Friday, July 31, 2009

Journal Entry July 31 part 1

I will share a personal entry of my devotional journal. I write of what God is bringing to me, and challenging me. I will post it in two parts. Reason is it will be long if I put it in one, and also both parts speak on different points. So this is the first part. There is a lot of Jim Elliot's journal in it. May it challenge and encourage your heart.

31 July
As I have been reading, ,'Shadow of the Almighty' I questioned myself in the up lifting feeling and urgency I get from Jim Elliot's words. It is not the words of the Lord but his. Yet anything we "create" he gets the glory. AMEN.
His Journal entry on October 24, 1949 is exactly the same idea I write about here. He writes about Brainerd's diary. Speaking about Brainerd's life he writes, "I have considered Hebrews 13:7 just now, regarding the remembrance of certain ones who spake the word of God, 'consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their life and imitate their faith.'
He goes on to list others of the faith that he read about, that challenged his walk. The next entry he writes about how similar are Brainerd's thoughts to his regarding 'true and false religion'. I am recorded in saying the same about Jim Elliot in an earlier entry.
Most of what I read in Christian litereature are biographys. I try not to get caught up in this fad of current books that want the reader to reshape the church or just tell you how it's doing it all wrong, in a back door, think like me, style. I am all for challenging, in fact I say we need it. But I will take a person's true life, and true self over someones attempt to sound relevant and different, anyday.
"I see the value of Christian biography tonight". Jim Elliot wrote that in the same entry. I agree with you Jim. "O lord, let me be granted grace to'imitate their faith'. This from the man who would write four days later on October 28th,"He is no fool who gives what he can not keep to gain what he can not lose". I pray that I can be a man like Elliot, that would be a stepping stone for generations to come.

Now my point is not that I worship Jim, but that as a fatherless generation, we have men that we can be spurred on by. And in the same point we also have amazing women. Even if they are gone. Paul even urged Timothy and others to follow him as he followed Christ.
So reading about Piper, Spurgeon, has got more than just facts about people.

The next entry is all personal things I speak of and think on.


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