{"id":301886,"date":"2009-09-02T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/podcast\/%series%\/dating-activities-are-they-wrong\/"},"modified":"2009-09-02T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-02T15:00:00","slug":"dating-activities-are-they-wrong","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/podcast\/familylife-today\/dating-activities-are-they-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Dating Activities&#8211;Are They Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Does dating and courtship always have to be so complicated? Not according to best-selling author and speaker Elisabeth Elliot. On today\u2019s broadcast, hear Elisabeth tell stories about other sweethearts who waited for God\u2019s timing in romance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Does dating and courtship always have to be so complicated?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":294104,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"https:\/\/web.familylifetoday.com\/fl2009-09-02.mp3","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"00:","filesize":"12.11M","filesize_raw":"12698559","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":""},"categories":[2807,2093],"tags":[4018,2588,4920,4996],"podcast_series":[7670],"cwp_profile":[8982],"series":[2101],"class_list":["post-301886","podcast","type-podcast","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engagements-and-weddings","category-women","tag-dating","tag-teens","tag-womanhood","tag-young-women","podcast_series-quest-for-love","cwp_profile-elisabeth-elliot-gren","series-familylife-today"],"acf":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1001\/2024\/09\/FLT-Podcast-Cover-2-508x508-3.jpg?w=508","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1001\/2023\/02\/image-scaled.jpg","download_link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/podcast-download\/301886\/dating-activities-are-they-wrong","player_link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/podcast-player\/301886\/dating-activities-are-they-wrong","audio_player":null,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"light","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/familylife-today\/id212174303?mt=2&app=podcast","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/0j5UaKdQOHQCuo1bt0ebEm","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"},"youtube":{"key":"youtube","url":"","label":"YouTube","class":"youtube","icon":"youtube.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/feed\/podcast\/familylife-today","embedCode":"<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"45nLCeFl6C\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/podcast\/familylife-today\/dating-activities-are-they-wrong\/\">Dating Activities&#8211;Are They Wrong?<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/podcast\/familylife-today\/dating-activities-are-they-wrong\/embed\/#?secret=45nLCeFl6C\" width=\"500\" height=\"350\" title=\"&#8220;Dating Activities&#8211;Are They Wrong?&#8221; &#8212; FamilyLife\u00ae - A Cru Ministry\" data-secret=\"45nLCeFl6C\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\"><\/iframe><script>\n\/*! This file is auto-generated *\/\n!function(d,l){\"use strict\";l.querySelector&&d.addEventListener&&\"undefined\"!=typeof URL&&(d.wp=d.wp||{},d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage||(d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if((t||t.secret||t.message||t.value)&&!\/[^a-zA-Z0-9]\/.test(t.secret)){for(var s,r,n,a=l.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret=\"'+t.secret+'\"]'),o=l.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret=\"'+t.secret+'\"]'),c=new RegExp(\"^https?:$\",\"i\"),i=0;i<o.length;i++)o[i].style.display=\"none\";for(i=0;i<a.length;i++)s=a[i],e.source===s.contentWindow&&(s.removeAttribute(\"style\"),\"height\"===t.message?(1e3<(r=parseInt(t.value,10))?r=1e3:~~r<200&&(r=200),s.height=r):\"link\"===t.message&&(r=new URL(s.getAttribute(\"src\")),n=new URL(t.value),c.test(n.protocol))&&n.host===r.host&&l.activeElement===s&&(d.top.location.href=t.value))}},d.addEventListener(\"message\",d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener(\"DOMContentLoaded\",function(){for(var e,t,s=l.querySelectorAll(\"iframe.wp-embedded-content\"),r=0;r<s.length;r++)(t=(e=s[r]).getAttribute(\"data-secret\"))||(t=Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,12),e.src+=\"#?secret=\"+t,e.setAttribute(\"data-secret\",t)),e.contentWindow.postMessage({message:\"ready\",secret:t},\"*\")},!1)))}(window,document);\n\/\/# sourceURL=https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-includes\/js\/wp-embed.min.js\n<\/script>\n"},"spectra_custom_meta":{"_wp_page_template":["default"],"transcript_url":["https:\/\/transcript.familylifetoday.com\/fl2009-09-02.pdf"],"audio_file":["https:\/\/web.familylifetoday.com\/fl2009-09-02.mp3"],"transcript_content":["<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 What is the essence of authentic, biblical masculinity?\u00a0 Here are some thoughts of that subject from Elisabeth Elliot.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 I asked my friend Dr. J.I. Packer, what do you think of when you think of masculinity?\u00a0 Without any hesitation he said responsibility.\u00a0 A man has to take the responsibility of being rejected, the risk of being rejected.\u00a0 A real man is going to be willing to do that.\u00a0 If these guys are such wimps that they are not going be the initiators then you don\u2019t want them for husbands.\u00a0 I mean a man has got to take the risk.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 This is <em>FamilyLife Today<\/em> for Wednesday, September 2<sup>nd<\/sup>.\u00a0 Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I\u2019m Bob Lepine.\u00a0 You\u2019re about to hear some timeless challenging common sense for singles from Elisabeth Elliot.\n\nAnd welcome to <em>FamilyLife Today<\/em>.\u00a0 Thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition.\u00a0 So is this your number one, you think?\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 If this isn\u2019t number one it is definitely in the top five.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 It\u2019s right up there.\u00a0 We have had a lot of great opportunities over the years to meet a lot of remarkable people\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Heaven class people.\u00a0 People talk about world class there are some who are heaven class.\n\n<strong>Bob: <\/strong>\u00a0There are some names that a lot of people know and some of them are folks you\u2019ve never heard of before.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 But this name you have heard of.\u00a0 Elisabeth Elliot.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t know who she is she was for a number of years a missionary in the country of Ecuador and her husband Jim Elliot was martyred for his faith.\u00a0 He was one of five men who lost his life.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 January of 1956.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 That\u2019s right.\u00a0 She remarried another gentleman and he died.\u00a0 Then she married her current husband, Lars Gren.\u00a0 I have to tell you that my only regret is that you couldn\u2019t have been with us not only on this interview but other interviews we\u2019ve done with Elisabeth Elliot and Lars Gren.\u00a0\u00a0 They are in Arkansas terms, a hoot.\n\n(laughter)\n\nThey are a lot of fun.\u00a0 She is one of the most articulate people I\u2019ve ever met.\u00a0 She is theologically sound and spot on in terms of understanding the culture.\u00a0 Today we are going to talk about a vital subject in terms of selecting a spouse.\u00a0 She speaks to it directly.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 One of her best known books is called <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 In this book she wrote about her relationship with Jim Elliot while both of them were at Wheaton College back in the 1950s.\u00a0 Ultimately they married.\u00a0 She talked about the principles of purity as you approach a courting type relationship.\n\nWhen that book came out there were a lot of people who read her advice things like don\u2019t kiss until you are married and just thought where is this lady coming from?\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 She\u2019s coming from the Bible by the way.\u00a0 Not that the Bible tells you you shouldn\u2019t kiss until your married but she is talking about protecting your innocence and your purity.\u00a0 There is nothing wrong with that.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 Over the years people who read her book some of them said I\u2019m not going to follow her advice.