Book #5 - Passion & Purity

I'm trying to read as much as I possibly can now, to make up for all the time when I read nothing! This was my second time reading this book, and I finished it in a day and a half. The first time I read this book was in my first semester of university, and it was the best time to read it! This time around, my eyes were scanning the book list and the title caused me to stop and consider. After I read it, I realized once again that I had read it at just the right time :) Now down to the book itself...
I've already read one book off the list by the author that also wrote this book, Elisabeth Elliot. To see what I wrote on her style and personal background, read here: http://lemonsandroses12.blogspot.ca/2014/02/book-2-let-me-be-woman_9582.html "In 'Passion & Purity', she emphasizes the need to commit daily to Christ all matters of the heart and to wait upon Him. She teaches this often-painful, yet rewarding discipline by candidly tracing her love story with Jim Elliot to 'serve as evidence that I've been there'."(back cover) Ruth Bell Graham writes the introduction of this book, and she summarizes perfectly my own feelings on the book:
            "...this is a book about bringing one's love life under the authority and Lordship of Jesus Christ. Elisabeth has made it warmly personal, supporting her theme from memories, journals and old love letters to Jim Elliot. She writes with poignancy and restraint. Interspersed through it are rich, right words from the Bible, beautiful old hymns, quotations from favorite authors - each so appropriate because they had met a living need. I didn't put it down until I had finished it. 'The best way to show up a crooked stick,' someone has said, 'is to lay a straight one beside it.' So amid today's too-crooked thinking, Elisabeth Elliot has come up with a straight stick. And a beautifully unforgettable one at that."
Before I move away from the style of the book and on to its content, a word to the guys out there! This book is just as relevant to you as it is to women. So don't be scared to be seen reading it! :) Both single men and women might be thinking, "What's this about bringing my love live under Christ's control? What love life? I have none!" Ahh yes. I've come to learn that the absence of a so-called "love life" is just as real as if you had a hopping, romantic one! Learning to be content with singleness is a constant struggle, one that Elliot deals with in this book. Learning to place it all in His hands and leave it there is indeed a discipline to be learned.
The content of the book has already been touched on. There isn't really an outline to this book, as she moves through her own personal timeline of her relationship with Jim Elliot and the struggles/joys along the way. So rather than lay out the book, I'll once again whet your appetite with a few things I enjoyed from it and things I were challenged by, and I hope that causes you to read it!
- "What kind of God is it who asks everything of us? The same God who '...did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all; and with this gift how can he fail to lavish upon us all He has to give?' He gives all. He asks all." (pg. 38)
 -  "It is a powerful lie that, because sexual desire is natural, healthy and God given, anything I do because of that desire is natural, healthy and God given... Christians who are buying such rubbish today are without honor. They have lost the notions of fidelity, renunciation and sacrifice, because nothing seems worth all that... If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd." (pg. 129)
- "Think of the self that God has given as an acorn. It is a marvelous little thing, a perfect shape, perfectly designed for its purpose, perfectly functional. Think of the grand glory of an oak tree. God's intention when He made the acorn was the oak tree. His intention for us is "...the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Many deaths must go into our reaching that measure, many letting-goes. When you look at the oak tree, you don't feel that the "loss" of the acorn is a very great loss. The more you perceive God's purpose in your life, the less terrible will the losses seem." (pg. 163)

Once again, be prepared to have your thoughts on courtship (yes...courtship, not dating!) challenged and probably changed. Be prepared to want to give it all to Christ and yet at the same time feel unworthy of that mighty task. May this book "help to remind you that only by putting your human passion and desire through His fire can God purify your love." (back cover) Enjoy this book :)