Lisa Barry: It's easy for us to get discouraged when we see people in occupations that we conclude are more holy than ours. We assume that a pastor or a missionary are exceedingly more pleasing to God. But as we'll find out today, a title or task has nothing to do with whether or not God is pleased with our work. Find out what the criteria is next as we embark on this Wednesday edition of Gateway To Joy.

Elisabeth Elliot: There is a subtle form of spiritual pride when we imagine that a different set of parents, different genes, different background, different education, different set of gifts, different personality, would have enabled me to do a better job of serving the Lord.

We have spiritual ambitions. We would like to do something admirable, something visible, very often something public. I hear a great deal of talk nowadays in the churches about discerning your gifts. How many people are willing to settle for the gift of helps? That's one of the spiritual gifts mentioned in the New Testament. Most of us would much rather have something for which we will be thanked or admired.

But you know, all the gifts that God has ever given to any of us are not meant for ourselves. They are meant for other people. If you have the gift of a beautiful voice, you might be ambitious to train that voice and to be able to sing solos publicly. And God does give a gift like that to many people.

But for most of us, He wants us to use the quieter gifts, the less visible, the less obvious ones, the willingness simply to help, to pitch in and do the job that nobody else is willing to do. Whatever my place is, let me accept that place with joy, with thanksgiving and fulfill the responsibilities that that place entails.

Amy Carmichael was given a great gift of evangelism. And when she went to India, for the first six or seven years she traveled with a small band of Indian women, camping, traveling by bullock cart during the day; a very tiring, wearisome, grueling kind of itinerant evangelism and one in which God gave her much visible fruit, relatively speaking in a Hindu culture. Not that there were ever crowds, but there were the ones and the twos here and there. And she was very grateful for that and thrilled to be called to be an itinerant evangelist.

But it was in the course of those travels that she discovered that there was an underground and illegal traffick going on among little baby girls that were being bought or given to the Hindu temples and raised for the purposes of prostitution to serve the male worshippers in the Hindu temples. These babies were very often the most beautiful ones. They were very often from rich families. They were not unwanted children at all.

They were offered because they were beautiful, and perhaps had talent and genes in their background that would make them talented in dancing and learning poetry and singing and doing various things that these temple prostitutes were trained to do.

Amy was utterly appalled to discover the nature of this traffick and she began to pray that God would enable her to rescue some of these babies from this life of sin--from which not one child had ever been known to escape. God answered her prayer and she did become the mother of, over a period of years, probably easily hundreds of babies, if not thousands.

God brought them to her and she was able to establish a wonderful work in South India called the Dohnavur Fellowship, which is still operating. It wasn't very long after she got the first girl babies that she discovered that there was a similar traffick in boy babies who were used for homosexual purposes in connection with Hindu temple worship. And likewise, these little boys were trained to be prostitutes, male prostitutes, and never could escape.

And so she began to pray that God would enable them to rescue some of these babies and that God would provide the men that they needed to take care of the boys' side of the work. And God answered that prayer.

But think of this. From going around as an itinerant evangelist and seeing people who had never heard the Gospel believe the Gospel and become Christians, she went from that rewarding kind of work and the sort of work about which you can write prayer letters back home--she went to cutting, as she said, thousands of tiny toenails and fingernails, and fixing baby bottles by the hundreds, and walking the floor with sick or dying babies. And washing diapers.

Is that spiritual work? Yes, it is. Of course. Spiritual work is the work done by a Christian in offering to Jesus Christ. It doesn't make any difference if it's digging ditches or cleaning out latrines or cutting teeny tiny little toenails.

I happen to be what some people would call a Christian writer. That doesn't mean that I write necessarily only about Christian things. I am a writer who is a Christian. If you're a Christian plumber, that doesn't mean you deal with Christian drains. That means you are a plumber who is a Christian. And so somebody who cuts toenails and makes formulas for babies is doing spiritual work.

Never doubt that your pathway is a good one, chosen by God, the very best possible pathway. The very things that you might deprecate as hindrances and obstructions or fatal limitations, these have been given to you. And so it is the next thing that God wants you to do.

Now what has this got to do with waiting on God? It's putting aside those ambitions that may not have anything to do with God's desire for your life. It's simply spreading them before Him and saying, "Lord, You do what You want with these. You do what's right with these. You make any use or any disposal of these that You want to do."

