Lisa Barry: All this week on Gateway To Joy, Elisabeth Elliot is visiting with Glenda Revell, who is no stranger to this broadcast. Some time ago, we featured her story on the air and it received a tremendous response. For the next few days, we have an opportunity to get reacquainted with Glenda and hear about the things she's involved with. If this is the first you've heard of GLENDA'S STORY, stay right where you are, because I'll tell you how you can get a copy of her book in just a few minutes. Now here's Elisabeth Elliot to get us started.

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 again today with my dear friend, my-do I dare call her my spiritual daughter? What am I to you, Glenda?

Glenda Revell: You're my mother.

Elisabeth Elliot: She tells me that I'm her mother, her spiritual mother, in a sense. It's just been my very great privilege to get to know Glenda Revell and her family from Smithfield, Virginia. She has a unique testimony. Not that she's experienced things that nobody else has experienced, but the ways in which she has responded to her Heavenly Father, I'm sure you're going to find comforting, inspiring, and probably if you're listening carefully, correcting and very deeply instructive.

I want to read some verses from Psalm 78. "I will utter hidden things, things from of old, what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children. We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, His power and the wonders He has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which He commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so that the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget His deeds, but would keep His commands."

May I strongly urge you mothers and grandmothers, and perhaps great-grandfathers and fathers and grandfathers, to put down on paper, if you possibly can, or perhaps make a tape, of the faithfulness of God in your life? I'm so glad that Glenda Revell took it into her head to write down her own experience. Her purpose was simply to give me a gift. We had become friends and she gave me the amazing gift of her little book called LED BY GRACE, which now has the title GLENDA'S STORY, subtitled LED BY GRACE. Glenda, how did you come to write that?

Glenda Revell: Several months before you received that gift, I was having quite a battle in my own life. I believed from reading the Word of God that God wanted me to tell my story. Up until that point, I had never considered the fact that I had a story to tell. But I was reading the Scriptures during my quiet time in the morning and I was reading Psalm 40, which I believe is my testimony.

"I waited patiently for the Lord and He inclined unto me and heard my cry. He lifted me up out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet upon a rock and established my goings. He put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God. Many shall see and fear and trust in the Lord."

The Lord convicted me that many had not seen, because I had not been willing to tell the truth about my past. Even my husband didn't know everything. Of course, he knew that my mother was an alcoholic. You can't hide an alcoholic anywhere. He knew that my home life was not normal. But I was so ashamed of having been sexually abused that I had refused to tell anyone.

The Lord spoke to my heart that morning. What I heard was, "My child, you are far more concerned with what people think of you than of what people think of Me." That broke my heart, because I wanted to love God with all of my heart. I knew I was holding something back. So I got on my knees and I said, "Okay, Lord. It's Yours. Send someone and I'll tell them."

The very next day, my telephone rang and it was a woman I had not talked to for several years. We had attended the same church years before. She said, "Glenda, we're having a ladies' retreat at my church and I would like for you to be the speaker. The Lord has just put you on my heart. I've been praying and praying."

Well, I was aghast. I had never spoken, had no intentions of ever speaking to a group. So I said, "Well, Betty, what do you want me to talk about?" She said, "Well, honey, that's between you and the Lord."

Well, I had been having a lot of problems with the Lord over this and I didn't know why she had to bring that into it. But she did, and so I said, "Well, do you have a theme?" She said, "Well, yes. Our theme is precious memories." So I instantly knew that this is what the Lord wanted me to do.

I had three months to prepare for that first speaking engagement, and so I jotted down my memories of my childhood. As I wrote them down, I began to see ever more clearly how God had led me all the way by His wonderful grace. But these things were not tragedies that had happened to me. They were part of a stupendous plan of wisdom that I could not have understood at the time.

So after I spoke at the ladies' retreat-actually, during the time when I was preparing for the ladies' retreat-I heard you say that in counseling young women who had sordid pasts, they would frequently say to you, "That's all right for you to say, because you haven't been through what I've been through." So the Lord began dealing with me that I should tell you my story, so that you could use it just in counseling these younger women.

