Elisabeth Elliot: And I believe with all my heart that the Gospel is still the power of God for salvation-for all of us and for all of our needs.

Lisa Barry: Some of you might be thinking, "Well, I'd expect Elisabeth Elliot to say something like that." Maybe you think that believing the Gospel still has power is an archaic notion and that the Bible is merely a historical book that has no relevance in the nineties. Well, I'd like to encourage you to stay tuned as Elisabeth Elliot reveals just how timeless God's Word can be. That's 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 subject of suffering.

Sometimes we seem to have no visible evidence that God is paying any attention to us. Do you ever feel as though God didn't do what you wanted Him to do? Well, if God didn't do what you wanted Him to do, wait to see what He will do. How often He has something undreamed of in mind.

You know, I get so many letters from people who listen to the program or read my books, and I'm so grateful and I do want to thank you. Every one of you who writes me a letter, I do thank you. I read them and I pray over them and I'm very, very grateful. And I trust that every one of you who has written have received a response.

But because we have such a staggering volume of information nowadays about other people's problems, due to the inescapable bombardment of the mass media which includes daily screenings of emotional strip tease on the talk shows, it's easy to assume that the Gospel can't possibly be relevant to all of them. Well, the Gospel is. The Gospel is the Gospel.

"After all, it was written too long ago," people say. "How can it be relevant today? Life has become much too complex. Problems have arisen in our time that our grandparents never heard of. Everybody needs a specialized support group now with an expert who's trained in handling their particular need."

Don't get me wrong. I think that support groups can be helpful. Experts do know things that the rest of us are ignorant of. People are always asking me-and I'm no psychologist and you know I've never claimed to be one-but they're always asking me to answer questions about their peculiar situations. And each time I think I've heard the worst, the next story tops it.

Elisabeth Elliot has no authority, except the Word of God. But as I pray for help and search the Word for answers, I often do find truth that applies. "There isn't anything new under the sun," as the preacher said thousands of years ago. ''And whatever is, has been already. And whatever is to come, has been already. And God summons each event back in its turn." That's from Ecclesiastes 3:15.

I believe with all my heart that the Gospel is still the power of God for salvation-for all of us and for all of our needs. I think I'd better say that again. I do believe that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation, and that means for you and me and for every one of our needs.

Pascal's description of man in the 17th century perfectly describes man at the end of the 20th: "Dependency, desire of independence, and need." Do you think anything has changed very drastically since the 17th century? Dependency. We hear a lot about that. Desire of independence. We hear a lot about that, too. There wouldn't be so many divorces if there weren't that kind of desire. And need.

But Pascal's prayer gets at the heart of the solution. "You are the sovereign Master, O Lord. Do whatever pleases You. Give me or take away from me." Acceptance and relinquishment are the keys to our peace.

In my book A PATH THROUGH SUFFERING, each chapter opens with a quotation from Lillias Trotter. Lillias Trotter was an English woman. I believe she was the first British missionary in North Africa. She founded a mission called the Algiers' Mission Band.

And she had had the promise of a great career as an artist lying before her before she went to North Africa. Many of her friends and family felt that she was very foolish in casting away such a great artistic talent in order to bury herself as a missionary in the desert.

But she felt God's call was clear and God did enable her to use that artistic talent in the most wonderful way. She wrote two beautiful little books, little spiritual classics, which are no longer in print but are available on tape. If you'd like to get Lillias Trotter's PARABLES OF THE CROSS and PARABLES OF THE CHRIST LIFE, you can call Gateway To Joy and they will give you information about those tapes.

But each of these chapters in my book, A PATH THROUGH SUFFERING, begins with one of her little lessons from the desert flowers and plants. We mentioned the other day the great principle that life comes out of death. And it is a principle which is illustrated daily in the cycle of plants and trees and flowers.

Lillias Trotter writes, "The seed vessel hopes for nothing again. It seeks only the opportunity of shedding itself. Its purpose is fulfilled when the wind shakes forth the last seed and the flower stalk is beaten low by the autumn storms. It not only spends but is spent out at last."

The doctor said that Lillias Trotter's nerves and heart were worn out by the strain of the battle, (that is, the spiritual battle), on that mission field in North Africa, and by the climate. One time she had recorded a temperature in the shade of 116 degrees. And added to all these physical buffetings was a sense of evil and spiritual oppression that many missionaries can testify to.

