Ministering to Your Husband's Killers

“To pray ‘thy will be done,’ I must be willing, if the answer requires it, that my will be undone.” – Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot (nee Howard) was born on December 21, 1926 in Brussels, Belgium to missionary parents who moved the family to Philadelphia when she was an infant. Elisabeth grew up in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, and later attended Wheaton College in Illinois, where she studied classical Greek to prepare for translating the Bible into an unknown language.

At Wheaton, Elisabeth met a fellow student named Jim Elliot who had a heart for lost souls and in particular, for native tribes in Central America. Jim and Elisabeth were married in Quito, Ecuador in 1953, and spent the next three years ministering to the Quichua and Huaorani (or Auca) Indians. In 1956, Jim – along with Nate Saint and three other missionaries – was speared to death by those Indians.

Undaunted, Elisabeth and Rachel Saint, Nate’s widow, chose to live amongst the Huaorani and Quichua tribes for five years, from 1958 to 1963. Not only did they successfully translate parts of the Bible into their native tongues, but they also led their husbands’ killers to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

Eventually, Elisabeth Elliot returned to the U.S. with her daughter Valerie, who was only 10 months old when Jim Elliot was murdered. She married a professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where she became an adjunct professor herself. Unfortunately, her second husband died just four years later and so, Elisabeth married for the third and final time in 1977 to a hospital chaplain.

Throughout her life, Elisabeth Elliot penned 25 books, the best known of which – Shadow of the Almighty and Through Gates of Splendor – describe her life and ministry with Jim Elliot. Elisabeth died in 2015 at the age of 88, having suffered from dementia for the last 10 years of her life.

As she said in today’s quote, no one would want to be tragically widowed at such an early age and left to raise an infant daughter by herself, only to lose a second husband within a few years of remarrying. And certainly no one would desire to spend their supposedly “Golden Years” battling dementia.

But that was God’s perfect plan for Elisabeth Elliot, and she accepted it with faith, grace, and courage… which is why her life story continues to inspire countless thousands of people to this very day.

“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Luke 22:42

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President