This morning we had Dr. Charles Woodrow preach at Grace Fellowship Church. For over 20 years, Dr. Woodrow has served as a missionary to Mozambique. Our church has been supporting him in this work for the past several years. In his sermon he quoted Jim Elliot–not the Elliot quote we all know (“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”), but one that I hadn’t heard before. I thought it was worth sharing.
We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the twentieth century does not reckon with. But we are “harmless,” and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are “sideliners” — coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!
