Lisa Barry: One of the reasons Elisabeth Elliot has left such a legacy of faith is because she wrote down what God was telling her over the years. Insights, verses, quotes from others, are all sprinkled throughout a lifetime of journals that she's kept. As we'll find out today on Gateway to Joy, journaling can be one of the most important aspects in staying focused spiritually and leaving a legacy for others. Bob Lepine and Nancy Leigh DeMoss talk with Elisabeth Elliot about this very important element. Stay with us for the Thursday edition of 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 my friend, Bob Lepine.

Bob Lepine: And we also have with us today, Elisabeth, Nancy Leigh DeMoss. And I noticed just before we started the program that Nancy was asking you about your little brown book. I don't know anything about your little brown book. Tell me about it.

Elisabeth Elliot: Well, I just found this very nice, leather-covered, ring-bound book. And this was probably 15 years ago or so, and I just began filling it up with quotations and notes that I wanted to remember and talks that I was going to give. And out of this has come quite a wonderful collection of other things, mostly from other people.

For example, somebody by the name of Parker wrote:

"God holds the key of all unknown,
and I am glad.
If other hands should hold the key,
or if He trusted it to me,
I might be sad.
What if tomorrow's cares were here
without it's rest.
I'd rather He unlock the day,
and as the hours swing open say,
'My will is best.'"

There are three more stanzas, I won't read the whole thing. But I have in the very first page, I wrote to myself, "My task is to love God, to make God loved and to lay down my life to these ends. Though I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I am nothing but noise." John 18:37 speaks of our being a witness to the truth, and in John 7:18, we read "if a man aims at the honor of him who sent him, he is sincere, and there is nothing false in him." (Paraphrased).

So the whole first section is quotations from other people's writings and then I have a section where I have some of my talks that I've given. And, of course, I have to continually weed those out and put in the ones that I'm using.

And then the last is all in alphabetical order, just all kinds of things, addresses for example, and then a page on the absence of feeling God's presence. And I certainly have to confess that I'm one who frequently feels God's presence as absent. And so I wrote about that. And then I came across a quotation from John H. Newman, where he says, "The taking up of the cross is no great action done once for all. It consists in the continual daily practice of small duties which are distasteful to us."

Bob Lepine: It's like a journal in one sense, as you read things, or as you hear things, you just capture them and use them for meditation?

Elisabeth Elliot: Well, I keep journals, also. I'm on journal number 38 now. I started when I was 16 years old. And, so, I don't consider these journals. These are things that I want to remember and things that are just very easy to find when I'm trying to think of a quotation that might fit in with whatever I'm speaking about from the pulpit.

You know, there's a great variety of things that are here, including Joyce Grenfell's hilarious imitation of the nursery school, "Children, pay attention please, everybody turn round this way please; we've got a lovely surprise for you this morning." So when I go to the Bill Gothard things, the girls 16-to-20-years-old; they have gotten the word that I have to do the nursery school thing. So that's in my little brown notebook. So it's quite a hodgepodge, you know, I might have a recipe here, and the nursery school somewhere else.

Bob Lepine: It's your life, basically, in a notebook, isn't it?

Elisabeth Elliot: Yes it is.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Bob, I can remember not too long ago, hearing Elisabeth speak at a conference, where they had a problem with a sound system. And for, I don't know, 15 or 20 minutes or more, they couldn't get the sound system to work. And with several hundred women sitting there waiting for Elisabeth to be able to start her message; and while they were tinkering with her mike and the speakers, Elisabeth stood up at the front. I was sitting on the back row. I still remember; she just read, I assume from this little brown book, quotes of great men and women of God. And for all those minutes, I just remember being so blessed to hear this wealth that was right there at your fingertips.

Elisabeth Elliot: Do you have any idea where that was?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: In Dallas.

Elisabeth Elliot: Oh, in Dallas.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: At a conference on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

Bob Lepine: I noticed, Nancy, that as she read from the first page of the brown book, you grabbed your pen and wrote down...

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I just wrote down that quote, this is so good and so challenging to me. My task is to love God, to make God loved and to lay down my life to these ends. That really says it all.

Bob Lepine: Do you have a little brown book of your own?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, I think I'm going to have to get one.

Elisabeth Elliot: You'll be lucky if you can find this particular one. I have looked and looked and looked. I did manage to get one for my daughter, but that was a long time ago.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: One of the things I love about so many of the quotes that Elisabeth uses (and I have found myself now doing the same thing) is that they're drawn, not just from contemporary writers and speakers, but from some of those who walked with God in past centuries and are not known to people today, Fenelon and others of these writers, who are such a wealth and wellspring of wisdom from the Word of God.

Bob Lepine: Yeah, in fact, you sent me a book by Fenelon from...

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: The Seeking Heart, one of my favorites.

Bob Lepine: And then I heard you quoting Fenelon, and I thought, Most people don't have any idea who Fenelon is, and yet there is richness in many of these unknown saints who have gone before us.

Elisabeth Elliot: Much, much more riches there than in anything current, it seems to me. And I would say that practically all my quotations would be from at least a century ago, or two or three centuries ago.

Bob Lepine: Let me ask you about journaling. You say you have 38, you're on number 38?

