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This is part two of Ellen Vaughn’s outstanding biography of Elisabeth Elliot, following 2020’s Becoming Elisabeth Elliot. You can read my review of that book here.
The author relies on Elliot’s private journals and never-before-published letters. With that information, she had a choice. She could write a victorious, “inspirational” white-washed story, or she could tell it straight, which is what she chose to do. This allowed us to read Elliot’s very personal thoughts. Some readers may be surprised with some of those thoughts. But the author tells us that Elliot herself railed against the image-conscious habits of the Evangelical Machine, whose every story must end with glorious conversion and coherent happy endings, lest God look bad.
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BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by R.C. Sproul
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In this volume we read about Elliot raising her daughter Val, the generally negative reaction to her only novel No Graven Image, meeting and marrying Addison Leitch, and his heart wrenching battle with cancer, her ten weeks in Jerusalem doing research for the book Furnace of the Lord, which would be rejected by her publisher, taking on two lodgers in her home, one of which (Walt) would marry Valerie, and the other would marry Elisabeth (Lars), her love of dogs, but her refusal to leash them, to their detriment, loneliness, staying married to Lars for 38 years, even though within nine days of marrying him she knew that she had made the biggest mistake of her life. Elliot was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the late 1990’s, and would die in 2015.
In her two-volume biography of Elisabeth Elliot, comprised of more than 600 pages, the author gives a thorough look at her life. I like the way the author summed up her life when she writes that she was a woman who lived imperfectly, as we all do, loved God, and sought to serve Him with everything she had.
- The Timeless Apostle. The Timeless Apostle by Ken Urbansky will be released by Relevant Publishers April 5.
- The Deconstruction of Christianity. Tim Challies reviews the book The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How To Respond by Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. He writes that it is a timely book that has been written to address an urgent contemporary issue, and that it would be hard to recommend it too highly.
- Study, Savor and Share Scripture: Becoming What We Behold. My wife Tammy has published a book about HOW to study the Bible. The book is available on Amazon in both a Kindle and paperback edition. She writes “Maybe you have read the Bible but want to dig deeper and know God and know yourself better. Throughout the book I use the analogy of making a quilt to show how the Bible is telling one big story about what God is doing in the world through Christ. Quilting takes much patience and precision, just like studying the Bible, but the end result is well worth it.
We are reading through Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith by R.C. Sproul. From the Ligonier description:
“The Westminster Confession of Faith is one of the most precise and comprehensive statements of biblical Christianity, and it is treasured by believers around the world. R.C. Sproul has called it one of the most important confessions of faith ever penned, and it has helped generations of Christians understand and defend what they believe.
In Truths We Confess, Dr. Sproul introduces readers to this remarkable confession, explaining its insights and applying them to modern life. In his signature easy-to-understand style and with his conviction that everyone’s a theologian, he provides valuable commentary that will serve churches and individual Christians as they strive to better understand the eternal truths of Scripture. As he walks through the confession line by line, Dr. Sproul shows how the doctrines of the Bible—from creation to covenant, sin to salvation—fit together to the glory of God. This accessible volume is designed to help you deepen your knowledge of God’s Word and answer the question, What do you believe?”
This week we look at WCF 10 Of Effectual Calling. Here are a few helpful quotes from this chapter:
- Whom does God effectually call? The elect—and only the elect.
- The proclamation of the gospel is an outward call and can by itself have no effect. But the call of God, when He works inwardly by the Holy Spirit in the soul and in the heart of an unregenerate person, is effective every time.
- We will never love Christ perfectly or love Him as much as we ought to. But if we have love for Him at all, we can be assured of our salvation.
- The confession states clearly that the operation of the Holy Spirit in effectual calling or regeneration is the work of God alone. This is the divine initiative by which we are brought to faith.
- Regeneration precedes faith. You don’t have to have faith in order to be born again. Rather, you have to be born again before you can ever have faith.
- God sovereignly determines to give the grace of effectual calling only to the elect. When that grace is given to the elect, it works.
- We can be confident that the children of believers who die in infancy are elect.
