Elisabeth Elliot: If you will ask yourself, "Who are the people who have most profoundly influenced my life?" I think you would probably find that every single one of them is a person who has suffered in some way.

Lisa Barry: It's true, isn't it? The people we respect and admire are most often those who have endured great suffering. Why? Maybe because we imagine how differently we would have handled the same difficulties. But what is the secret to making the most of trials and

suffering? Elisabeth Elliot talks today about that very subject, so stay tuned for Gateway To Joy coming up next.

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, talking with you again today about the question of suffering. Why do bad things happen to good people? And we also need to remember that question--why do good things happen to bad people? Much worse things have happened to much better folks than you and I are. Right?

Well, before I launch into what I have to say on that subject today, I do want to tell you that Linda Meyers is my producer and director and general coordinator of Gateway To Joy. And she explained to me the other day that secular stations often pay to get programs, while the very opposite is true on Christian radio. We have to pay the stations in order for our program to be heard.

Now some of you are thinking to yourselves, "Well, here comes the fast pitch after the slow curve.'' No. I'm not asking for money. Hudson Taylor's rule was "God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply." But sometimes you listeners actually ask us to explain what the money situation is. So that's the explanation. We do have to pay for some of the stations, and of course that has to come from the listeners.

So during this week and next week, we are going to be talking about this subject of suffering. After the death of my husband Jim Elliot, I went back to my jungle station. My Quichua friends were very sympathetic because they had loved Jim, too. There was a lot of work to do, and I soon established new routines and I was very glad for all the pressing duties that filled my days. Isn't it wonderful that God gives us work to do, which is therapy? If we just simply carry on with what God has given us to do, it's wonderful how He gives us peace and the gradual healing begins. I think there's no better way of slowing down the healing process than to just call a halt on everything and sink down into a swamp of self-pity.

Bags of mail began to come in bringing comfort and the assurance of prayers of hundreds of people, most of whom I really didn't even know. I wrote to my family and friends, telling them that I was all right, that my baby Valerie was well, that God was faithful, and they did not need to be in anguish over the thought that I was "all by myself down there in the jungle."

But my mother-in-law wrote of her fears that I was perhaps repressing my grief and might eventually crack. This upset me of course, and I wondered if she was right. She was a chiropractor and a keen observer of human nature. She was a wise woman and I wanted to learn from her.

But was there really no such thing as a peace that passes understanding? Was I only imagining that I had been given that kind of peace? Could God fulfill His Word or couldn't He? Well, I can tell you, the enemy, Satan, came in like a flood and I had a whole new set of worries after I got that letter.

But another letter "happened"-and that's in quotation marks in my mind because nothing just happens to a Christian; everything is under God's control. But another letter came in the same mail with Mom Elliot' s. And I went back to that one many times, because it contained a great antidote for the fears that my mother-in-law had planted in my mind. The antidote was a poem by Amy Carmichael.

"When stormy winds against us break, establish and reinforce our will. O hear us for Thine own name's sake. Hold us in strength and hold us still. Still as the faithful mountains stand through the long, silent years of stress, so would we wait at Thy right hand in quietness and steadfastness."

Well, I got through those first two stanzas and I thought, "Well, those words really sound too brave and too strong for me." But the last stanza set my feet on the rock.

"But not of us this strength, O Lord, and not of us this constancy. Our trust is Thine eternal Word; Thy presence, our security."

I was not strong. I was not constant or confident. But I had another much more dependable source of security--one that was guaranteed forever.

In Huqo Bassi's poem, ''Sermon in a Hospital," he says, ''Measure thy life by loss and not by gain; not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth. For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice, and he that suffereth most hath most to give."

If you will ask yourself, "Who are the people who have most profoundly influenced my life?" I think you would probably find that every single one of them is a person who has suffered in some way.

Yesterday I read you some verses from II Corinthians 1, and Paul tells how he had to suffer. He had to go through some sore trials in order to learn to put his trust in God and not in men and not in himself. Now suppose Paul had not been through the sufferings that he had experienced. The Apostle Paul was imprisoned more than once, put in chains, shipwrecked, flogged, starved, naked, and yet it's the Apostle Paul that talks about "these little troubles, which are really so transitory." Imagine.

