The God Who Is There

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them. DEUTERONOMY 33:27

For some thirteen years, every weekday, a great many people heard the same words at the start of a short radio programme. Before she said anything else on Gateway to Joy, Elisabeth Elliot reminded her listeners of two things: that the Lord had loved them with an everlasting love, and that underneath them were the everlasting arms. Both phrases come straight from the Authorised Version — the first from the prophet Jeremiah, the second from the last blessing of Moses. She did not begin with an illustration or a joke. She began with God.

The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. JEREMIAH 31:3

That opening is the best possible summary of her theology. Everything else she taught — about duty, suffering, obedience, discipline, love and loneliness — stands on those two sentences. God loves you, and God holds you. His love is not a mood, and His arms are not a metaphor for good luck. They are the ground under the believer’s feet when every other ground has given way. The title of one of her later collections, Secure in the Everlasting Arms, puts the same conviction on its cover.

Sovereign and loving

She held the sovereignty of God without embarrassment. She believed, with a long line of Protestant teachers and with a great deal of plain Scripture, that God governs all things: the rise and fall of nations, the fall of a sparrow, a flood that sweeps away a mission station, and a spear on a sandbar in the Curaray. Nothing, in her teaching, happens to a child of God by accident. There is no corner of the universe where God is merely a spectator.

And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? DANIEL 4:35

But she never taught sovereignty alone. A sovereign God who did not love would be a tyrant, and the doctrine would be a horror. What made it a comfort to her was that the One who rules all things is the same One who did not spare His own Son. The question of whether God can be trusted with what He permits had, for her, already been answered at Calvary. If He gave His Son for us, He will not be careless with anything else.

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? ROMANS 8:32

This is the hinge of her whole outlook. Many people believe that God is powerful and doubt that He is kind. Many others believe that He is kind and doubt that He is in charge. She insisted on both, and she insisted on them most firmly at the moments when they seemed most impossible to hold together.

Not fatalism

It is important to see what this teaching is not. It is not fatalism, the shrug that says whatever will be will be. The fatalist submits to an impersonal force; the Christian trusts a Person. The fatalist concludes that nothing he does matters; Elisabeth Elliot concluded that everything he does matters, because God has given him real duties and will hold him to them. She never used the sovereignty of God as an excuse for laziness or carelessness, and she had sharp words for those who did.

Nor is it a claim to understand. She was quite clear that God’s purposes are mostly hidden from us. She did not know why Macario was murdered, or why her language files were stolen, or why five young men who had prepared so carefully were killed within days of their first friendly meeting. She did not offer neat explanations, and she distrusted those who did. Her confidence was not in her ability to read God’s purposes but in His character. She knew who He was, even when she did not know what He was doing.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. ISAIAH 55:8–9

This combination — great confidence about God and great reticence about His reasons — is one of the most valuable things she offers. It saves the sufferer from two opposite errors: the despair that concludes God has lost control, and the glib comfort that pretends to know exactly why He has done what He has done.

The God who speaks

Behind all of this lay her conviction that God has made Himself known in the Bible, and that the Bible is to be believed and obeyed. She had been trained in Greek and could read the New Testament in its own language, and she was also a woman who read the Bible daily, memorised a great deal of it, and quoted it constantly. She did not treat Scripture as a collection of helpful thoughts. She treated it as the voice of the God who is there, speaking to people who would otherwise be left guessing.

That is why her teaching keeps returning to the text. When she was asked how to know God’s will, she pointed first to what He has already said. When she was asked how to bear a loss, she pointed to the Psalms and to the cross. When she was asked about feelings, she pointed to promises that do not depend on feelings. The God who is there is also the God who has spoken, and for her the two could not be separated.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. PSALM 119:105

Weighing it

Her doctrine of God is, in its main lines, the doctrine of historic Protestant Christianity, and evangelical readers can receive it with gratitude. Three cautions are worth adding.

The first is that the sovereignty of God can be taught in a way that leaves no room for lament. Scripture does not do this. The same Psalms that declare God’s rule also cry out against Him, ask how long, and complain that He has hidden His face. She knew the Psalms as well as anyone, and she did not forbid honest crying; but readers who find her counsel brisk should remember that the Bible gives them words for protest as well as for surrender.

The second is that the language of God’s sovereignty can be misused by the strong against the weak — as when someone in authority tells a victim to accept, as God’s will, a wrong that ought to be resisted. She never meant her teaching that way, and she spoke plainly against sin; but the distinction matters. To accept what God permits is not to approve what men do.

The third is simply that this is a doctrine to be lived before it is argued. She did not come to it as a debater. She came to it as a widow on a mission station with a baby, and she held it because, when everything else had gone, it held her.

It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. LAMENTATIONS 3:22–23

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Which do you find harder to believe — that God is in control, or that God is good? Tell Him honestly, and ask Him to strengthen what is weak.

2. Read Romans 8:28–39 slowly. Underline every phrase that speaks of God’s love and every phrase that speaks of His power.

3. Think of a present trouble whose purpose you cannot see. Write down what you know of God’s character, and set it beside what you do not know of His reasons.

4. Learn Deuteronomy 33:27 and Jeremiah 31:3 by heart, and say them to yourself each morning this week before you say anything else.

5. Consider whether you have ever used the will of God as an excuse for doing nothing. Name one duty you have been avoiding, and do it.

A PRAYER

Eternal God, You are my refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. You have loved me with an everlasting love.

You rule all things, and none can stay Your hand; and You did not spare Your own Son for me. Teach me to hold both truths together.

When I cannot see what You are doing, let me rest in who You are. When I am tempted to despair, remind me that Your mercies are new every morning.

Hold me when I cannot hold on, and keep me trusting You to the end, through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.