Josh Hatcher's Blog

I'm really getting recharged as I read this book. It's a wonderful biography of a powerful man of God. It's different than most biographies, because it is filled with quotes and clips from Jim Elliot's journals and letters.

Elizabeth Elliot fills in details as needed to weave them all together, but to actually read what was going on in the head of a man so passionate about Christ as Jim Elliot is refreshing, and makes me feel like I've just plugged in to a power source, and I'm sucking in electricity to fill up my batteries. (I say this as my laptop light blinks, because it's not getting enough electricity...)
The Call

Jim Elliot had some awesome thoughts on the concept of a "call" from God to do ministry. In Christian circles, the "call" is when someone feels God is telling them to go into ministry.

Elliot didn't like the response he was seeing to such thinking.

Our young men are going into professional fields because they don't "feel called" to the mission field. We don't need a call; we need a kick in the pants. We must begin thinking in terms of "going out" and stop our weeping because "they won't come in." Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the church. May God send us forth.

The two things that motivated Jim more than anything else was his passionate relationship with God, (A living God that spoke to him everyday.) and a broken heart for the billions of people going to hell without Christ.

Supernatural Power

And it was in the context of that relationship that Jim sought power from God to do the work.
He spoke out of frustration at one point of his life, after seeing very few people won to Christ:

No Fruit Yet. Why is it I'm so unproductive? I cannot recall leading more than one or two into the kingdom. Surely this is not the manifestation of the power of the Resurrection. I feel as Rachel - "Give me children or else I die."

He was frustrated with the complacency he saw within the church, and the lack of the people to take hold of God's power in their lives. He attended a missionairy conference while in college and wrote this:

Think for a moment of the potential here: students from all over the country and other parts of the world, met here specifically to study missions. How long shall we sit analyzing, questioning, arguing, discussing, before God lays hold on us with power to thrust us out to the billion and a half who have not yet heard? But one can pray- and this I ask of you all Lay hold with all your powers upon the Lord of the Harvest, that He would make the effects of this convention resound in dark places for His Name's Sake.
Dangerous

Observing this complacency in the church led him to write one of my absolutely most favorite quotes of all time.


We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not recon with. But we are "harmless" and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part int he comradeship of the cross. We are "Sideliners" - coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like it's own. Oh, that God would make us dangerous!

This has been my prayer for a long time... that we who call ourselves Christian (including me) would live with the kind of abandon that Jim Elliot did. No fear holding us back... No attachments keeping us from giving our all to Him.... Nothing. Absolutely NOTHING should be able to keep us from obeying God. The penalty for not obeying Him is the death of billions of people. They are all around us, and without us being willing to take ridicule, or a fist to the eye, or maybe as Jim Elliot did, a spear to the chest, they will not find the eternal hope that God gives them.

Instead we sit behind our comfortable salaries, our shiny cars, and 300 channel cable TV packages. We spend more on our family cell phone plan than we do funding the Kingdom of God. And when challenged with this fact, we get indignant, because, "who is this guy to tell me that I have to give this up. I NEED this."

No. We need to sacrifice. We NEED to get disconnected from the things of this world. We need to get plugged into Jesus, and then stop being "church people" and start being PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW CHRIST.

To follow Christ means that we "take up our cross"... it means that we lay down our lives...

"Josh, I love Jesus. I am willing to give up anything to follow Him!"
- Yeah? What if it meant losing your job? What if it meant selling your house and moving into an apartment next door to the projects? What if it meant giving away all your stuff, and moving to Guinea to work with our friend Pastor David Coker? What if it meant breaking up with that girlfriend? What if it meant telling your kids that you are canceling your internet service, or your cable tv, or your cell phone, or selling that second car, and taking out a second mortgage on your home, and giving the money to fund God's work? What if it meant admitting to your wife that you are looking at porn? What if it meant face to face forgiving the guy that raped you? What if it meant the whole world turned against you and what if you lost everything?

Wait... it DOES mean all that. It is going to look different for each of us... but the call to sacrifice... the call to live a dangerous faith... the call to abandon ALL for Christ is extended to all of us... And we need to be aware that Jesus never meant for our lives to be easy... or comfortable... or happy...

it might be those things.. because Jesus DOES want to bless us...

but what we are is "sheep for the slaughter"....

I still have about half of the book to finish.... but this quote, written years before Jim was slaughtered by the Waodoni Indians on the shore of the river in Ecuador.... while he was trying to share love with them. It's almost eerie. Did he KNOW his death was looming if he obeyed God? Who knows. What we do know, is that we are all called to follow in Christ's footsteps... to sacrifice... whether it is our lives, or our comfort, or our own wants and desires...

"We are the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise." And what are sheep doing going into the gate? What is their purpose inside those courts? To bleat melodies and enjoy toe company of the flock? No. Those sheep were destined for the altar. Their pasture feeding had been for one purpose, to test them and fatten them for bloody sacrifice. Give Him thanks, then, that you have been counted worthy of His altars. Enter into the work with praise.