My list of troubles doesn't come close to Paul's. And yet, each of us in the measure which God knows is exactly correct, must experience suffering. Why? Well, for our own sake and also for the sake of others. If Paul had not suffered--if the great Apostle Paul had not suffered--and he was dishing out to you and me what he dishes out in those profound epistles of his, wouldn't we be tempted to think, "What does he know about it?"

Well, he's told us some of the things that he knows about it, and he's humble enough to say, "I needed that lesson." When the Apostle Paul had that thorn in his flesh, he had to pray. He prayed just as you and I would pray. ''Lord, please take it away. Get me out of this." And the Lord's answer was no, because God knew that you and I would need the lesson Paul learned only through having that thorn in his flesh. "My grace is all you need."

There's a principle in II Corinthians 4:11,12: "For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you."

Now that's a principle--life comes out of death. The food that we eat on the table--an every day illustration of that principle. There's very little that's on that table for which something or some animal didn't have to die. Right? Milk and eggs-they don't have to die in order to give us. But the meats, the fruits, the vegetables--something has to die.

A parent's care for his or her children. It's "I die these deaths daily. I die the death of having to walk the child during the night when the child is sick. I make these sacrifices for the sake of the child." The child's life comes out of those little daily deaths. The mother's self-sacrifice of her ambition to make a big name in the world, perhaps in a career. She's willing to offer that to the Lord for the sake of her children.

All the limitations placed upon us because of others' needs. The weariness of the night worker. Paul's chains, thorns, shipwrecks, floggings. These are all initiations into the world of suffering.

In the introduction to my biography of Amy Carmichael, A CHANCE TO DIE, I tried to express the inexpressible debt of gratitude that I owe to her. Her words are never empty to me. The ring of reality is there, because she too knew what stormy winds could do to a soul. She knew the long, silent years of stress. She knew her own weakness. And she learned to accept suffering, even to accept it with joy, dying to her own natural reticence.

I have a letter from a woman who tells about her first experience of joy and peace that came through the acceptance of suffering. "It was many years ago," she said, "when my first child was born. The doctor came in the next day to tell me that Carl had had a hemorrhage in his brain. When I asked if he would be all right, he shrugged his shoulders and left. I was devastated. I was too shocked to pray or even to think, but God took me in His wonderful arms and held me so close to Himself. He gave me that acceptance which is peace. I couldn't pray; God was too close. You can only talk to someone else. I was enmeshed in God. His mind and mine were in total agreement.

"I didn't know if my baby would live or die, but I did know completely, without a shadow of doubt, that God was in control and that whatever happened would be all right and that He would take care of it."

She says later in the letter that her son recovered with no apparently ill effects. But without that terrible piece of news and the uncertainty that followed, she couldn't have known that intimacy with God.

May you learn that today.

Lisa Barry: If you've learned that lesson already, you know the cost that accompanied such an important discovery. If not, hopefully today's talk has led you that much closer to understanding. It's tough for me to admit that crises teach me important lessons, because I'm afraid that they'll become the rule rather than the exception. But what I have to keep reminding myself is that God's concern is for me and my welfare, and He doesn't delight in my suffering. Maybe that's where you are today. You're afraid at what God might have in store for you, fearful that submitting to God may open the door for tragedy in the name of maturing.

If that's the case, here's a book you should read that depicts one woman's love for God in the midst of great tragedy. Her name is Amy Carmichael, and the book is entitled A CHANCE TO DIE. It's a classic. She's a woman who has had a profound influence on Elisabeth Elliot. Let her influence you, too.

The cost of the biography is $25, and that includes shipping and handling. Here's where to write: Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call toll-free: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Well, we would all admit that many tragedies have positive outcomes, but are there any hardships that would be considered a mere waste? Elisabeth Elliot talks more about suffering tomorrow on Gateway To Joy.