I want you to trust me. I understand your longings. I understand the culture in which you live. I fully understand it. But I want you to trust me." Will you do that for your love life?

Lisa Barry: And that's my prayer that God will bring to mind the things you've heard today so you can apply them in your own life. I know many people will try and tell you the rules have changed in regard to relationships, but there are many universal principles about relationships that no one has been able to alter for hundreds of years. Aren't you glad there's a program that offers such common sense on topics like this. It's not common on the airwaves. But your partnership with us can ensure that these principles are held high without apology. Your contribution to Gateway To Joy is a vote of confidence, and knowing that we belong to the Evangelical Counsel for Financial Accountability, you can have the confidence that your gift will be used properly. Why not drop us a line. Here's our address:

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Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible. Tomorrow Elisabeth talks about sexual purity and how to maintain it. Don't miss that next time on Gateway To Joy.