I fought again, I'm ashamed to say, because I didn't want you to know these things about me. But after I spoke, I decided to write things out more clearly, and that's when I got that little journal and I began transforming those notes into my story. After I finished, I was so hesitant to let you know all of these things that I almost threw it away. But I didn't and I sent it to you as a gift, all I had to give. Of course, you had other plans.

Elisabeth Elliot: It's beautifully written. There's not one single error in the whole book. Beautiful handwriting, so perfect that I couldn't imagine how you could have put it in that neat book. It would have been one thing if you had been writing it on separate sheets of paper, because if you'd make a mistake, then you could have easily put in another sheet. But this is one of those very attractive little journals that you can buy that are blank pages.

The more I pondered that story, which of course was a shocking one to me, the more I thought, "This is too good to keep to myself." So I called you and said, "Glenda, what am I supposed to do with this book you sent me?" There was sort of a dead silence on the phone. Then you said, "Well, anything you want to do with it. It's yours." I said, "Anything at all?" You said, "Yes." So I said, "How would you feel if I were to read it on the radio?"

Well, I think there was a thunderous silence after that. But you didn't say no, and so I read it on the radio. I know that those of you who did hear it are glad to hear a little bit more about how it came to be.

As happens when someone writes a book that turns out to be well-received, you have been asked to write another book. We have just a few minutes. Could you tell us a little bit about what that book is going to be?

Glenda Revell: I began observing a pattern in the mail I received in response to my first book. Young women who had backgrounds similar to mine, who had come to Christ and wanted with all of their hearts to build homes centered on the Lord Jesus. But they had never had a role model and they didn't know where to start. One woman told me, "This is harder for me than graduate school, because my past is so broken."

I began thinking about what it is that makes it so difficult. I'm a very simple thinker. It seemed fairly simple to me. I'm sure it's a very complex problem. But it seems to me that there are two responses to suffering. Everyone suffers. There's no question about it. If someone has lived long enough to be concerned with establishing a home for Christ, she has already suffered in some way. But how has she responded to that suffering?

Proverbs 14:1 says, "The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down." I believe the wise woman is the one who responds to suffering by embracing the cross and accepting what the Lord has given. The foolish one is the woman who responds with anger, bitterness, resentment and self-pity.

Elisabeth Elliot: I get so many letters that indicate that there has been a wrong response. I couldn't agree more emphatically with you, Glenda, that it's not the suffering that is going to make a saint out of any of us. It is our response. We know that all through the Bible, the great saints whose stories are included in the Bible-we know that they all experienced suffering. The Apostle Paul has a long list of his sufferings, several lists in different parts of his letters. One of them is in 2 Corinthians 12:11.

He goes through this long list of sufferings-shipwrecks and floggings and imprisonment and nakedness and starving and the care of all the churches. Then, isn't it amazing that in chapter 12, the very next chapter, he talks about this tiny, little, seemingly trivial thing, which he calls a thorn, which he prayed that God would remove from him. Some form of suffering. We really don't know whether it was emotional or physical or spiritual or what it was.

But he prayed. He was a godly man and God certainly heard his prayer. But God's answer was what?

Glenda Revell: No. "My grace is sufficient."

Elisabeth Elliot: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Are we talking to someone who is feeling very weak today, someone who is suffering, perhaps very deeply? Remember that there is grace. Glenda Revell is a shining testimony to one who has been led by grace.

Lisa Barry: Indeed, that is true. If you'd like to hear GLENDA'S STORY in its entirety, there are two ways you can do that. One is to purchase a copy of her book, GLENDA'S STORY, or you can purchase a cassette version, which is read personally by her. Or you may simply want an overview, as we've been sharing this week. For you, we have a taped copy available to purchase of this week of talks. The best thing to do is call our toll-free number and we'll get you started.

Here's that number: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Or you can write to us at Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Glenda Revell is back again tomorrow to talk about God's faithfulness, so be sure and join us then for another Gateway to Joy.