\u00a0\u00a0 Others said this makes sense.\u00a0 Many of them wrote to her later and said here\u2019s what happened in my relationships and she compiled a book called <em>Quest for Love<\/em> where she told the stories of those who had pursued purity and those who had ignored the Bible\u2019s command for purity.\u00a0 We had a chance to sit down with her probably more than a decade ago back in 1996.\u00a0 It is one of our all time favorite interviews.\u00a0 It is a classic.\u00a0 We\u2019ll just go ahead and dive right in and let our listeners hear the timeless wisdom of Elisabeth Elliot.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Tell me what really motivated you to take all these letters and then craft a book about how people made the choice of selecting a spouse?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, it was the letters that poured in from readers of <em>Passion and Purity<\/em> that made me realize that there were still a lot of things that needed to be said that hadn\u2019t been said in <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\n\n<em>Passion and Purity<\/em> is basically the love story of Jim Elliot and me, which began when we were college students and God kept us apart for five-and-a-half years.\u00a0 Finally, He brought us together after we had both been missionaries, singly, on two different sides of the Andes and Ecuador.\u00a0 I was in the western jungle; he was in the eastern jungle.\u00a0 But young people today just don\u2019t seem to want to wait on the Lord.\u00a0 And so I got floods and floods of letters telling me the awful messes, the really chaotic messes that young people are getting into today because of what\u2019s called dating.\n\nNow there was such a thing as dating back in my day but it was a very far cry from what today\u2019s system, if you want to call it that, is.\u00a0 And a little further back, my parents never used the word dating.\u00a0 There was no such thing.\u00a0 When my father wanted to court my mother, he had to go to her home and sit in the living room.\u00a0 They did not go out alone.\u00a0 And this system of putting a 17-year old girl with an 18-year old guy all by themselves in a car and sending them off alone \u2013 why should we be surprised at what happens?\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 You know, I remember the first time \u2013 I think I was in college the first time I heard about the book <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\u00a0 And somebody said to me, \u201cThe lady in this book says you shouldn\u2019t kiss until you get married.\u201d\u00a0 And it was like, \u201cCan you believe anyone would be so backward, so archaic as to even suggest a standard like that?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you expected that kind of response from people when you wrote the book.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t you?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 You\u2019re exaggerating a little bit.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t say you shouldn\u2019t kiss until you get married, but I said keep your hands off and your clothes on.\u00a0 That\u2019s the basic rule for everybody.\u00a0 And you certainly should not even hold hands until you\u2019re engaged.\u00a0 And I confess that Jim and I did kiss after we became engaged.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had a number of letters from young people who have made up their minds that the safest thing is to wait until they\u2019re at the altar, when the pastor turns to them then and says, \u201cYou may express your love for each other,\u201d at which point in front of an audience they have their first kiss.\u00a0 That\u2019s great.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t make fun of that at all.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t say that that\u2019s actually necessary.\n\nBut I do think that when young people \u2013 the minute they start messing around along the edges, then they\u2019re already beginning the downward slide.\u00a0 I spoke to a group of kids just this past Saturday, high school \u2013 600 high school kids.\u00a0 I said to them what I often say, \u201cI know that you think I\u2019m an old lady that comes from some other planet and that I can\u2019t even imagine how you feel about these things.\u00a0 But I know what you\u2019re going to say to me.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to say, \u2018Well, you know, this old lady \u2013 are you going to tell us, Elisabeth Elliot, that it\u2019s a sin to hold hands?\u2019\u201d\n\nMy answer to that is, \u201cNo.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to tell you that it\u2019s a sin to hold hands.\u00a0 But I\u2019m going to ask you a question.\u00a0 Why do you do it?\u201d\u00a0 And there\u2019s a dead silence.\u00a0 Well, they do it because it feels good.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun.\u00a0 My next question is \u201cIs there any difference between shaking hands with the pastor at the door of the church and holding hands with a member of the opposite sex who is attractive to you when you\u2019re in a dark place?\u00a0 Is there any difference at all?\u201d\u00a0 Then, of course, they kind of giggle and nudge each other.\n\nI said, \u201cOf course, you know there\u2019s a tremendous difference.\u00a0 And so what are you doing?\u00a0 Why are you doing this?\u201d\u00a0 Because it\u2019s fun.\u00a0 Because it\u2019s exciting.\u00a0 And that is exactly the way God intended it to be.\u00a0 God intended that there should be a certain progression from point A to point B to point C, and ultimately to consummation in marriage.\u00a0 But when is it appropriate to start playing that game?\u00a0 It is not appropriate until a commitment has been made.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Elisabeth, there are moms here listening to our broadcast right now and they\u2019re hearing you talk about this and this is resonating.\u00a0 But they\u2019re looking at their toddlers or they\u2019re thinking about their school-age children, perhaps teenagers that will be coming home from school in a few hours, and they\u2019re asking the question, \u201cWhere in the world did we go wrong?\u201d\u00a0 What would you say to her to help her understand what happened in our culture and especially within the Christian community, that we\u2019ve lost our sense of holding to high standards and holiness?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, of course, in the Christian community it\u2019s always been a temptation from the time of the New Testament to be conformed to the world.\u00a0 And the Bible tells us over and over again in different ways, \u201cDon\u2019t take your queues from what the world is telling you.\u201d\u00a0 I often say to people who are struggling with whether this or that is right or wrong, \u201c\n\nAnything at all that becomes a by-word in the world, a secular concept which you hear repeated again and again, such as \u201cif it feels good, do it\u201d \u2013 anything at all is highly suspect.\u00a0 What the world is telling me is probably wrong.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just assume that it\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 They need to examine it and decide if it lines up with scripture.\u00a0 But that is certainly a problem that\u2019s not new.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 You speak of dating in your book and you take some pretty serious shots at this concept.\u00a0 You\u2019ve questioned the entire courtship\/selection process that we\u2019re involved in now.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that right?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 As I wrote this book, <em>Quest for Love<\/em>, I was compiling stories from Christian biographies from way back.\u00a0 For example, Hudson Taylor and George Mueller and from some contemporary letters that I\u2019d had from students, from young people who were following exactly the same principles that Hudson Taylor and George Mueller were following, people who earnestly wanted the will of God.\u00a0 They believed that God knew how to show them the right person at the right time.\u00a0 And we need to distinguish between a man\u2019s search for a wife and a woman\u2019s search for a husband.\n\nI\u2019ve tried to spell out as clearly as possible in two books that there is a vast difference between masculinity and femininity.\u00a0 That\u2019s another thing that has confused everybody because this idea of equality and interchangeability has messed up both the men and the women.\u00a0 I believe with all my heart that men are to be the initiators and women are to be responders.