This is an excerpt from a letter that she received from Jim Elliot before they were married. They wanted so badly to be married, but the Lord told them to wait. They would get frustrated thinking about the fact that they could be doing missions together, but then Jim said this:
"Besides this, there is the somewhat philosophical realization that actually I have lost nothing. We may imagine what it would be like to share a given event and feel loss at having to experience it alone. But let us not forget-- that loss is imagined , not real. I imagine peaks of enjoyment when I think of doing things together, but let not the hoping for it dull the doing of it alone. What is, is actual-what might be simply is not, and I must not therefore query God as though He robbed me-- of things that are not. ... Let not our longing slay the appetite of our living."
Wow. Now, I am not in the same boat as Jim and Elizabeth, but it still applies to my desires. Sometimes I just really want to go to the beach, or go be doing missions on the other side of the world, and not just in Simi Valley, or I want to go backpacking with my friends.
But when I have to work on Saturday, and can't go on the backpacking trip, or when I am don't have enough gas money to drive to the beach, I just have to remember that I have lost nothing.
Be encouraged. God is good.
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