We conclude our series this week with our final installment featuring excerpts from the Journals of Jim Elliot from his junior year at Wheaton College in 1948. We pray it has been a blessing to you and increased your devotion and desire to know the Word of God and surrender your life to Him. Next January, we plan to return his journals.
MAY 26 Deuteronomy 5 Much hunger of soul this morning. Wholly dissatisfied with my present powerlessness. Verse 29 speaks especially as I read. “Oh that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commands always . . . . ” Oh, that I had such a heart. Commandment keeping is terribly laborious when it doesn’t spring from an eager pious heart. “. . . doing the will of God from the heart!” (Eph. 6:6).
MAY 30 Deuteronomy 8 I see this morning afresh my God’s love for me in His earnest desire to see me prosper. As a father chasteneth his son, so He me. “He suffered thee to hunger that he might prove thee” (vv. 2, 3). His Word is given that I might live (1 Pet. 1:23), multiply (John 15:16), and possess (Heb. 10:34). Simply to have life is not all God purposes for me—but I know nothing of multiplication. I am still only a living soul. God make of me a quickening spirit.
JUNE 1 Deuteronomy 11 My thirst for the blessed land increases as I read Moses. Here I must refresh my dry soul “with the foot,” or, I suppose we would say, “by hand.” With fleshly effort and striving only is it possible to produce. How I long for the land that drinks effortlessly, of the rain of heaven—the land that God cares for and not man! It’s that state of the soul that has entered by faith into perfect rest, a broad, open country of hills and valleys, exhilarating heights and mossy cool quiet times—upon which the eyes of God remain continually—not as a puny garden of cooped-up herbs.
JUNE 8 Deuteronomy 23, 24 Seems some time since my last entry. Mind has been muddy about Betty H. lately and have had trouble in concentration. Thankfully God has borne with me and shown me fresh substance this day. . .
JUNE 10 Deuteronomy 29 Came to an understanding at the Cross with Betty last night. Seemed the Lord made me think of it as laying a sacrifice on the altar. She has put her life there, and I almost felt as if I would lay a hand on it, to retrieve it for myself, but it is not mine—wholly God’s. He paid for it and is worthy to do with it what He will. Take it and bum it for Thy pleasure, Lord, and may Thy fire fall on me as well. Meditation is easier now. . .
**Excerpt originally found in Journals of Jim Elliot pp. 61-62, 64-65