**As we face the New Year of 2024, let us step into it with hearts full of faith and obedience in our Lord Jesus Christ, as Elisabeth encourages us…
Every summer I go into the attic and clear out a few more things. Last summer I delved into the box containing all the letters I had ever written to my parents, beginning in 1941 when I went away to boarding school. Mother had carefully kept in chronological order the letters from all six of her “bairns” until 1982 when her mind lost its keen edge. It seemed rather foolish to hold on to things if one was never going to look at them again, so I pulled out the file which describes a crucial segment of my life, my first widowhood (my husband was one of five missionaries in Ecuador killed by Auca Indians on January 8, 1956). Valerie was ten months old. The only missionary on our jungle station at that time, I was strongly tempted to fear. Would I be able to make it without dishonoring my Lord? How to carry on without Jim, who had been running the station, building our house, managing the Quichua workers, teaching the new believers, working with me on Bible translation? Where to begin? What to do next?
Very likely some of you are asking yourselves this last question. An array of things you had meant to do last year were not done. Things you prayed earnestly for in 1998 did not happen as hoped. People you counted on fell by the wayside. All sorts of not-asked-for events took place. Matters that simply must be dealt with this year stare you in the face. I can’t think of a better time to review that tremendous eleventh chapter of Hebrews. The word faith occurs twenty eight times.
The ancients were commended for a solid faith full of hope and based on a strong certainty. As we contemplate the end of this millennium we might take an invaluable lesson from them: obedience to God is our job. The results of that obedience are God’s.
Did Noah have private misgivings about constructing that preposterous vessel? I should think he had, but his trust outweighed his doubts. He simply obeyed. When the Lord told Abraham to leave his country, his people, and his father’s household, was he astounded? fearful? rebellious? He obeyed and went, not knowing where he was going. When called to make the supreme sacrifice of his son Isaac, did his heart leap from his chest? He reasoned that God could (and perhaps might) raise the dead. He got up early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two servants and his son, cut enough wood for a burnt offering, and set out on a three-day journey, every step of which must have been agony. When all was prepared (including his heart, surely), he raised the knife, his trust and obedience perfected—whereupon God sent an angel with a message, “Because you have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you …because you have obeyed me.”
. . . continued next week
**Excerpt originally published in the Jan/Feb 1999 Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter.