Valerie Shepard: I will never forget the effect that that whole conference had on me and my own understanding of the fact that I needed to have the personal commitment to Jesus Christ, instead of just relying on my parents? faith?something that I had always believed in.

Lisa Barry: Well, I guess that if anyone might be tempted to ride into Christianity on someone else?s coattails, a likely candidate would be a child of Elisabeth Elliot. That was the voice of Elisabeth?s daughter, Valerie Shepard, who in her teen years discovered that she needed to make her faith personal. I can imagine that was a very difficult time for Valerie. After all, she grew up hearing Scriptures quoted, sermons preached and had a family who modeled what they taught, so it might be easy to assume that Christian faith came bundled altogether in that package. Not so. Valerie had to listen for her own call to commitment, and it was her stepfather, Addison Leitch, who gave the challenge. Find out more about the man who left a legacy of love next on Gateway to Joy.

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 conversation today with my daughter, Valerie Shepard. We?ve been talking about suffering and specifically about the suffering and death of my second husband, Addison Leitch. He used to be the president of Pittsburgh Seminary at one time. Then he was professor at Gordon Conwell Seminary. He was a theologian and a philosopher, but a very wonderful man. Val told us a little bit about how much he had meant to her between her ages 13-18. That was the period in which he was ours. Then the Lord took him in cancer. Welcome, Val. Tell us a little more.

Valerie Shepard: Thank you. I?m so glad to be here. I had said on an earlier taping that I wished I had learned more from my stepfather, just because he was so wise. But I was too carefree and careless at the age of between 13-18. I knew that he was wise. I knew that he was very smart. I remember some good advice?several different pieces of good advice he gave me.

One was that if I came to the table in the morning on a school day, he would look at me across the breakfast table. My mother?I?m thankful for her always having a breakfast on the table at the right time every morning, so that I could have breakfast before I went to school. But if I was the least bit uncheerful, he would say to me, "Take that nothing look off your face."

Elisabeth Elliot: Oh, dear! I can remember he said, "She gives me that nothing look!"

Valerie Shepard: Of course, looking back on it now, I regret that I didn?t appreciate him more and know really how to respond with more eagerness to learn and an eagerness to submit to his authority. I remember his questioning my thinking that I had to go to youth group two times in one weekend. We?d have a Bible study on a Saturday night and then we?d have another youth group meeting at the church on a Sunday night. I remember you and he not going round and round?it wasn?t as if I was always fighting this. But I remember your questioning and his questioning, "Was it really necessary?" Now that I have teenagers of my own, I understand completely why you were thinking that it was unnecessary that I had to go out two nights in a row with the same youth group. It would be wiser to have at least one night during the weekend at home.

Elisabeth Elliot: I think one of the gifts that you gave to him that you were not aware of really was your love for him. I think his family had been quite undemonstrative. His first wife was a very brilliant woman, very organized. Oh, she was an incredible woman. He used to call her the last of the Puritans. For that reason, there was probably a little bit more restraint in the three daughters that they had. He was absolutely swept away by the fact that you would run up to him and throw your arms around him. I don?t think anybody had done that before.

Valerie Shepard: Well, I?m sure I had my moments of showing enjoyment. I just wish?as I look back on it now?I wish that I had given him more of my attention. But I was whirling about and having fun with my friends. I?m thankful that I was in a Bible study during those teenage years. I was with a group of Christian friends, and that makes all the difference in the world.

But I would like to read something that?s written to youth by Samuel Rutherford. He wrote many, many letters as a pastor. It?s rare that you get personal letters from pastors in the congregation these days.

Elisabeth Elliot: You said this is a letter to youth, to young people.

Valerie Shepard: Yes. It?s to young people. He says, "Swim through your temptations and troubles to be at that lovely, amiable person, Jesus, to whom your soul is dear. In your temptations, run to the promises. They be our Lord?s branches hanging over the water that our Lord?s silly, half-drowned children may take a grip of them." I can remember being very silly when I was in my teens.

"If you let that grip go, you will fall to the ground. Are you troubled with the case of God?s church? Our Lord will evermore have her betwixt the sinking and the swimming. He will have her going through a thousand deaths and through hell as a crippled woman, halting and wanting the power of her one side that God may be her staff. That broken ship will come to land because Jesus is the pilot. Faint not; you shall see the salvation of God, else say that God never spake His word by my mouth and I had rather never have been born, ere it were so with me. But my Lord hath sealed me. I dare not deny I have also been in heaviness since I came from you, fearing for my unthankfulness that I be deserted." He had many struggles in his own church and with the powers that be of the church government.

