Lisa Barry: What sort of visions did you have about marriage before you got there? Mine was that my house would always be neat and my children's hair always be neatly combed and styled in ringlets. So much for my vision!

When today's guest, Glenda Revell, was first married, she knew she'd have to care for her family, but there was one chore in particular that she despised. Not only that, but she quickly found out that a few tiny little bugs can do a whole lot of damage to a home. What's this all about? Well, I certainly won't be the one to wreck the surprise. You'll just have to wait until Elisabeth Elliot and her friend, Glenda Revell, tell you about it next on Gateway To Joy. Here's Elisabeth.

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 with Glenda Revell of Smithfield, Virginia. Glenda is the author of a book which I hope many of you have read, and many more of you will read, called GLENDA'S STORY. The subtitle is LED BY GRACE.

She is a woman with a testimony of the marvelous grace of our Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. That's from one of the old hymns that we used to sing in family prayers when I was growing up. Welcome, Glenda.

Glenda Revell: Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. In the book I'm writing now, which is geared to women with backgrounds similar to mine, who are longing to build a home for Christ, I started using an illustration from the house that our family lives in. We bought an old Victorian farmhouse about seven years ago. It was a shambles when we bought it. We've very lovingly, and I hope patiently, restored it.

During those first two years, we began seeing some powder on the pine floors. Just little piles of white powder here and there. We had no idea what it was. We were keeping ourselves very busy, doing what we thought were important things, such as rewiring, replumbing, putting walls up, wallpapering, stenciling, painting. So we kept ignoring the little piles of powder on the floor.

About a year later, we had to refinance our mortgage. At that time, we had to get a termite report. Of course, we had gotten one the year before when we moved into the house, but we discovered at this point that the man who sold us the house had a false letter written. It had never had a termite inspection and the house indeed was eaten up with termites, and powder post beetles.

Powder post beetles work silently inside the wood, just chewing away and churning out very fine sawdust. That was the powder we were seeing. So as we were working so hard to make our home beautiful, it was being eaten out from underneath by termites and powder post beetles.

I began to think how similar that was to what the foolish woman does-as she's tearing down her house with her hands-when she has responded to whatever suffering has come into her life with anger and bitterness and resentment and self-pity. Those things aren't easy to see on the outside. As a matter of fact, what she's doing on the outside may look very good.

But you can believe that they are undermining what the Lord is wanting done in that home. If she does not find the cure for that bitterness, eventually she will tear her house down-literally with her own hands.

Elisabeth Elliot: One thing that I think needs to be said again and again is that the real test of the validity of our faith and of our trust in God is in those hidden places at home, in our relationships with, for example, our husbands, our children, perhaps if you're single, your relationship with your mother or your boss at work-the things where we don't even stop to think about them having anything to do with anything spiritual. You know, these are just nuisances that we have to put up with at home. But those are the real testing grounds, don't you think?

Glenda Revell: Yes, I certainly do.

Elisabeth Elliot: And so many of these women who want to serve God have no idea that you start in the kitchen. You start in the bedroom. You start in the bathroom. You don't go to church and ask to teach a Sunday school class. That's not the first thing.

Glenda Revell: Yes. I read just recently-I was reading MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST by Oswald Chambers. He said, "Christian work is often used to evade the soul's concentration on Jesus Christ." I do see that. I have to be on guard all the time myself, because it is the hidden places, where no one else sees, where we get our greatest victories and where we have our greatest failures.

Elisabeth Elliot: Give us that quote again, will you, please?

Glenda Revell: "Christian work is often used to evade the soul's concentration on Jesus Christ."

Elisabeth Elliot: "To evade the soul's concentration on Jesus Christ."

Glenda Revell: Yes. If we're very busy leading the church choir and teaching Sunday school and leading the youth group and doing all of these very nice, good things, we can easily use that to avoid the hard things-submitting to our husbands, treating our children as if they were the Christ child, being happy to mop our floor when other women are out doing prestigious things.

Elisabeth Elliot: Now would you expound a little bit on what you mean by treating your children as you would the Christ child?

