Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot
Week 10: Jim Elliot's Journals — Faith, Prayer, and Surrender
Reflect on Jim Elliot's journal entries and letters as quoted throughout Through Gates of Splendor. Key Scripture: Galatians 2:20; Psalm 27.
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Jim Elliot kept journals that Elisabeth Elliot later published separately, but excerpts appear throughout this book — raw, poetic, spiritually searching. This week, we linger with his voice and let his prayers become a lens for our own.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Jim Elliot wrote with unusual intensity and literary quality for a young man. What aspects of his writing — his theology, his self-awareness, his passion — struck you most as you encountered him through Elliot's quotations?
2.'He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.' This is perhaps the most quoted line from the book. Why do you think it has had such staying power? What makes it feel both simple and inexhaustible?
a.Can you restate the logic of that sentence in your own words?
b.What would it mean to apply that logic to one specific decision in your life right now?
3.Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, 'It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.' Jim Elliot's life seemed to be a sustained attempt to inhabit that verse. Where do you feel the gap most acutely between that verse and your own experience?
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