Some of you know that when I spent my first year as a missionary, I was working on the Colorado Indian language. And at the end of that year, all of the language materials that I had collected were stolen. So an entire year's work disappeared in the days when there were no Xeroxes and no tape recorders. So we didn't have any copies of anything.

For whom had I done that work? Well, of course I had visions of someday being known as the apostle to the Colorado Indians and the translator of the Colorado Bible. You know, I could see these phrases in my mind and I could imagine doing the job in order to see Colorado Indians come to Christ. And I never saw any of that. And everything that I did just went up in smoke, as it were.

I'm serious when I say that God does know what to do with what we offer to Him. And Amy Carmichael wrote, "God never wastes His servants' time. God never wastes His servants' talents. God never wastes His servants' money." Maybe you're one of those who gave money to a cause that you thought was a good one, and it turned out to be some sort of a scam. But you gave it to God, didn't you? So that's not lost.

What have you given to God? If you accept your place, then you can give it back to God. You cannot give your work to God if you haven't accepted it in the first place. You have to receive it before you can offer it back. And offer it back with thanksgiving. So there is a continuous cycle. I receive everything from God. I thank Him for it. I offer it back to Him with thanksgiving. He gives to me and I give to Him. That is what is called by some the eucharistic life, the life of thanksgiving and offering.

There's a beautiful little story in a book called THE GOLDEN WINDOWS. It's one of those 19th century books by Laura E. Richards. It's called "The Prominent Man." "While hurrying to business one morning, the prominent man slipped on a piece of ice, fell and broke his leg. It was to be a big day for him and his very natural outcry was, 'What will become of everything?' He was taken to his home, and there in his distress he was visited by the angel who attends to things.

After inquiring about his state of health, the angel advised him not to worry. 'The truth is,' said the angel, 'I put that piece of ice there myself. I wanted to get rid of you.' Then the angel went on to explain that if the prominent man had attended the meeting that he had expected to attend that day, a new man whose voice should have been heard would not have felt free to speak. And if he had given the lecture that he had intended to give later in the day on an important matter affecting large issues, he would have done harm.

The angel assured him that when the crisis was over, it would be all right for him to deliver the lecture because then it would harm no one. 'Am I awake or is this a dream?' cried the prominent man. 'More or less,' said the angel, 'it is what you call life.' 'But, but, but,' cried the man, 'this is terrible. You don't know anything about business.' 'My dear soul,' said the angel, 'what do you take me for?' And he went away and told the nurse to give her patient a composing draft," which I guess in modern parlance would be a tranquilizer.

Have you ever had that feeling when all of a sudden your plans go awry and you think, "What's going to happen to everything?" The truth is, nobody's necessary anywhere. You're not going to be missed nearly as much as you think. The point that the angel of course was making was that were some much more important things at stake than this prominent man's getting to the lecture or to the board meeting.

It wasn't very important that he should get there; in fact, it was very important that he not get there. The angel said, "I wanted to get rid of you." So what was the next thing for that man? It wasn't the lecture after all. It wasn't the board meeting. It was to get the leg set and then to sit. That was the next thing. And trust in the living God. God is not taken by surprise. It was all a part of the pattern, everything that happens.

Lisa Barry: I can remember taking an inventory trip when I worked as a sportswear buyer for a clothing store. Once a year all the buyers would be dispersed throughout the United States to take inventory of the thousands of stores in the chain. I got Wisconsin. Getting there was fine. I had another woman for a travel companion, but on the way home she flew by plane and left me to drive the rental car alone.

Heading home, I encountered a blizzard and was forced to find a motel in Eau Claire. I felt so inconvenienced and angry. But as it turned out, a friend who had recently moved there was only a block from my motel. She had been having a very rough time and really needed someone to talk to. Now it doesn't always happen that we find God's silver lining so quickly, but God will always bring about what glorifies Him.

If this series has been helpful to you, I know you'd appreciate having a copy to listen to in the future. The title to ask for is WAITING ON GOD. The cost is $13. 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. That's 1-800-759-4569. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

This is Lisa Barry, inviting you to be with us again tomorrow when Elisabeth talks about how to give yourself daily to God. That's next time on Gateway To Joy.