So she was home in England for recuperation and rest at a place called Morley Hall. She wrote of a lovely sense of what it meant to be buried with Christ. ''Not only dead but buried, put to silence in the grave. The 'I can't' and the 'I can' put to silence side by side in the stillness of a grave beside Him, with God's seal on the stone and His watch set that nothing but the risen life of Jesus may come forth."

Now this may be a bit too deep, too profound, too spiritual-sounding for some of you. What is she talking about? Well, you know we all have to die to the old life if we are going to be alive to the new life, to Christ's life. And we have to die to ourselves if we're going to be of any use to other people.

And so Lillias Trotter watched the acorns falling on the road outside her lodging and she thought how they would never come to anything because they were only lying on the ground, and not in it. She made a fresh commitment to die with Christ, to be a corn of wheat that falls into the ground and dies.

Blow after blow fell when she returned to her mission work. Two girl brides, 15 and 17, who had become Christians, died by a slow-working poison, probably administered by enemies of the Gospel. A girl convert who had been faithful for years fell under the power of a sorceress and suddenly would have nothing to do with the missionaries. Evil drugs were used to turn the minds of other converts against them.

Although there seemed nothing encouraging on the human side of things, Lillias Trotter turned as always to the parables of the earth around her. And this is what she wrote: "In the face of the bleak sky and cold wind, four little snowdrop buds have sat for the last two or three days with their chins on the earth. And now today one of them has reared itself up, pure and fearless, on its stalk with all the promise of spring."

Lillias Trotter knew the power of prayer that passes all the bounds of physical possibility. And as she was thinking of the dear mud houses of Tolga, the domed roofs of the Souf, and the horseshoe arches of Torzur, and the tiled huts buried in prickly pear hedges in the hills-those were all places of course where she had been working as a missionary.

And she thought of her powerlessness to go to them (she and her colleagues had been forbidden to go to the south lands). Excuse me, I see that I made a mistake there. Those were not places where she had actually worked. Those were places that she had seen on the map and had been praying that the Lord would enable her to go. She found an intensity of joy in praying for them, believing that she could through this medium-the medium of prayer-more effectively bring down the working of the Holy Spirit than if she were allowed to go there in person.

She said, "One can shut the door and stand alone with God, as one cannot on the spot with the thronging outward distractions of the visible.''

And you know, that little sentence comforted me as a grandmother. When I go to visit my grandchildren and my daughter and son-in-law, there are many things to do-a whole lot of things that take my attention. And of course when I am away from them, which is all the way across the country since I live in Massachusetts and they live in California, I find that I do have another kind of a privilege. I can stand alone with God for them in prayer in a way that I can't do when I'm there with the thronging outward distractions of the visible. Maybe that little word will comfort one of my listeners today.

Lillias Trotter was strengthened by the thought of Moses' unanswered prayer to enter the Promised Land. "Centuries later he was allowed to stand on the mountain there withJesus Himself and Elijah. Because he was denied his request to die, he experienced the glory of the fiery chariot when it was God's time for him to go."

Has God not done what you wanted Him to do when you wanted Him to do it? Wait to see what He will do.

Lisa Barry: Maybe when we began this program you thought that Elisabeth Elliot was going to give historical evidence for the validity of the Bible. After all, if one is going to prove the power of the Bible, we need statistics. Right? Maybe for some that is the answer, but the real evidence of the power of the Gospel is not in statistics but in changed lives. Lillias Trotter was an amazing example of that. And that's the kind of evidence the Lord has chosen to use.

As we looked into the topic of suffering this week, it reminds me of how deep the pain of suffering goes. Chances are, there is no tool that cuts deeper than that. For that reason you may want to make an investment in a great book that deals with many aspects of personal anguish. It's written by Elisabeth Elliot and it's called A PATH THROUGH SUFFERING. It's not a fix-it book, but an honest look into the many hard questions people ask in the midst of tragedy.

The cost of the book is $14, and that price includes shipping and handling. You can send that, along with your request, to Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call 1-800-759-4JOY. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Be with us again tomorrow as Elisabeth Elliot tells about how the suffering in two marriages and how that became a gateway to joy. Don't miss it.