"But the Lord will be kind to me, whether I will or not. I repose that much in His rich grace that He will be loathe to change upon me. As you love me, pray for me in this particular."

Samuel Rutherford gave many pictures, metaphors of who we are in Christ. He often said we would be in a boat, and we must believe that the Lord is sleeping on the pillow in our boat and that He can command the waves and the storm to quit. He often said that we must swim through our temptations to be at that lovely, amiable person, Jesus.

When I was in high school, it was the first year that you and Daddy were married. He suggested that I go to a youth missions conference in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania when I was 14 years old. I had never been to a youth conference, never heard any clear Gospel preaching that I know of. I might have heard some. It might have gone in one ear and out the other, but I know that you had always taught me what the Bible taught about the Gospel.

But when I went to this conference, I was blown away by the preachers?their articulation of what the Gospel was, their calling of youth to come to Christ and to commit their whole lives to Christ. I will never forget the effect that that whole conference had on me in my own understanding of the fact that I needed to have the personal commitment to Jesus Christ, instead of just relying on my parents? faith?something that I had always believed in. But I recognized Jesus needed to be the Lord of my life and Savior of my life as well.

So it was from that conference on, through my high school years when my stepfather was still alive, that I began to have my own Bible reading and try to keep a journal. Of course, I?d known from your life and my fathers? lives that journal keeping and Bible reading were very important in each day. My stepfather encouraged that. I don?t remember anything specific he said to me about my own Bible reading, but he always read the Bible to us. it was at mealtime. He would open up the Bible and read to us.

And the prayers and just the fact that he stood for a professor of theology and being a preacher of the Word I think had a tremendous influence on me, although I couldn?t articulate at the time what that meant to me.

Elisabeth Elliot: Even though he was a brilliant man and a theologian and all of that, he was so down to earth and so unstuffy. Nothing stuffy about him. Speaking of neglected prayer and learning how important it is to be reading the Scriptures, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that amazing German who was imprisoned and died in prison during World War 2, he wrote this: "Wasted time of which we are later ashamed, temptations we yield to, weaknesses, lethargy in our work, disorder and lack of discipline in our thoughts and in our interaction with others?all these frequently have their root in neglecting prayer in the morning."

Valerie Shepard: That is so true. Well, I was just reading this morning of the same kind of thing. A lack of discipline in one?s life just keeps you from growing and being obedient. This is in JOY AND STRENGTH by Mary Wilder Tileston, which has been a devotional book you and I have enjoyed together.

"As Paul said, ?I therefore so run not as uncertainly, so fight I not as one that beats the air, but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection.?" This reading is from H. L. Sidney Lear. "The slack, indolent temperament disposed to self-indulgence and delay will find a very practical and helpful discipline in strict punctuality, a fixed habit of rising to the minute when once a time is settled on, in being always ready for meals or the various daily matters in which our unpunctuality makes others uncomfortable. Persons have found their whole spiritual life helped and strengthened by steadfastly conquering a habit of dawdling or of reading newspapers and bits of books, when they ought to be settling about some duty."

Elisabeth Elliot: Wow. That should be inscribed in huge letters on everybody?s wall somewhere. Tremendously important that we be consistent, faithful and organized. People say, "Well, I don?t like to be so tied down to a schedule." But there?s a great deal to be said for it, including the Scriptures. Thank you, Val, for being with me once again.

Lisa Barry: Well, I hope listening to Elisabeth and Valerie today has challenged you to make a commitment to a daily time with God, if you haven?t already. We do such a good job filling ourselves with Christian tidbits?just enough to make us not hungry for the meat of the Word. If you?ve never started a daily devotional time, then let me suggest a couple of things. First get a hold of a Bible?one that you can understand. Then buy an inexpensive journal and keep track of your thoughts?what each day brings along with notes from your Bible readings.

Then if you want some food for thought, try a devotional like JOY AND STRENGTH. It?s the book Elisabeth and Valerie talked about today. The cost of JOY AND STRENGTH is $11.50, and you can send that along with your request to Gateway to Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call toll-free: 1-800-759-4JOY. For a rundown of some of our other resources, why not take a look at our on-line resource center? It?s quick and easy. That address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway to Joy is a listener-supported production of Back to the Bible.

Tomorrow we take a new turn as Elisabeth and Valerie talk about some of their favorite hymns. I hope you?ll join us then for another Gateway to Joy.