Lisa Barry: Have you ever listened to a radio program and assumed the host must have a perfect life, blessed by perfect harmony each and every day? Well, I doubt there's any such person on the planet. Elisabeth Elliot is certainly not one of those people, either. She has been through the high waters and deep valleys, that at times have lured her into discouragement. Find out what she did in those times of testing next on this Friday edition of Gateway To Joy.

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, concluding my talks today on the subject of discouragement.

Undoubtedly, many of you remember the story of Robert Bruce and the spider. Robert Bruce, I think, was in a prison cell. I may be mistaken about that. But he was watching the efforts of a spider. Again and again and again, the thread was dropped or broken in some way. Every single time, no matter how many times it happened, the spider picked up the skein and continued his work. Again and again and again, mending the broken web.

I have told a number of times of some of my own temptations to discouragement. Four blows to my faith. Perhaps the earliest, really severe tests came when I was a new missionary in the western jungle of Ecuador. I wrote a book about that first year. I was not at that time married. I wasn't even engaged. I was a single missionary working with another American missionary and two British women.

We were working with a very small tribe of Indians called Colorados. That's the Spanish word for "red," a good name for the tribe, because they painted themselves bright red from head to toe with a dye which is used, or at least used to be used in the States, for the coloring of margarine. A bright red seed that they cultivated.

I wrote a book called THESE STRANGE ASHES and I'm going to read you a few pages from that book, just to prove to you that I certainly do know what discouragement is about. "As I look back on that time, I think it was lesson one for me in the school of faith. That is, it was my first experience of having to bow down before that which I could not possibly explain. Usually, we need not bow. We can simply ignore the unexplainable because we have other things to occupy our minds. We sweep it under the rug. We evade the questions.

Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain. If God were God, if He were omnipotent, if He had cared, would this have happened? Is this that I face now the ratification of my calling, the reward of obedience? One turns in disbelief again from the circumstances and looks into the abyss. But in the abyss, there is only blackness; no glimmer of light, no answering echo.

When I was 16 years old, I copied in the back of my Bible a prayer of Betty Scott Stamm's, whose visit in our home when I was very small had made such a deep impression on me. Her prayer was, 'Lord, I give up all my plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee to be Thine forever. Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt. Send me where Thou wilt. Work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever.' The cost for her was quite literally her life, only a few years after she had prayed that prayer.

I had never forgotten the picture on the front page of the newspaper of the Stamms' baby daughter being carried in a rice basket by a Chinese woman, who had found her after her parents' execution by Chinese execution.

I went back to things like that prayer as I searched for meaning to Micario's death." I have to put in a parenthesis here that Micario was the white Ecuadorian who was my interpreter for the Colorado language. He was murdered, when he and I had only been working together for a few weeks.

"Only God knew Micario's heart and whether he was a martyr. For me, there were other implications. I had promised to obey God and I had known that that promise might lead to tribulation. I had also prayed for holiness. But this? This kind of answer was startling and repugnant to me. I had desired God Himself, and He had not only given me what I asked for, He had snatched away what I had. I came to nothing, to emptiness.

Doreen, one of my British colleagues, took the poncho on which the autopsy had been performed and spread it over the fence between our two houses, in hopes that the rain would wash off the great splotch of blood in the middle of it. But it stayed there for weeks. Each time I saw it, I thought of the sight of those spilled brains-the only brains in the world that contained the languages I needed." Micario had been shot at point-blank range.

"I felt like a son who had asked for a fish and been given a scorpion. I had honestly (surely, it was honestly) desired God. I wanted to do His will. That bloody poncho mocked me.

It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself." It is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself. "Even the Son of God had to learn obedience by the things which He suffered. He had come for only one purpose: 'Lo, I come. In the volume of the book it is written of Me, "To do Thy will, O God."' And His reward was desolation and crucifixion."

Amy Carmichael wrote, "'But these strange ashes, Lord, this nothingness, This baffling sense of loss?' Son, was the anguish of my stripping less Upon the torturing cross?"

"Each separate experience of individual stripping, we may learn to accept as a fragment of the suffering that Christ bore when He took it all. 'Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.' This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart, I may, if I will, accept. And by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. So I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange gives Himself to me."

And Amy Carmichael's poem goes on to say, "Was I not brought into the dust of death?" She is putting these words into Jesus' mouth, of course. "Was I not brought into the dust of death, A worm, and no man, I; Yea, turned to ashes by the vehement breath of fire, on Calvary?

Was I not brought into the dust of death, worm and no man, I? Yea, turned to ashes by the vehement breath of fire on Calvary."

And then the Heavenly Father answers the Son: "O Son beloved, this is thy heart's desire: This, and no other thing Follows the fall of the Consuming Fire on the burnt offering. Go on and taste the joy set high, afar-No joy like that to thee; See how it lights the way like some great star. Come now, and follow Me."

We've all experienced discouragement. Many of us have seen the work of years go up in smoke. Many of us know what it's like to have nothing but ashes left from the sacrifice that we offered. But of course, when an Israelite when to the tabernacle to make a sacrifice, what did he expect the result was going to be? Fire turns the sacrifice to ashes. They seem so strange to us, don't they? What have you offered to God and you feel as if He has not accepted the offering? Very likely He has. But it's ashes that you have left.

"Should we feel at times disheartened and discouraged? A confiding thought, a simple movement of the heart towards God, will strengthen and renew our powers. Whatever He may demand of us, He will give us at the moment the strength and the courage that we need."

I want to read that again. Those are not my original words. Those are from Fenelon, a 17^th century writer. "Should we feel at times disheartened and discouraged? A confiding thought, a simple movement of the heart towards God, will strengthen and renew our powers. Whatever He may demand of us, He will give us at the moment the strength and the courage that we need."

And I give you again the words from Isaiah 43:2: "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon you: for I am the Lord your God."

And the verse that my father gave me when I went away to boarding school and was very homesick, Isaiah 41:10: "Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee by the right hand of My righteousness."

Please don't be discouraged. Offer yourself to God. Fix your eyes on Jesus and run the race that has been set before you. God bless you. Remember that you are being prayed for by people at Gateway To Joy. You are prayed for by me whenever I get your letters or your prayer request forms.

Lisa Barry: And that's a good reminder to drop us a line when you get a chance. I know many of you like what you hear on this program. If that's the case for you, we'd like to hear it from you personally. It's true that you are prayed for, sometimes in a general way. When you write, we can pray in a very specific way.

If you could when you write, consider supporting this program financially. We don't receive grants. We don't receive underwriting. Everything we do is supported through the efforts of people like you, who want to keep hearing what Elisabeth is saying. Would you ask God if it's your turn to give today?

As we say good-bye, let me give you one last chance to purchase this tape series called DISCOURAGEMENT. The cost is $7. 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.

Monday Elisabeth reads stories that will delight children and adults of any age. Find out more next time on Gateway To Joy.