Expendable

I've just finished reading this book – Through Gates of Splendor – about five missionaries who set out to reach the savage Auca tribe in Ecuador. These guys gave themselves to a specific task, spent years in preparation, and then got massacred on pretty much their first point of contact with the tribe on the ground.

As far as the book details, no Auca ever became a Christian, or even had the gospel presented to them in an intelligible, meaningful way*. But thousands of Christians were struck by their sacrifice, commitment, and all out abandonment for Christ. Lives were changed and redirected through their testimony. And the story was big news in the secular press at the time (1950s).

So all in all, as far as it is visible to us at the present time, their life and mission bore much fruit. Just not in the way they had planned or envisioned.

Their story also stands out in direct contrast to that of Hudson-Taylor, John Wesley, and all the guys that spent long, fruitful, gifted lives working incredibly hard for the cause of Christ. It stands in contrast because they were very ordinary people, they were young and their story was so utterly short. And yet they were prayerfully led by God throughout it.

It seems this was His will, His way. Their sacrifice, their story, was one He permitted and intended.

It just makes you think – anything that we could accomplish or do with our lives is all in the hands of God. It's His story, not ours. He writes the script, and we're utterly expendable.

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"Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."
Jim Elliot, p11

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
Jim Elliot, p173

"During the last war we were taught to recognize that, in order to obtain our objective, we had to be willing to be expendable ... This very afternoon thousands of soldiers are known by their serial numbers as men who are expendable ... We know there is only one answer to our country's demand that we share in the price of freedom. Yet, when the Lord Jesus asks us to pay the price for world evangelization, we often answer without a word. We cannot go. We say it costs too much."
Nate Saint, p53

"A call is nothing more nor less than obedience to the will of God, as God presses it home to the soul by whatever means He chooses."
Pete Fleming, p13

"The old life of chasing things that are of a temporal nature seemed absolutely insane."
Nate Saint, p62

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* 7th August 2011: I've just read in Randy Alcorn's book Heaven that some Auca's (or at least one) did become Christians:

"Mincaye, the Auca Indian who speared Nate Saint, is now a follower of Jesus. When Mincaye was asked what he's going to do when he meets Nate Saint in Heaven, he replied, "I'm going to run and throw my arms around Nate Saint and thank him for bringing Jesus Christ to me and my people." He added that Nate Saint would welcome him home."

Heaven, Randy Alcorn, page 336