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Why Elisabeth Elliot Changed Her Beliefs About Finding God’s Will

Why Elisabeth Elliot Changed Her Beliefs About Finding God’s Will

Section titled “Why Elisabeth Elliot Changed Her Beliefs About Finding God’s Will”

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  • She saw God’s care as dependent on her perfect obedience, and obedience as including not only her actions and her will but every aspect of her life right down to her natural inclinations. Human free will involved only the choice to obey or disobey God’s direction, and God’s will was so minutely specific that even an earnest seeker could miss the narrow path of obedience.
  • Elliot had left Ecuador with a changing understanding of God’s will. In college she believed she had discerned a call to work in Bible translation; for eleven years she had worked in three distinct languages, and there seemed to be nothing to show for it. It had seemed that God called her to marriage; after two years of marriage her husband had been killed. Her call to missions had been the first call she discerned; gradually she had become unable to see a role for herself on the mission field and had changed careers. Circumstances had forced her to look long and hard at her beliefs about God’s guidance.
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  • Elliot’s understanding of her own heart had changed as well. In another passage that echoes that earlier letter, the book explains: “For a long time I took the view that whatever I might want to do could not possibly be what God wanted me to do. That seemed unarguable. I am a sinner, my desires are sinful, ‘there is no health in us,’ and that’s that.” But over time, “a better understanding of Scripture” had helped her see that because she was made in the image of God she might also, as “a very simple and natural thing,” have good desires.7