Lisa Barry: There are plenty of things in life that we consider necessities, but are they really? Or have we merely let ourselves become attached to things that we shouldn't? Elisabeth Elliot talks again today about detaching ourselves from the things that hinder us from finding God's perfect will in our lives. Find out more 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 my talks today on an old-fashioned word, "Detachment," which means simply becoming unattached to things.

I want to give you a verse from 1 Corinthians 3:12,13. "If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire and the fire will test the quality of each man's work."

I began yesterday's talk by asking three questions. What are you living for? How will you get it? Is it worth living for?

Have you stopped to think about that fire, that refining fire, that purifying fire which is going to burn away all the wood, hay and stubble in your life? Only the gold and silver and precious stones will remain.

What are you living for? How will you get it? Is it worth living for? I don't believe it's worth living for unless it's worth dying for. One of the great lessons of the spiritual life, which is going to go on as long as we live here in this world, is the lesson of detachment. The becoming unattached to the things and to our desires and to our preferences and to our will, and accepting instead the will of God.

I read a lovely letter yesterday from a blind mother who learned that God had actually chosen her to be the mother of her little child. The child was not being deprived because the mother was blind; the child was in fact blessed in ways that other children are not blessed. Here's another amazing letter that came to Gateway To Joy from a family in Colorado.

"Our children are 18, 15, 11, 6 and 14 months. Our two sons, 15 years old and 14 months, were born with birth defects. Merlin, 15, was born with bilateral clubbed foot deformity, for which he has had two surgeries and multiple castings. Please join us in a prayer of thanksgiving for his gracious acceptance of his own physical limitations and his wit, humor and wisdom, which he through the grace of Jesus Christ has chosen to develop from his experience over an attitude of self-pity.

"Our baby boy, Miles, born with multiple random anomalies, has endured one surgery and will undergo another in March. Please pray again with us in thanksgiving for Miles' sweet disposition [Miles, you remember, is 14 months old] and for a successful outcome, God willing, to this second surgery. Please pray also that we as a family will continue to recognize the hidden, eternal gifts under the temporary facade of human suffering with which we have been blessed."

I have to read that sentence again. "Please pray also that we as a family will continue to recognize the hidden, eternal gifts under the temporary facade of human suffering with which we have been blessed." There is an example of detachment, a glad, free, joyful acceptance of suffering. Think about it.

What are you living for? How will you get it? Is it worth living for? Is it worth dying for? Thank God for that attitude of detachment.

Supposing you have at long last schooled yourself to put God's will first in everything, to let Him decide what you shall have and not have, do and not do. Does it follow that you have ceased to love the world of men and of things? On the contrary, it may well mean exactly the opposite. It may well mean that at long last you've really started to love them. To love them, and not yourself. Maybe only now you begin to realize that since you're not their master, they for their part are not just means but ends. They are to be loved in themselves.

You'll also discover that all the things that God has made and that He loves are lovable and not just those things, which you would otherwise have found superficially attractive. But above all, you will love not less but infinitely more than before, because when you have reached this degree of identity with the will of God you will have been given the heart of Christ. It's my prayer that the Lord will give me the life of Christ.

Some of you remember the story in Amy Carmichael's biography, which is entitled A Chance to Die, how she and her brother had come out of church on a Sunday morning and it was a very gray, rainy day. Their spirits were rather gray and rainy. As they walked down the street toward home, they came to an old woman struggling along.

She said, "She looked as though she were a bag of feathers, but she had a heavy burden." The little boy and girl decided that they needed to help her. But she said, "We were just two little children, and we were embarrassed and we did not want to help her." But, she said, suddenly those words from 1 Corinthians 3:12 struck her: "Wood, hay and stubble. Gold, silver and precious stones." That verse set the tone of her life, detachment.

It was a very tough lesson for those little children. Certainly they were not thinking of the word "detachment," but they did what they didn't want to do. They did the will of God instead of the will of themselves and they helped that old lady, feeling very foolish, feeling very far from spiritual. Nevertheless, they did it.

I had a letter from a prisoner who had heard me read the poem written by Fanny Crosby when Fanny was only nine years old. Fanny, as you perhaps remember, was blinded at the age of six weeks by the mistake that a doctor made. When she was nine years old, she wrote, "Oh, what a happy soul am I, although I cannot see. I am resolved that in this world contented I will be. How many blessings I enjoy that other people don't. To weep and sigh because I'm blind, I cannot and I won't."

I hope some of you children that are listening will memorize that little poem. I'll read it again. "Oh, what a happy soul am I, although I cannot see. I am resolved that in this world contented I will be. How many blessings I enjoy that other people don't. To weep and sigh because I'm blind, I cannot and I won't."

Now I had a letter from a prisoner who paraphrased Fanny Crosby's poem. "Oh, what a happy soul am I, although I am not free. I am resolved that in this cell contented I will be. How many blessings I enjoy that other prisoners don't. To weep and sigh because I'm chained, I cannot and I won't."

Detachment means the becoming unattached. One of the things to which I need to become unattached is myself. Do I crown myself or do I crown Jesus Christ? Do I belong to myself or do I belong to Jesus Christ? Take the crown of the kingdom from your own soul and lay it at Jesus' feet.

Perhaps you're saying today, "But why should I put up with so and so, that awful person at church that I just wish I didn't ever have to look at?" The answer of course is that you must put up with her because Christ lives in you and there is a new principle of operation, a new power, a new attitude, a whole set of new aims.

Pronounce the grand decision, "I am His, body and soul." The past is nothing. Not denial, but an offering, a gift of surrender, a resolution to renounce and proceed on the new principle, "All for Jesus."

Some of you are lugging along the baggage of the past. Will you be unattached? Will you just let go of all that baggage and do as Paul said, "Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus"?

"Have Thine own way, Lord. Have Thine own way. Mold me and make me after Thy will."

Now let me read another, it's not exactly a poem. "I am willing to receive what Thou sendest, to lack what Thou withholdest, to relinquish what Thou takest, to suffer what Thou inflictest, to do what Thou commandest, to be what Thou requirest." Perhaps I should repeat that in modern English.

"I am willing to receive anything You send. I am willing to do without anything You withhold. I am willing to let go of anything You want to take. I am willing to suffer anything that You inflict. I am willing to do what You command, and to be what You require." That takes detachment.

Lisa Barry: As you consider how you're going to apply the things Elisabeth talked about today, I'd encourage you to find a friend with the same goal of detachment. Hold each other accountable and talk about how you're doing. A book that may help on a day-to-day basis is called Keep a Quiet Heart. It's full of short doses of encouragement and challenge that keep your mind focused on things above, not things on the earth. The cost is $14.50 and to purchase a copy, you can send that amount, along with a note, to:

Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, NE 68501. That's Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, NE 68501. Or, call toll-free 1-800-759-4JOY. We also have today's program available on tape. Ask about it when you call 1-800-759-4569. On the Web, type in gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a listener-supported production of Back to the Bible.

This is Lisa Barry inviting you to join us again tomorrow for more Gateway To Joy.