Appendix B: Chapter-by-Chapter Study and Reflection Guide

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”

— James 1:22, KJV

This guide is for personal reflection, small groups, or a reading course of about twenty-four weeks. Its purpose is not to make Elisabeth Elliot an object of admiration, but to let her life hold up a mirror in which readers can examine their own discipleship under Scripture. Groups may find it helpful to begin each session with the chapter’s opening verse and to end with prayer. Those who want to go further are encouraged to read her own books, obtained from their publishers or a library, alongside these chapters.

Chapter 1 - Brussels and Germantown

Central idea

Elisabeth Howard was born to missionary parents in Brussels and raised in a large, devout Philadelphia family, where her father edited the Sunday School Times.

Scriptures to revisit

Psalm 139:13-16; Psalm 16:6; Acts 17:26.

Reflection

1. What did the faith of your family, or its absence, give you? 2. Where has God placed you, and to what end?

Chapter 2 - A House Ordered by Scripture

Central idea

Family worship, hymns, Scripture memory, firm discipline and summers in Franconia formed habits of faith that lasted her whole life.

Scriptures to revisit

Deuteronomy 6:6-7; Joshua 24:15; 2 Timothy 3:14-15.

Reflection

1. What habits of faith shape your household? 2. Which passages of Scripture do you know by heart, and which would you like to?

Chapter 3 - Hampden DuBose

Central idea

At a Christian boarding school in Florida a shy, serious girl was stretched and tested, and her sense of a call to missionary service grew.

Scriptures to revisit

Ecclesiastes 12:1; 1 Samuel 3:10; Isaiah 6:8.

Reflection

1. When did you first sense that God might have work for you to do? 2. Who encouraged you then?

Chapter 4 - Greek at Wheaton

Central idea

She studied classical Greek so that she could translate the Scriptures, and she met Jim Elliot, her brother’s friend.

Scriptures to revisit

Proverbs 2:3-5; 2 Timothy 2:15; Psalm 119:130.

Reflection

1. How are you using your mind in the service of God’s Word? 2. What friendships has God used to change the direction of your life?

Chapter 5 - A Love Laid on the Altar

Central idea

Elisabeth and Jim acknowledged their love but gave it back to God, uncertain whether he would ever allow them to marry.

Scriptures to revisit

Genesis 22:1-14; Romans 12:1; Psalm 37:4-5.

Reflection

1. What desire are you holding most tightly? 2. What would it mean to lay it on the altar?

Chapter 6 - The Waiting Years

Central idea

Years of separation, letters, study at Prairie Bible Institute and training in linguistics tested two young people’s patience and faith.

Scriptures to revisit

Psalm 27:14; Lamentations 3:25-26; Isaiah 40:31.

Reflection

1. What are you waiting for, and how are you waiting? 2. How has a season of waiting shaped you?

Chapter 7 - San Miguel de los Colorados

Central idea

As a single missionary in the western forest of Ecuador, she set out with other women to reduce the Colorado language to writing.

Scriptures to revisit

Romans 10:14-15; Psalm 96:3; Matthew 28:19-20.

Reflection

1. Who around you has never heard the gospel in words they understand? 2. What part might you play?

Chapter 8 - Macario, and a Stolen Suitcase

Central idea

Her language helper was murdered and her work was stolen: losses that no explanation could make sense of.

Scriptures to revisit

Job 1:21; Habakkuk 3:17-18; 2 Corinthians 4:8-9.

Reflection

1. What loss in your life has never been explained? 2. Can you offer it to God without an explanation?

Chapter 9 - Quichua First

Central idea

Engaged in January 1953, she set aside her own plans to learn Quichua in the eastern jungle before marrying Jim.

Scriptures to revisit

Proverbs 16:9; Philippians 2:3-4; James 4:13-15.

Reflection

1. Whose plans govern your life? 2. What would yielding a plan cost you this year?

Chapter 10 - 8 October 1953

Central idea

A civil wedding in Quito on Jim’s twenty-sixth birthday began a marriage with very little ceremony and a great deal of purpose.

Scriptures to revisit

Genesis 2:24; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12; Ephesians 5:25.

Reflection

1. What makes a marriage strong when outward things are plain? 2. How can you honour the marriages around you?

Chapter 11 - Shandia

Central idea

Married life among the Quichua, on a station rebuilt after a flood, and the birth of Valerie in February 1955.

Scriptures to revisit

Psalm 127:3; 1 Corinthians 15:58; Galatians 6:9.

Reflection

1. Where is your labour unseen? 2. How do you keep going when the fruit is slow?

Chapter 12 - Palm Beach

Central idea

Five young men set out to reach the Waorani, agreed not to use their guns against them, and were killed on 8 January 1956.