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spelled out my reasons for that in <em>Let Me Be a Woman<\/em> the book on femininity and <em>The Mark of a Man<\/em> the book on masculinity.\n\nSo it is indeed the responsibility of men to be particularly on their faces before God asking the question, \u201cLord, is marriage in Your will for my life?\u201d\u00a0 I think we can assume that in most cases the answer will be yes.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very rare man that will feel very clearly that God was calling him to remain single.\u00a0 My point is that women are not to go out and do the looking.\u00a0 We are not to be searching for a husband.\n\nSingle people throughout the history of Christianity have greatly blessed the church.\u00a0 So it\u2019s entirely possible that God does want some men to understand that calling.\u00a0 And Jim Elliot was one of those who felt very strongly that he needed to be willing to be single.\n\nPeople thought \u2013 I mean we thought from Wheaton campus that Jim Elliot must be a woman-hater because he had made up his mind when he came to Wheaton that if he was going to become approved unto God \u2013 and he called that his AUG degree (Approved Unto God) \u2013 and get a BA (the Bachelor of Arts), then he was going to have to eliminate one or two things from his program that the average college man thought were absolutely necessary.\n\nOne of those things was dating.\u00a0 So he just made up his mind he was not going to date.\u00a0 And as he matured and approached his final year in college, he made a commitment to the Lord.\u00a0 \u201cIf it\u2019s required that certain men remain single for the sake of the gospel\u201d \u2013 for example, in pioneer missionary work \u2013 \u201cthen Lord I\u2019m willing to be one of those.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that he was not interested in marriage.\u00a0 But when he began to feel that God might give him permission to get married sometime, then he decided that he had already made up his mind which woman on that campus he would like to have.\n\nMy point is that women are not to go out doing the looking.\u00a0 We are not to be searching for a husband.\u00a0 And, of course, I get hundreds of letters from women who tell me these horrible stories of the result of these searches.\u00a0 They\u2019re putting themselves in a place of total availability to the guys \u2013 whatever they want, wherever they want it.\u00a0 And the guys are delighted.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have to do a thing.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 They sit and wait for the phone to ring, and the phone rings and the women are on the line inviting them out.\u00a0 And when they go out they don\u2019t know whether I\u2019m picking up the tab, is she picking up the tab, is this going to be Dutch?\u00a0 I mean, who decides where we\u2019re going to go?\u00a0 I just \u2013 my heart goes out to them.\u00a0 I think, \u201cYou have been sold a bill of goods.\u00a0 It is nonsense.\u201d\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 I can imagine though a single woman saying, \u201cYou don\u2019t know guys today.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t initiate, it will be years.\u00a0 These guys are not initiators and me just sitting back \u2013 some other girl is going to go initiate and then I\u2019ve lost.\u00a0 There\u2019s no way.\u201d\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 That\u2019s absolutely right.\u00a0 And you can bet your bottom dollar I\u2019ve had a lot of letters exactly like that.\u00a0 But I have had a lot of letters telling me the results of that kind of a search.\u00a0 If these guys are such wimps that they\u2019re not going to be the initiators, you don\u2019t want them for husbands.\u00a0 A husband is a man \u2013 I mean, a man has got to take the risk.\n\nWhen I wrote my book, <em>The Mark of a Man<\/em> I asked my friend Dr. J.I. Packer, what do you think of when you think of masculinity?\u00a0 Without any hesitation he said responsibility.\u00a0 A man has to take the responsibility of being rejected, the risk of being rejected.\u00a0 A real man is going to be willing to do that.\n\nOne chapter in the book is so relevant to this question of a man having to take the huge risk of proposing to a woman.\u00a0 It\u2019s the story of Dick Hillis, a missionary in China. \u00a0Dick had fallen in love with a girl on the campus named Margaret but Margaret was going with his best friend.\u00a0 And it certainly appeared that they were going to get married.\u00a0 Well, Dick went on to China still loving this girl Margaret and never having said a word to her, never having had a date or anything.\u00a0 But he had just picked her out as the kind of godly woman that he would hope the Lord would give him.\n\nHe went to China, leaving a buddy of his the responsibility of reporting to him every six months about what was happening with Margaret and this other guy.\u00a0 So six months went by and the letter came, \u201cThey are still together.\u201d\u00a0 And another six months and he said, \u201cThey are still together.\u201d\u00a0 And this went on for \u2013 I\u2019ve forgotten how many years \u2013 something like two or three, maybe four years.\n\nDick continued to trust that somehow, sometime, somewhere maybe God still would give him this woman Margaret.\u00a0 Finally, the letter from his buddy came and said, \u201cThey\u2019ve broken up because Margaret has been called to China.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0So Dick immediately wrote a letter of proposal to Margaret to be waiting for her when she arrived in Shanghai.\u00a0 She opened this letter and scratched her head and thought, \u201cDick Hillis.\u00a0 Now let me think.\u00a0 That name is kind of familiar.\u00a0 I think we must have been in school together.\u201d\u00a0 She was floored, as you can imagine, and he said in his letter, \u201cThere can be no courtship until after the proposal.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019m asking you to marry me.\u201d\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 Wait.\u00a0 She got a marriage proposal in the mail from a guy she couldn\u2019t even remember?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Only vaguely did she remember the name.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth: <\/strong>\u00a0She didn\u2019t tell a soul.\u00a0 She was so utterly floored by this.\u00a0 And being a godly woman she thought, \u201cWell, God does do some strange things.\u00a0 I\u2019m not just going to write this off.\u00a0 But Lord, what shall I do?\u201d\n\nIt wasn\u2019t very long after that that she was invited to tea by an older missionary lady.\u00a0 And Margaret certainly didn\u2019t bring up any subject of courtship or marriage or anything.\u00a0 But this lady somehow or other, in the course of having tea together, divulged to her her own story.\u00a0 She told about how the Lord had brought her and her husband together without any time of getting acquainted at all and \u201cWe\u2019ve had a wonderfully happy marriage for all these so-many years.\u201d\u00a0 So Margaret sort of chalked that one up in her mind and thought, \u201cMaybe God is doing something here.\u201d\n\nI\u2019ve forgotten all the details but it\u2019s in the book -- it\u2019s one of the chapters in this book, <em>Quest for Love<\/em> --how eventually through correspondence alone they did become engaged.\u00a0 Dick was very wise in saying to Margaret, he said, \u201cIf I were to ask you if you came to China because of love for God or love for the Chinese, I feel sure that your answer would be because of love for God, because you would have trusted that if you loved God and if He was calling you to China, then God would know how to give you a love for the Chinese.\"\u00a0 Would it not be reasonable to assume that if you think it might be the will of God to marry me then God can give you a love for me?\u00a0 I want you to know I love you.\u201d\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 What a great story.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s one of a number of great stories that I\u2019ve compiled.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 It is one of a number of great stories.\u00a0 And I want you to tell one more story before we end the broadcast today.\u00a0 But I want Bob to tell our listeners how they can get a copy of <em>Quest for Love<\/em> along with the classic book that you\u2019ve written, <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\u00a0 In this book you really do call single people to holiness and to take a fresh look at this whole idea of courtship in that book.