Follow the Leader!

The martyrdom of American missionaries Jim Elliott, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint and Roger Youderian, fifty-two years ago (January 8, 1956) by the Waodani people deep in the jungles of Ecuador along the Amazon River basin has inspired thousands (if not millions) of Christians during the past half-century, and has been used by God to bring countless others to saving faith in Jesus. That story, narrated by Nate Saint’s son, Steve, was powerfully portrayed in the docudrama “End of the Spear,” which opened in 1,163 theaters across the U.S. on January 20, 2006. As Win and I watched the movie with some special friends the week it opened, I was reminded that one of the most moving books I have ever read is "Shadow of the Almighty." It is the story of missionary Jim Elliot, based on his personal diary, written by his widow, Elizabeth, shortly after his horrifying martyrdom on that day fifty-two years ago, at the age of 29.

Jim Elliot was born in 1927 in Portland, Oregon. He was educated at Wheaton College (my alma mater) and the Summer Institute of Linguistics of Wycliffe Bible Translators. He went to Ecuador with his wife, Elizabeth, in 1952, deeply burdened to reach the savage, stone-age Indians of that country with the Gospel.

In a letter to his parents dated August 8, 1950, he describes the compelling force of his call to leave home and to follow the Lord with the words, "Impelled.... I dare not stay home!"

Jim Elliot epitomizes for me, in both his life and his death, what it really means to "follow the Leader." Indeed, he fleshed out the somewhat rigorous terms of followership articulated by our Lord with these words in Mark 8:34, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

The demands of discipleship are basically three: deny, take and follow.

First of all, the command to "deny" ourselves literally means that we should forget or disown ourselves - our selfishness and self-centeredness. We need to stop thinking "I, I, I" and stop focusing on "me, me, me."

To be sure, we are living in a day when the very idea of self-denial rubs against the grain of current psychological theory. We are far more comfortable with words like "self-actualization" and "self-realization." But, in reality, those who deny themselves are the ones who experience fulfillment in the best sense of that word.

Next of all, to "take" up one's cross means to be willing not only to deny self but also to "die" to self. (You see, a man carrying a cross was a man going out to die!) Jesus is NOT talking about tolerating life's inconveniences and petty annoyances. I believe it was Chuck Swindoll who reminded us in one of his books that Jesus is NOT referring to those nagging, chronic problems, like suffering from asthma or enduring a migraine headache. Such things may indeed be "thorns in the flesh," but they are not "crosses to bear" in the way that Jesus meant it. To "take up one's cross" is to be willing to say with the Apostle Paul in Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ." And so in his book titled "My Utmost for His Highest," Oswald Chambers admonishes us, "Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence."

Last of all, we are to follow Him - continuously, habitually. Moment by moment. Step by step. Again, Oswald Chambers comments, "When the call of God comes, begin to go, and never stop going!"

Jim Elliot understood the cost of true followership. He wrote in his diary, "Father, let me be weak that I might lose my clutch on everything temporal. My life, my reputation, my possessions. Lord, let me loose the tension of the grasping hand.... Rather, open my hand to receive the nail of Calvary, as Christ's was opened -that I, releasing all, might be released, unleashed from all that binds me now." That's the kind of language that gives the Devil a fit. In fact, when they hear it, all his demons gasp!

You see, Jim Elliot really had no regard for self, or success or status. The only thing that was important to him was that he "follow the Leader!" He was ready and willing to deny himself, take up his cross and follow Christ. Thus, when it came to his call to missionary service, he could only reply, "Impelled, I dare not stay home."

It was in 1949, while a student at Wheaton College that Jim Elliot penned these now immortalized words, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot loose." Seven years later, on a hot Sunday afternoon, his body and the bodies of his four comrades were discovered on the bank of the Curaray River, savagely murdered by those they had sought to reach for Jesus Christ. Jim Elliot followed the Leader, bearing his cross.... But in heaven he will be wearing a crown!

May God be pleased to find me, along with many other fellow members of the Body of Christ, who are ready and willing to "follow the Leader" with a commitment so great that it will make all hell gasp!

Following our Resurrected and Exalted Leader in 2008 . . .