Scriptures to revisit

John 12:24-25; John 15:13; Revelation 12:11.

Reflection

1. What would you refuse to do even to save your own life? 2. How do you weigh courage against prudence?

Chapter 13 - The Widow at Shandia

Central idea

Widowed at twenty-nine with a baby of ten months, she stayed in Ecuador and went on with the work.

Scriptures to revisit

Psalm 46:1-2; Isaiah 43:2; 2 Corinthians 1:3-4.

Reflection

1. How has God met you in grief? 2. Whom do you know who needs comfort now?

Chapter 14 - Through Gates of Splendor

Central idea

She told the story of the five men, and of Jim’s life, in books that reached millions and turned grief into a public witness.

Scriptures to revisit

Psalm 145:4; Habakkuk 2:2; Hebrews 11:4.

Reflection

1. What story of God’s work should you write down or tell? 2. How do we honour the dead without making legends of them?

Chapter 15 - Mintaka and Mankamu

Central idea

Two Waorani women came out of the forest and lived with her, while Dayuma taught her language to Rachel Saint.

Scriptures to revisit

Ruth 2:10-12; Hebrews 13:2; Romans 12:20-21.

Reflection

1. Who is the stranger at your door? 2. What would it cost you to welcome them?

Chapter 16 - Into the Forest

Central idea

In October 1958 she, Valerie and Rachel Saint went to live among the people who had killed her husband.

Scriptures to revisit

Genesis 12:1; Psalm 23:4; Matthew 5:44.

Reflection

1. Where is God asking you to go that you would rather not? 2. Whom do you need to forgive in practice, not only in word?

Chapter 17 - Among the Waorani

Central idea

Some of the killers became believers, but strain among the missionaries and her own questions led her to leave, and in 1963 to return home.

Scriptures to revisit

2 Corinthians 5:17; Acts 15:36-40; Philippians 4:2-3.

Reflection

1. How do you respond when Christian work is marred by conflict? 2. When is it right to leave?

Chapter 18 - The Questions She Would Not Hide

Central idea

Back in America, she refused to tidy up her experience, and in No Graven Image and other books she exposed the idols of missionary piety.

Scriptures to revisit

Psalm 62:8; Exodus 20:4-5; Isaiah 55:8-9.

Reflection

1. What questions have you been hiding from God? 2. Is there a God of your own making you need to give up?

Chapter 19 - Addison Leitch

Central idea

A second marriage, to a Presbyterian theologian, brought companionship and happiness, and then the long nursing of a husband dying of cancer.

Scriptures to revisit

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10; Psalm 90:10-12; Romans 12:15.

Reflection

1. How do you receive happiness that may not last? 2. Whom are you called to care for through illness?

Chapter 20 - Lars, and Magnolia

Central idea

A third marriage, a growing family, books on womanhood that drew praise and criticism, and a home life harder than anyone saw.

Scriptures to revisit

Psalm 68:6; Ephesians 5:21-33; Galatians 3:28.

Reflection

1. How do you weigh teaching on men and women under Scripture with fairness to those who disagree? 2. Is there anyone whose public face hides private burdens you could help to carry?

Chapter 21 - Gateway to Joy

Central idea

For thirteen years a daily radio programme told listeners they were loved with an everlasting love, and that small duties are holy.

Scriptures to revisit

Jeremiah 31:3; Deuteronomy 33:27; Luke 16:10.

Reflection

1. Do you believe you are loved with an everlasting love? 2. Which ordinary duty could you offer to God today?

Chapter 22 - The Next Thing

Central idea

An old poem’s counsel to do the next duty, a conviction that suffering is never wasted, and a willingness to correct her own most famous story.

Scriptures to revisit

Ecclesiastes 9:10; Matthew 6:34; Ephesians 4:25.

Reflection

1. What is the next thing in front of you? 2. Is there a story you have told about God that you need to tell more truthfully?

Chapter 23 - The Long Twilight

Central idea

Dementia silenced the woman who had lived by words, and she was cared for at home until her death on 15 June 2015.

Scriptures to revisit

Isaiah 46:4; Psalm 71:9, 18; 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

Reflection

1. How do you think about growing old, and about losing your powers? 2. How can your church honour the elderly and those who care for them?

Chapter 24 - The Legacy of Elisabeth Elliot

Central idea

Her books, her family’s publications and honest biographies have kept her witness alive, together with the places where her teaching must be weighed.

Scriptures to revisit

Hebrews 13:7; 1 Thessalonians 5:21; Hebrews 12:1-2.

Reflection

1. Whose faith have you been asked to follow, and how do you test it? 2. What would you want said about the end of your own life?