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 We are listening back to an interview today that we recorded back in 1996 We are listening back to an interview today that we recorded back in 1996 with Elisabeth Elliot.\u00a0 This is one of our favorite interviews of all time.\u00a0 Just to hear those stories again I think of the singles who are longing for a relationship.\u00a0 They are wondering how do I make this happen?\u00a0 I think you listen to Elisabeth Elliot and you come away with this answer.\u00a0 There is no formula for making it happen but there are principles that are biblical principles for finding contentment in whatever season you are in and for trusting the Lord.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yes, and I think most importantly, Bob, there is a person.\u00a0 There is the person of God who brings two people together and who still orchestrates relationships and cements hearts together.\u00a0 That really is her point there.\u00a0 It\u2019s God who can give you love for another person.\u00a0 Ultimately, I think the strongest marriages are built around receiving your spouse as God\u2019s perfect gift for you.\u00a0 That\u2019s a good reminder for all of us who are married and a great exhortation for every person who is single.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019ve often thought I wonder what books that are being written in our day are still going to be read 50 or 100 years from now.\u00a0 It would not surprise me if some of the books that Elisabeth Elliot has written in her lifetime are not the kind of timeless classics that are still being recommended a century from today should the Lord tarry.\n\nHer book, <em>Passion and Purity<\/em> is a classic.\u00a0 Even though I read it in my 20s when it first came out it\u2019s a book that I encourage my teenagers to read.\u00a0\u00a0 I would imagine they would encourage their sons and daughters to read it a generation from now.\n\nWe\u2019ve got the book in our FamilyLife Resource Center along with the follow up book that we talked about in these interviews called <em>Quest for Love. <\/em>\u00a0I want to encourage parents.\u00a0 Get a copy of both of these books and go through them with your teenagers.\u00a0 They may read some of this and decide they don\u2019t agree with some of this.\u00a0 That\u2019s okay because it\u2019ll start a conversation about what your standards are going to be and what does God\u2019s word have to say about relationships.\n\nYou can request copies of both of these books when you go to our web site FamilyLifeToday.com.\u00a0 Or you can call toll free 1-800-358-6329.\u00a0 That\u2019s 1-800-FL-TODAY.\u00a0 Someone on our team can let you know how you can have either or both of these books sent to you.\u00a0 If you do order both of the books we\u2019ll send along at no additional cost the CD audio of our conversation with Elisabeth Elliot so you can listen to it again.\u00a0 Again our web address is FamilyLifeToday.com and our phone number is 1-800- \u201cF\u201d as in family, \u201cL\u201d as in life and then the word TODAY.\n\nOver the years as we have tried to address this subject in a number of different settings and in a number of different ways we\u2019ve had tremendous response from listeners saying this is the kind of help I need.\u00a0 I need to be reminded of what the Scriptures say and I need to be reminded that the cultural approach to relationships will lead me in the wrong direction.\n\nWe had a conversation a number of months ago with Chip Ingram who had just finished a book called <em>Love, Sex and Lasting Relationships<\/em>.\u00a0 It tackles many of these same issues.\u00a0 We sat down with him and talked for more than two hours about the themes from that book.\u00a0 This month we want to make the CDs of our conversation with Chip available as a thank you gift to those of you who can help support the ministry of <em>FamilyLife Today<\/em> with a donation of any amount.\n\nI think most of you know that <em>FamilyLife Today<\/em> is listener supported which means that when we hear from listeners like you we are able to continue the program on this station and other stations across the country.\u00a0 When we don\u2019t hear from listeners we have to sometimes make the difficult decision as we did recently to go off the air in some key markets.\u00a0 That\u2019s always a tough decision to make.\u00a0 So if you are able to help with a donation this month feel free to request a copy of our two CDs with Chip Ingram on love, sex and lasting relationships.\n\nIf you make your donation online at FamilyLifeToday.com you\u2019ll want to type the word \u201clove\u201d in the key code box on the online donation form so we\u2019ll know to send you the CDs.\u00a0 Or if you call 1-800-FL-TODAY and make your donation over the phone just ask for the CDs about relationships.\u00a0 We\u2019ll know what you are talking about.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be happy to send those to you.\u00a0 Thanks again for your support of this ministry.\u00a0 We do appreciate your financial partnership with us.\n\nBefore we are done here today when we interviewed Elisabeth Elliot more than a decade ago one of the questions we asked her was about her own love story.\u00a0 We asked her to share with us the details of how Jim Elliot, her first husband, proposed to her and here\u2019s is how she responded.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He confessed his love for me long before he proposed to me.\u00a0 I was graduating from college.\u00a0 He still had another year to go.\u00a0 I was a senior and he was a junior.\u00a0 And in May, just a few weeks before my graduation, we went for a walk.\u00a0 We\u2019d had some conversations.\u00a0 He was a close friend of my brothers, so my brother brought him to our home for Christmas and Jim and I had sat up and talked until 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning.\u00a0 We had also been taking the same major.\u00a0 We were both Classical Greek majors so we were in almost exactly the same classes.\u00a0 So I\u2019d seen him a lot and had a few conversations with him.\u00a0 I think we studied some together and stuff like that.\n\nJust before graduation he took me out for a walk and he said, \u201cBet, I think we need to get squared away how we feel about each other.\u201d\u00a0 I was floored.\u00a0 I almost went through the sidewalk because I didn\u2019t know that Jim had any feelings for me.\u00a0 And my momma had told me when I was 13 years old \u201cnever chase boys and keep them at arm\u2019s length.\u201d\n\nSo I had done my level best to make sure that nobody had any idea that I was interested in Jim Elliot.\u00a0 So it made me a little bit irritated to think that Jim was saying \u201cI think we\u2019d better get squared away how we feel about each other.\u201d\u00a0 I thought, \u201cWell, what gives this guy any idea that I have some feelings for him?\u201d\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Now wait a second, but the truth was\u2026\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 That I did.\n\n(laughter)\n\nBut I thought I had done such a wonderful job of concealing them.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t rolled my eyes at him.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t tried to sit next to him in class.\u00a0\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t put a little smiley faces on his book covers.\n\nSo anyway, I responded by saying, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\u00a0 And he said, \u201cWhat do you mean, what do I mean.\u00a0 You know what I mean.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been in love with you for months.\u201d\u00a0 And he said, \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to show you this in every way except verbal.\u201d\u00a0 But he said, \u201cNow I\u2019m telling you, I love you.\u201d\u00a0 Didn\u2019t you know that?\n\nI said, no.\u00a0 Well, he said you must be deaf, dumb, and blind.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been trying to show you in every way.\u00a0 We went into a park and we sat down on the grass facing each other.\u00a0 We were more than an arm\u2019s length apart, according to my mother\u2019s rule, and we talked for seven hours.\n\nAnd he said, \u201cI am not proposing to you.\u00a0 I cannot ask you to marry me.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to Africa, I\u2019m going to South America.\u201d\u00a0 He lived in Oregon; I lived in New Jersey.\u00a0 I was graduating; he had another year.\u00a0 The chances of our seeing each other again seemed to be zero.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI have to leave you in God\u2019s hands.\u201d\u00a0 And he said, \u201cGod knows how to bring us together if he ever wants us together.