Elisabeth Elliot: Twenty-eight, thirty-eight, yeah.

Bob Lepine: This has been a...is this a daily discipline for you?

Elisabeth Elliot: No, I don't try to do it every day. I just use blank books, and I write whatever I feel like writing on any given day. You know, there'll be some long lapses where there's nothing, but over the years, I would say I have a pretty good collection of my life.

Bob Lepine: How has that discipline helped you spiritually?

Elisabeth Elliot: Well, I've done it primarily for that reason. You know, it wasn't as though I thought I was writing a book for somebody else, or that anybody else was ever going to want to read them. I was really tutoring myself and articulating precisely what is it God said to me this morning. So I have to be careful to weigh my words. I am a wordsmith, and so I try to put it down as succinctly, as clearly, the essence of whatever the thing is that I've just been studying.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And Elisabeth, I want to say how thankful I am for those journals because now, many of us are benefiting, though others may not realize it, from that journaling that you have done.

You told me recently when I was talking to you about your newer devotional book, The Music of His Promises, that though that's just been published in the last couple of years, that those are things you wrote in your journals, 15 or more years ago. And I've actually been using that book as a part of my own devotional life for the last several months.

And what a blessing it has been to me and so many of the insights that God put into your heart all those years ago are now speaking to me at exactly where I am at this season of my life and pointing me to the heart of God, the ways of God. The truth has been a steadying force at a very changing time in my own life.

Bob Lepine: You journal as well don't you?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I do, but again, like Elisabeth, I have over the years; and it is a meaningful discipline. But then, also, to go back and to review the ways of God as he has opened up the Word to me is a precious thing.

Bob Lepine: The devotional life and time with the Lord on a regular basis, on a daily basis, is something that helps you walk consistently with the Lord, don't you think?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, absolutely, and my parents, as we were growing up in a very busy home, really modeled the importance of starting the day with the Lord. And my dad, from the first year that he came to know the Lord (in his mid-20's) until the day he went home to be with the Lord, 28 years later--he never missed a single day of giving to the Lord the first hour of the day in the Word and in prayer. No matter what else he had going on that day, no matter what meetings or appointments he had, no matter what time he got home the night before, he was up, on his knees. I don't know how many kneeling pads he wore out over the years--praying for us, letting the Lord speak to him through the Word. And this has been a huge part of the legacy that my dad has passed on to us children.

Bob Lepine: That was a part of your experience growing up as well?

Elisabeth Elliot: Exactly the same thing, yes. My father was up at 5:00 a.m. and was in his little study until almost 7:00 a.m.

Bob Lepine: Well, now, see, I hear both of you say that and I think, Okay, my daughter's 20-years-old; I need to roll back the clock and start getting up earlier and doing better as a dad with these kinds of disciplines if I want my daughter to grow up to be like Elisabeth Elliot and Nancy Leigh DeMoss." It really is a challenge to fathers and to mothers too, not just to model, but to call our children to the Word and to prayer.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I think you're right, Bob, that you can't overestimate the value in the lives of your children, of that example. There are many days when I'm tempted to hit my day running, with all the piles and the responsibilities; but I always have that indelible image of a dad on his knees. And if parents could only realize, you know, they can make a lot of mistakes and will. But if your children know that you take God seriously--that He is the cornerstone and first and central core of your whole life and existence; they will make a lot of allowances in other areas.

Bob Lepine: Do you let anybody read your journals? If I come over to the house, can I read some?

Elisabeth Elliot: Sure.

Bob Lepine: Okay, and can I read your journals, too?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, I might want to censor mine a little bit.

Bob Lepine: I just want to see what...

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: There's some pretty personal dealings of the...mine is really not a diary, it has more to do with how God is dealing in my life through His Word. But it's pretty honest and...

Bob Lepine: Well, David got pretty honest, too; and he let us read his journal entries, he turned them into songs as a matter of fact.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Right, and his were inspired by the Holy Spirit and I won't claim that for mine.

Bob Lepine: Well, it's a great reminder, this is to all of us, for not only our personal spiritual disciplines, but also for our need to call our children to that same kind of a spiritually disciplined life.

Lisa Barry: And with that final challenge, we need to wrap things up for today. But I'd like to thank Bob Lepine and Nancy Leigh DeMoss once again for being our guests this week.

And I hope those of you listening feel as though you've gotten to know Nancy better than you did before. She is someone who will carry on the spirit of Gateway To Joy long after the name is changed. She, like Elisabeth, has a passion for seeing women's hearts turn to the Lord through the application of Biblical truth.

And so I encourage you to welcome her with open arms, when Revive Our Hearts begins on Monday. I'd also like to remind you that all of Elisabeth Elliot's materials, including books and tapes, will continue to be available on the Web site at gatewaytojoy.org. Two other ways to reach us are first by phone at 1-800-759-4JOY, that's 1-800-759-4569. Another option is to write to us at Gateway to Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501, that's Gateway to Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501.

Gateway to Joy is a listener-supported production of Back to the Bible. Tomorrow we'll bring you our final broadcast of Gateway To Joy and Nancy Leigh DeMoss will have some insightful questions to ask Elisabeth. And what a fitting close it will be. Be sure and join us then for the final Gateway To Joy.