Glenda Revell: Well, I believe that, as you have taught me so well, all of the work we do, if we do it for God, is spiritual work. Although I've been given the privilege in the last few years of speaking before groups and talking to many people and even counseling at times, that is no more spiritual work than what I do privately in my home. As a matter of fact, I think it's much less spiritual work before God. If I am busy at home-maybe I'm preparing to speak-and a child, one of my children comes in and asks me a question and I'm abrupt with that child because I'm busy, I have been abrupt with Christ in that child. Understanding that makes me many times have to go to my children and ask for forgiveness.

Elisabeth Elliot: We have the verse in Matthew 25:40, "Inasmuch as you've done it to one of the least of these, My brothers, you've done it to Me." In other words, Jesus was teaching us that in every single human being we ought to see Jesus Christ and treat that person as though he or she were Christ Himself. Would you go so far as to say that applies also to an unborn baby?

Glenda Revell: I certainly would. Yes, indeed.

Elisabeth Elliot: That unborn baby is Jesus Christ in that woman's womb, as He was in Mary's womb. Mary was willing to receive this gift from God, not knowing the pain and the suffering that she was going to endure because of being the mother of the Son of God. But there's a sense in which every single one of us, who is given the privilege of being a mother, carries Christ in us. Perhaps we have a little bit deeper understanding of what that means than any man could possibly have, because we have actually carried a child in our womb. But it's horrendous to think that so many are killed before they are born because they're a nuisance and the parents don't want them.

Glenda Revell: Yes. And I know that I was a nuisance to my mother and that my birth made her life much more difficult. But I'm so thankful that she allowed me to have life.

Elisabeth Elliot: Well, I am, too. You would not be with us today, if God somehow in His mercy had made sure that you were not done with away with, as you might have been.

Glenda Revell: I think also understanding that Christ is in our husbands, and I think that's a little more difficult than seeing Christ in our children at times.

Elisabeth Elliot: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Glenda Revell: And I remember when I first got married, of course it was difficult for me in many ways to relate to my husband as a wife. But I also remember just having rebellion in my heart about certain things. I'm so ashamed to tell you this. I'm telling the whole world, but I remember the first year of our married, one of the things I despised doing was folding his socks. They all looked like the same color to me. The blue ones and the black ones and the brown ones, they all looked the same. I would constantly mismatch them.

David is never critical, but he would pull his socks out and all he would have to say is, "These don't match," and I would be just wounded. I remember sitting on the living room floor, crying, feeling sorry for myself, because I had to fold the man's socks. He was out laboring to provide a life for me and I didn't want to fold his socks.

Well, of course God has changed my heart. I'm so thankful, because it needed transforming. Now I delight in folding that dear man's socks.

Elisabeth Elliot: Has anyone said to you, "Well, don't you get tired of taking care of these little kids?" I mean, wouldn't you just put them in a daycare or something and go out and do something fulfilling?

Glenda Revell: The most fulfilling thing I have ever done is to cooperate with God in raising those four children. What a privilege!

Elisabeth Elliot: And what lovely children they are. I'm here to testify that the Revell children are, well, they're model children. And I know that you will say they're not, certainly not all the time at home. But we've been in your home several times and we just love them. Charlotte is how old?

Glenda Revell: She's nineteen.

Elisabeth Elliot: Sarah?

Glenda Revell: Seventeen.

Elisabeth Elliot: Jason?

Glenda Revell: Fourteen.

Elisabeth Elliot: And Jason is how tall now?

Glenda Revell: He is just a hair below six feet tall.

Elisabeth Elliot: And Daniel?

Glenda Revell: Daniel is eleven.

Elisabeth Elliot: He's eleven.

Glenda Revell: Yes.

Elisabeth Elliot: Well, we're so grateful to have had you with us today, Glenda. We'll talk again tomorrow. This has been Glenda Revell, author of the book GLENDA'S STORY, with the subtitle of LED BY GRACE. She's working on another book that she's going to tell us a little more about tomorrow.

Lisa Barry: That we will, but I want to take a few minutes now to tell you about a great packet we've put together for Mother's Day. You're going to love this. Here's what's in it: Glenda's brand-new book called WITH LOVE FROM A MOTHER'S HEART. You also get the tapes that we'll begin to air next week, a flip calendar by Elisabeth and the famous booklet entitled DO THE NEXT THING. The cost for this packet is $30.

You can purchase it now if you want to by sending that amount, along with your request for the Mother's Day packet and send it 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.

We'll hear about Glenda's new book next time, so make sure to join us then for another Gateway To Joy.