\u00a0 But he said in the mean time I am not going to lay a finger on you because I have no rights over you.\u00a0\u00a0 You belong to God.\u00a0 You go ahead and go to Africa.\u00a0 God can bring us together.\u201d\n\nSo that\u2019s a very long story which is told in my book, <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\u00a0 But it was five years later in Ecuador where I was working on one side of the Andes, Jim on the other, that God finally gave to Jim a green light.\n\nThe reason he had hesitated so long was that he had been told by senior missionaries that there was jungle pioneer work that needed to be done only by single men.\u00a0 So he had given that a very good try for a whole year and concluded that if this single woman that he loved was doing pioneer work all by herself in the jungle on the other side of the Andes there really wasn\u2019t any reason why I would be a hindrance to his pioneer work on the eastern side of the Andes.\u00a0 At which point he felt that God gave him a green light to propose to me.\u00a0 So it wasn\u2019t until then that he sent me a cablegram, asked me to meet him in Quito.\u00a0 I got on my horse, I rode about five hours to the closest town, and then I rode 10 hours in a banana truck, and we met in Quito.\u00a0 And sitting by a fireplace Jim said, \u201cI want you for my wife.\u00a0 Do you want to marry me?\u201d\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 And you said?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, I said something like do I want to marry you?\u00a0 And he said, yes, that\u2019s what I\u2019m asking you.\u00a0 And there was a long pause and I said, \u201cYes.\u201d\n\n<em>FamilyLife Today<\/em> is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.\n\nHelp for today.\u00a0 Hope for tomorrow.\n\nWe are so happy to provide these transcripts for you. However, there is a cost to transcribe, create, and produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider <a href=\"http:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/donate\">donating today<\/a> to help defray the costs?\n\nCopyright \u00a9 FamilyLife. 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dating and courtship always have to be so complicated?","meta_box":{"show_notes":"","transcript_url":"https:\/\/transcript.familylifetoday.com\/fl2009-09-02.pdf","transcript_content":"<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 What is the essence of authentic, biblical masculinity?\u00a0 Here are some thoughts of that subject from Elisabeth Elliot.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 I asked my friend Dr. J.I. Packer, what do you think of when you think of masculinity?\u00a0 Without any hesitation he said responsibility.\u00a0 A man has to take the responsibility of being rejected, the risk of being rejected.\u00a0 A real man is going to be willing to do that.\u00a0 If these guys are such wimps that they are not going be the initiators then you don\u2019t want them for husbands.\u00a0 I mean a man has got to take the risk.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 This is <em>FamilyLife Today<\/em> for Wednesday, September 2<sup>nd<\/sup>.\u00a0 Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I\u2019m Bob Lepine.\u00a0 You\u2019re about to hear some timeless challenging common sense for singles from Elisabeth Elliot.\n\nAnd welcome to <em>FamilyLife Today<\/em>.\u00a0 Thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition.\u00a0 So is this your number one, you think?\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 If this isn\u2019t number one it is definitely in the top five.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 It\u2019s right up there.\u00a0 We have had a lot of great opportunities over the years to meet a lot of remarkable people\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Heaven class people.\u00a0 People talk about world class there are some who are heaven class.\n\n<strong>Bob: <\/strong>\u00a0There are some names that a lot of people know and some of them are folks you\u2019ve never heard of before.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 But this name you have heard of.\u00a0 Elisabeth Elliot.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t know who she is she was for a number of years a missionary in the country of Ecuador and her husband Jim Elliot was martyred for his faith.\u00a0 He was one of five men who lost his life.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 January of 1956.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 That\u2019s right.\u00a0 She remarried another gentleman and he died.\u00a0 Then she married her current husband, Lars Gren.\u00a0 I have to tell you that my only regret is that you couldn\u2019t have been with us not only on this interview but other interviews we\u2019ve done with Elisabeth Elliot and Lars Gren.\u00a0\u00a0 They are in Arkansas terms, a hoot.\n\n(laughter)\n\nThey are a lot of fun.\u00a0 She is one of the most articulate people I\u2019ve ever met.\u00a0 She is theologically sound and spot on in terms of understanding the culture.\u00a0 Today we are going to talk about a vital subject in terms of selecting a spouse.\u00a0 She speaks to it directly.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 One of her best known books is called <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 In this book she wrote about her relationship with Jim Elliot while both of them were at Wheaton College back in the 1950s.\u00a0 Ultimately they married.\u00a0 She talked about the principles of purity as you approach a courting type relationship.\n\nWhen that book came out there were a lot of people who read her advice things like don\u2019t kiss until you are married and just thought where is this lady coming from?\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 She\u2019s coming from the Bible by the way.\u00a0 Not that the Bible tells you you shouldn\u2019t kiss until your married but she is talking about protecting your innocence and your purity.\u00a0 There is nothing wrong with that.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 Over the years people who read her book some of them said I\u2019m not going to follow her advice.\u00a0\u00a0 Others said this makes sense.\u00a0 Many of them wrote to her later and said here\u2019s what happened in my relationships and she compiled a book called <em>Quest for Love<\/em> where she told the stories of those who had pursued purity and those who had ignored the Bible\u2019s command for purity.\u00a0 We had a chance to sit down with her probably more than a decade ago back in 1996.\u00a0 It is one of our all time favorite interviews.\u00a0 It is a classic.\u00a0 We\u2019ll just go ahead and dive right in and let our listeners hear the timeless wisdom of Elisabeth Elliot.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Tell me what really motivated you to take all these letters and then craft a book about how people made the choice of selecting a spouse?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, it was the letters that poured in from readers of <em>Passion and Purity<\/em> that made me realize that there were still a lot of things that needed to be said that hadn\u2019t been said in <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\n\n<em>Passion and Purity<\/em> is basically the love story of Jim Elliot and me, which began when we were college students and God kept us apart for five-and-a-half years.\u00a0 Finally, He brought us together after we had both been missionaries, singly, on two different sides of the Andes and Ecuador.\u00a0 I was in the western jungle; he was in the eastern jungle.\u00a0 But young people today just don\u2019t seem to want to wait on the Lord.\u00a0 And so I got floods and floods of letters telling me the awful messes, the really chaotic messes that young people are getting into today because of what\u2019s called dating.\n\nNow there was such a thing as dating back in my day but it was a very far cry from what today\u2019s system, if you want to call it that, is.\u00a0 And a little further back, my parents never used the word dating.\u00a0 There was no such thing.\u00a0 When my father wanted to court my mother, he had to go to her home and sit in the living room.\u00a0 They did not go out alone.\u00a0 And this system of putting a 17-year old girl with an 18-year old guy all by themselves in a car and sending them off alone \u2013 why should we be surprised at what happens?\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 You know, I remember the first time \u2013 I think I was in college the first time I heard about the book <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\u00a0 And somebody said to me, \u201cThe lady in this book says you shouldn\u2019t kiss until you get married.