This week we continue with Part Two of our new devotional series featuring excerpts from The Journals of Jim Elliot as we honor his martyrdom on January 8, 1956. Today we share his entry from January 20, 1948 during his first year at Wheaton College.
JANUARY 20 Genesis 26 It is as the Word said it should be in the last days. Famine is upon Christendom. Love is grown cold because of the predominance of iniquity. The Son of Man must indeed seek for faith at His coming, for it is scarce. May these two elements, unknown either among Christians or worldlings, be found this day in me, Lord. I would have faith working by love in me. The tendency is to go to Egypt as our fathers have done, even as was Isaac’s case. There is a river which does not fail; seemingly Egypt is without famine. But God wants me to find my satisfaction in wells in a famished land, not the river of a fat one.
O Lord, when Christians are going to Egypt and the world for their ideas, their methods, their manner of life, I would hear your word to Isaac, “Go not down . . . dwell in a land I will tell thee of” (v. 2). I would sow in a land of sojourning and in spite of the general famine, would be fruitful so that even worldlings will envy–not to have lands and possessions, but to display a life blessed a hundredfold without having gone to the world for methods of “cultivation.” Teach me that wells, known to godly men in past years, must be unstopped, and I would not be surprised as Contention and Enmity (Esek and Sitnah) bar the way to blessing. The world must see plainly that Jaweh is with me (v. 28). Abraham had well trouble with Abimelech, I expect no less.
**Excerpt from The Journals of Jim Elliot pp. 14-15