\u201d\u00a0 And it was like, \u201cCan you believe anyone would be so backward, so archaic as to even suggest a standard like that?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you expected that kind of response from people when you wrote the book.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t you?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 You\u2019re exaggerating a little bit.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t say you shouldn\u2019t kiss until you get married, but I said keep your hands off and your clothes on.\u00a0 That\u2019s the basic rule for everybody.\u00a0 And you certainly should not even hold hands until you\u2019re engaged.\u00a0 And I confess that Jim and I did kiss after we became engaged.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had a number of letters from young people who have made up their minds that the safest thing is to wait until they\u2019re at the altar, when the pastor turns to them then and says, \u201cYou may express your love for each other,\u201d at which point in front of an audience they have their first kiss.\u00a0 That\u2019s great.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t make fun of that at all.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t say that that\u2019s actually necessary.\n\nBut I do think that when young people \u2013 the minute they start messing around along the edges, then they\u2019re already beginning the downward slide.\u00a0 I spoke to a group of kids just this past Saturday, high school \u2013 600 high school kids.\u00a0 I said to them what I often say, \u201cI know that you think I\u2019m an old lady that comes from some other planet and that I can\u2019t even imagine how you feel about these things.\u00a0 But I know what you\u2019re going to say to me.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to say, \u2018Well, you know, this old lady \u2013 are you going to tell us, Elisabeth Elliot, that it\u2019s a sin to hold hands?\u2019\u201d\n\nMy answer to that is, \u201cNo.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to tell you that it\u2019s a sin to hold hands.\u00a0 But I\u2019m going to ask you a question.\u00a0 Why do you do it?\u201d\u00a0 And there\u2019s a dead silence.\u00a0 Well, they do it because it feels good.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun.\u00a0 My next question is \u201cIs there any difference between shaking hands with the pastor at the door of the church and holding hands with a member of the opposite sex who is attractive to you when you\u2019re in a dark place?\u00a0 Is there any difference at all?\u201d\u00a0 Then, of course, they kind of giggle and nudge each other.\n\nI said, \u201cOf course, you know there\u2019s a tremendous difference.\u00a0 And so what are you doing?\u00a0 Why are you doing this?\u201d\u00a0 Because it\u2019s fun.\u00a0 Because it\u2019s exciting.\u00a0 And that is exactly the way God intended it to be.\u00a0 God intended that there should be a certain progression from point A to point B to point C, and ultimately to consummation in marriage.\u00a0 But when is it appropriate to start playing that game?\u00a0 It is not appropriate until a commitment has been made.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Elisabeth, there are moms here listening to our broadcast right now and they\u2019re hearing you talk about this and this is resonating.\u00a0 But they\u2019re looking at their toddlers or they\u2019re thinking about their school-age children, perhaps teenagers that will be coming home from school in a few hours, and they\u2019re asking the question, \u201cWhere in the world did we go wrong?\u201d\u00a0 What would you say to her to help her understand what happened in our culture and especially within the Christian community, that we\u2019ve lost our sense of holding to high standards and holiness?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, of course, in the Christian community it\u2019s always been a temptation from the time of the New Testament to be conformed to the world.\u00a0 And the Bible tells us over and over again in different ways, \u201cDon\u2019t take your queues from what the world is telling you.\u201d\u00a0 I often say to people who are struggling with whether this or that is right or wrong, \u201c\n\nAnything at all that becomes a by-word in the world, a secular concept which you hear repeated again and again, such as \u201cif it feels good, do it\u201d \u2013 anything at all is highly suspect.\u00a0 What the world is telling me is probably wrong.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just assume that it\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 They need to examine it and decide if it lines up with scripture.\u00a0 But that is certainly a problem that\u2019s not new.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 You speak of dating in your book and you take some pretty serious shots at this concept.\u00a0 You\u2019ve questioned the entire courtship\/selection process that we\u2019re involved in now.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that right?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 As I wrote this book, <em>Quest for Love<\/em>, I was compiling stories from Christian biographies from way back.\u00a0 For example, Hudson Taylor and George Mueller and from some contemporary letters that I\u2019d had from students, from young people who were following exactly the same principles that Hudson Taylor and George Mueller were following, people who earnestly wanted the will of God.\u00a0 They believed that God knew how to show them the right person at the right time.\u00a0 And we need to distinguish between a man\u2019s search for a wife and a woman\u2019s search for a husband.\n\nI\u2019ve tried to spell out as clearly as possible in two books that there is a vast difference between masculinity and femininity.\u00a0 That\u2019s another thing that has confused everybody because this idea of equality and interchangeability has messed up both the men and the women.\u00a0 I believe with all my heart that men are to be the initiators and women are to be responders.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spelled out my reasons for that in <em>Let Me Be a Woman<\/em> the book on femininity and <em>The Mark of a Man<\/em> the book on masculinity.\n\nSo it is indeed the responsibility of men to be particularly on their faces before God asking the question, \u201cLord, is marriage in Your will for my life?\u201d\u00a0 I think we can assume that in most cases the answer will be yes.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very rare man that will feel very clearly that God was calling him to remain single.\u00a0 My point is that women are not to go out and do the looking.\u00a0 We are not to be searching for a husband.\n\nSingle people throughout the history of Christianity have greatly blessed the church.\u00a0 So it\u2019s entirely possible that God does want some men to understand that calling.\u00a0 And Jim Elliot was one of those who felt very strongly that he needed to be willing to be single.\n\nPeople thought \u2013 I mean we thought from Wheaton campus that Jim Elliot must be a woman-hater because he had made up his mind when he came to Wheaton that if he was going to become approved unto God \u2013 and he called that his AUG degree (Approved Unto God) \u2013 and get a BA (the Bachelor of Arts), then he was going to have to eliminate one or two things from his program that the average college man thought were absolutely necessary.\n\nOne of those things was dating.\u00a0 So he just made up his mind he was not going to date.\u00a0 And as he matured and approached his final year in college, he made a commitment to the Lord.\u00a0 \u201cIf it\u2019s required that certain men remain single for the sake of the gospel\u201d \u2013 for example, in pioneer missionary work \u2013 \u201cthen Lord I\u2019m willing to be one of those.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that he was not interested in marriage.\u00a0 But when he began to feel that God might give him permission to get married sometime, then he decided that he had already made up his mind which woman on that campus he would like to have.\n\nMy point is that women are not to go out doing the looking.\u00a0 We are not to be searching for a husband.\u00a0 And, of course, I get hundreds of letters from women who tell me these horrible stories of the result of these searches.\u00a0 They\u2019re putting themselves in a place of total availability to the guys \u2013 whatever they want, wherever they want it.\u00a0 And the guys are delighted.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have to do a thing.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 They sit and wait for the phone to ring, and the phone rings and the women are on the line inviting them out.\u00a0 And when they go out they don\u2019t know whether I\u2019m picking up the tab, is she picking up the tab, is this going to be Dutch?\u00a0 I mean, who decides where we\u2019re going to go?\u00a0 I just \u2013 my heart goes out to them.\u00a0 I think, \u201cYou have been sold a bill of goods.\u00a0 It is nonsense.\u201d\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 I can imagine though a single woman saying, \u201cYou don\u2019t know guys today.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t initiate, it will be years.\u00a0 These guys are not initiators and me just sitting back \u2013 some other girl is going to go initiate and then I\u2019ve lost.\u00a0 There\u2019s no way.\u201d\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 That\u2019s absolutely right.\u00a0 And you can bet your bottom dollar I\u2019ve had a lot of letters exactly like that.\u00a0 But I have had a lot of letters telling me the results of that kind of a search.\u00a0 If these guys are such wimps that they\u2019re not going to be the initiators, you don\u2019t want them for husbands.\u00a0 A husband is a man \u2013 I mean, a man has got to take the risk.\n\nWhen I wrote my book, <em>The Mark of a Man<\/em> I asked my friend Dr. J.I. Packer, what do you think of when you think of masculinity?\u00a0 Without any hesitation he said responsibility.\u00a0 A man has to take the responsibility of being rejected, the risk of being rejected.\u00a0 A real man is going to be willing to do that.\n\nOne chapter in the book is so relevant to this question of a man having to take the huge risk of proposing to a woman.\u00a0 It\u2019s the story of Dick Hillis, a missionary in China. \u00a0Dick had fallen in love with a girl on the campus named Margaret but Margaret was going with his best friend.\u00a0 And it certainly appeared that they were going to get married.\u00a0 Well, Dick went on to China still loving this girl Margaret and never having said a word to her, never having had a date or anything.\u00a0 But he had just picked her out as the kind of godly woman that he would hope the Lord would give him.\n\nHe went to China, leaving a buddy of his the responsibility of reporting to him every six months about what was happening with Margaret and this other guy.\u00a0 So six months went by and the letter came, \u201cThey are still together.\u201d\u00a0 And another six months and he said, \u201cThey are still together.\u201d\u00a0 And this went on for \u2013 I\u2019ve forgotten how many years \u2013 something like two or three, maybe four years.\n\nDick continued to trust that somehow, sometime, somewhere maybe God still would give him this woman Margaret.\u00a0 Finally, the letter from his buddy came and said, \u201cThey\u2019ve broken up because Margaret has been called to China.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0So Dick immediately wrote a letter of proposal to Margaret to be waiting for her when she arrived in Shanghai.\u00a0 She opened this letter and scratched her head and thought, \u201cDick Hillis.\u00a0 Now let me think.\u00a0 That name is kind of familiar.\u00a0 I think we must have been in school together.\u201d\u00a0 She was floored, as you can imagine, and he said in his letter, \u201cThere can be no courtship until after the proposal.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019m asking you to marry me.\u201d\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 Wait.\u00a0 She got a marriage proposal in the mail from a guy she couldn\u2019t even remember?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Only vaguely did she remember the name.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth: <\/strong>\u00a0She didn\u2019t tell a soul.\u00a0 She was so utterly floored by this.\u00a0 And being a godly woman she thought, \u201cWell, God does do some strange things.\u00a0 I\u2019m not just going to write this off.\u00a0 But Lord, what shall I do?\u201d\n\nIt wasn\u2019t very long after that that she was invited to tea by an older missionary lady.\u00a0 And Margaret certainly didn\u2019t bring up any subject of courtship or marriage or anything.\u00a0 But this lady somehow or other, in the course of having tea together, divulged to her her own story.\u00a0 She told about how the Lord had brought her and her husband together without any time of getting acquainted at all and \u201cWe\u2019ve had a wonderfully happy marriage for all these so-many years.\u201d\u00a0 So Margaret sort of chalked that one up in her mind and thought, \u201cMaybe God is doing something here.\u201d\n\nI\u2019ve forgotten all the details but it\u2019s in the book -- it\u2019s one of the chapters in this book, <em>Quest for Love<\/em> --how eventually through correspondence alone they did become engaged.\u00a0 Dick was very wise in saying to Margaret, he said, \u201cIf I were to ask you if you came to China because of love for God or love for the Chinese, I feel sure that your answer would be because of love for God, because you would have trusted that if you loved God and if He was calling you to China, then God would know how to give you a love for the Chinese.\"\u00a0 Would it not be reasonable to assume that if you think it might be the will of God to marry me then God can give you a love for me?\u00a0 I want you to know I love you.\u201d\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 What a great story.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s one of a number of great stories that I\u2019ve compiled.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 It is one of a number of great stories.\u00a0 And I want you to tell one more story before we end the broadcast today.\u00a0 But I want Bob to tell our listeners how they can get a copy of <em>Quest for Love<\/em> along with the classic book that you\u2019ve written, <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\u00a0 In this book you really do call single people to holiness and to take a fresh look at this whole idea of courtship in that book.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 We are listening back to an interview today that we recorded back in 1996 We are listening back to an interview today that we recorded back in 1996 with Elisabeth Elliot.\u00a0 This is one of our favorite interviews of all time.\u00a0 Just to hear those stories again I think of the singles who are longing for a relationship.\u00a0 They are wondering how do I make this happen?\u00a0 I think you listen to Elisabeth Elliot and you come away with this answer.\u00a0 There is no formula for making it happen but there are principles that are biblical principles for finding contentment in whatever season you are in and for trusting the Lord.\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yes, and I think most importantly, Bob, there is a person.\u00a0 There is the person of God who brings two people together and who still orchestrates relationships and cements hearts together.\u00a0 That really is her point there.\u00a0 It\u2019s God who can give you love for another person.\u00a0 Ultimately, I think the strongest marriages are built around receiving your spouse as God\u2019s perfect gift for you.\u00a0 That\u2019s a good reminder for all of us who are married and a great exhortation for every person who is single.\n\n<strong>Bob:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019ve often thought I wonder what books that are being written in our day are still going to be read 50 or 100 years from now.\u00a0 It would not surprise me if some of the books that Elisabeth Elliot has written in her lifetime are not the kind of timeless classics that are still being recommended a century from today should the Lord tarry.\n\nHer book, <em>Passion and Purity<\/em> is a classic.\u00a0 Even though I read it in my 20s when it first came out it\u2019s a book that I encourage my teenagers to read.\u00a0\u00a0 I would imagine they would encourage their sons and daughters to read it a generation from now.\n\nWe\u2019ve got the book in our FamilyLife Resource Center along with the follow up book that we talked about in these interviews called <em>Quest for Love. <\/em>\u00a0I want to encourage parents.\u00a0 Get a copy of both of these books and go through them with your teenagers.\u00a0 They may read some of this and decide they don\u2019t agree with some of this.\u00a0 That\u2019s okay because it\u2019ll start a conversation about what your standards are going to be and what does God\u2019s word have to say about relationships.\n\nYou can request copies of both of these books when you go to our web site FamilyLifeToday.com.\u00a0 Or you can call toll free 1-800-358-6329.\u00a0 That\u2019s 1-800-FL-TODAY.\u00a0 Someone on our team can let you know how you can have either or both of these books sent to you.\u00a0 If you do order both of the books we\u2019ll send along at no additional cost the CD audio of our conversation with Elisabeth Elliot so you can listen to it again.\u00a0 Again our web address is FamilyLifeToday.com and our phone number is 1-800- \u201cF\u201d as in family, \u201cL\u201d as in life and then the word TODAY.\n\nOver the years as we have tried to address this subject in a number of different settings and in a number of different ways we\u2019ve had tremendous response from listeners saying this is the kind of help I need.\u00a0 I need to be reminded of what the Scriptures say and I need to be reminded that the cultural approach to relationships will lead me in the wrong direction.\n\nWe had a conversation a number of months ago with Chip Ingram who had just finished a book called <em>Love, Sex and Lasting Relationships<\/em>.\u00a0 It tackles many of these same issues.\u00a0 We sat down with him and talked for more than two hours about the themes from that book.\u00a0 This month we want to make the CDs of our conversation with Chip available as a thank you gift to those of you who can help support the ministry of <em>FamilyLife Today<\/em> with a donation of any amount.\n\nI think most of you know that <em>FamilyLife Today<\/em> is listener supported which means that when we hear from listeners like you we are able to continue the program on this station and other stations across the country.\u00a0 When we don\u2019t hear from listeners we have to sometimes make the difficult decision as we did recently to go off the air in some key markets.\u00a0 That\u2019s always a tough decision to make.\u00a0 So if you are able to help with a donation this month feel free to request a copy of our two CDs with Chip Ingram on love, sex and lasting relationships.\n\nIf you make your donation online at FamilyLifeToday.com you\u2019ll want to type the word \u201clove\u201d in the key code box on the online donation form so we\u2019ll know to send you the CDs.\u00a0 Or if you call 1-800-FL-TODAY and make your donation over the phone just ask for the CDs about relationships.\u00a0 We\u2019ll know what you are talking about.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be happy to send those to you.\u00a0 Thanks again for your support of this ministry.\u00a0 We do appreciate your financial partnership with us.\n\nBefore we are done here today when we interviewed Elisabeth Elliot more than a decade ago one of the questions we asked her was about her own love story.\u00a0 We asked her to share with us the details of how Jim Elliot, her first husband, proposed to her and here\u2019s is how she responded.\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He confessed his love for me long before he proposed to me.\u00a0 I was graduating from college.\u00a0 He still had another year to go.\u00a0 I was a senior and he was a junior.\u00a0 And in May, just a few weeks before my graduation, we went for a walk.\u00a0 We\u2019d had some conversations.\u00a0 He was a close friend of my brothers, so my brother brought him to our home for Christmas and Jim and I had sat up and talked until 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning.\u00a0 We had also been taking the same major.\u00a0 We were both Classical Greek majors so we were in almost exactly the same classes.\u00a0 So I\u2019d seen him a lot and had a few conversations with him.\u00a0 I think we studied some together and stuff like that.\n\nJust before graduation he took me out for a walk and he said, \u201cBet, I think we need to get squared away how we feel about each other.\u201d\u00a0 I was floored.\u00a0 I almost went through the sidewalk because I didn\u2019t know that Jim had any feelings for me.\u00a0 And my momma had told me when I was 13 years old \u201cnever chase boys and keep them at arm\u2019s length.\u201d\n\nSo I had done my level best to make sure that nobody had any idea that I was interested in Jim Elliot.\u00a0 So it made me a little bit irritated to think that Jim was saying \u201cI think we\u2019d better get squared away how we feel about each other.\u201d\u00a0 I thought, \u201cWell, what gives this guy any idea that I have some feelings for him?\u201d\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Now wait a second, but the truth was\u2026\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 That I did.\n\n(laughter)\n\nBut I thought I had done such a wonderful job of concealing them.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t rolled my eyes at him.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t tried to sit next to him in class.\u00a0\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t put a little smiley faces on his book covers.\n\nSo anyway, I responded by saying, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\u00a0 And he said, \u201cWhat do you mean, what do I mean.\u00a0 You know what I mean.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been in love with you for months.\u201d\u00a0 And he said, \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to show you this in every way except verbal.\u201d\u00a0 But he said, \u201cNow I\u2019m telling you, I love you.\u201d\u00a0 Didn\u2019t you know that?\n\nI said, no.\u00a0 Well, he said you must be deaf, dumb, and blind.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been trying to show you in every way.\u00a0 We went into a park and we sat down on the grass facing each other.\u00a0 We were more than an arm\u2019s length apart, according to my mother\u2019s rule, and we talked for seven hours.\n\nAnd he said, \u201cI am not proposing to you.\u00a0 I cannot ask you to marry me.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to Africa, I\u2019m going to South America.\u201d\u00a0 He lived in Oregon; I lived in New Jersey.\u00a0 I was graduating; he had another year.\u00a0 The chances of our seeing each other again seemed to be zero.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI have to leave you in God\u2019s hands.\u201d\u00a0 And he said, \u201cGod knows how to bring us together if he ever wants us together.\u00a0 But he said in the mean time I am not going to lay a finger on you because I have no rights over you.\u00a0\u00a0 You belong to God.\u00a0 You go ahead and go to Africa.\u00a0 God can bring us together.\u201d\n\nSo that\u2019s a very long story which is told in my book, <em>Passion and Purity<\/em>.\u00a0 But it was five years later in Ecuador where I was working on one side of the Andes, Jim on the other, that God finally gave to Jim a green light.\n\nThe reason he had hesitated so long was that he had been told by senior missionaries that there was jungle pioneer work that needed to be done only by single men.\u00a0 So he had given that a very good try for a whole year and concluded that if this single woman that he loved was doing pioneer work all by herself in the jungle on the other side of the Andes there really wasn\u2019t any reason why I would be a hindrance to his pioneer work on the eastern side of the Andes.\u00a0 At which point he felt that God gave him a green light to propose to me.\u00a0 So it wasn\u2019t until then that he sent me a cablegram, asked me to meet him in Quito.\u00a0 I got on my horse, I rode about five hours to the closest town, and then I rode 10 hours in a banana truck, and we met in Quito.\u00a0 And sitting by a fireplace Jim said, \u201cI want you for my wife.\u00a0 Do you want to marry me?\u201d\n\n<strong>Dennis:<\/strong>\u00a0 And you said?\n\n<strong>Elisabeth:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, I said something like do I want to marry you?\u00a0 And he said, yes, that\u2019s what I\u2019m asking you.\u00a0 And there was a long pause and I said, \u201cYes.\u201d\n\n<em>FamilyLife Today<\/em> is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.\n\nHelp for today.\u00a0 Hope for tomorrow.\n\nWe are so happy to provide these transcripts for you. 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All rights reserved.\n\n<strong>www.FamilyLife.com<\/strong>","theme_header_position":"","post_header_is_sticky":"","is_header_overlay":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/podcast\/301886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/podcast"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/podcast"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301886"},{"taxonomy":"podcast_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/podcast_series?post=301886"},{"taxonomy":"cwp_profile","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cwp_profile?post=301886"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=301886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}