In 1956, Jim Eliot and four friends flew onto a sandbar on the Curaray River to share Jesus with the Waorani tribe, which lived deep in the Amazon’s interior. All previous efforts were met with violence, and Jim knew this. He wrote in his journal, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” He spoke of his own life.
When Jim and his friends arrived, they refused to defend themselves and were slaughtered by the tribesmen. He loved his enemies unto death. He turned the other cheek as they perforated his body with spears—just as Jesus did on the cross.
But the story didn’t end there, because Jim’s wife, Elisabeth Eliot, followed in the footsteps of her husband. She canoed down the Curaray River to reach the tribe that murdered her husband, love them, and lead them to Christ. When she arrived, they did not kill her. Instead, they were bewildered. Why had her husband refused to defend himself? Why would she return? Why forgive them?
Their confusion gave way to curiosity, and curiosity to confession, and confession to faith. After a few years, many in the tribe gave their lives to Christ.
It’s undeniable: people used to do hard things.
Do we do hard things today? Of course, the answer is yes. Christians around the world do hard things every day. Every Sunday, Christians in China risk their wages and liberty to worship Christ in illegal churches. Christians in Nigeria risk execution to hear the Bible preached. Christians in North Korea risk lifetime imprisonment in gulags just to read a page of their Bible.
But there’s a different story in America, where millions of Americans choose brunch over church. Opt for PJs and a livestream rather than communing with the people of God. Prioritize kids’ sports over worshiping the living God.
We don’t face persecution, and yet the small scheduling difficulties we face sometimes seem insurmountable.
I don’t write this to glorify pain or scold us for our freedoms. Praise God, we don’t face such persecution! There is no nobility in seeking pain (Col. 2:22-23). But I do think there’s a value in self-reflection.
So ask yourself: Do I do hard things for the gospel? Do I see a reflection of my spirit in the man who risks life and limb to worship Jesus or in the pajama-clad lover of comforters?
Speaking for myself, I default to the pajama man. I want a life of comfort, not courage. A life of freedom, not discipline. A life of mental safety, not mental toughness. Of course, no one admits such things out loud, but if you ignore our words and measure our actions, then the truth is evident.
Yet, I’m also deeply unsatisfied with such a life. It was Jesus who said, “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:38-39).
Jesus is asking: Do you want life? Because the path there is cut through jungles of pain.
Speaking for myself, I no longer want a life tamed by comfort. I want the world of Jesus, the world of the old stories. I read the Bible, and it’s full of wild liturgies. Forty-day fasts. Locust-eating prophets. Children slaying giants. Men cast into flames, thrown before lions, facing down demons. Humans who found God, risked everything, faced suffering, made mistakes, grew wise, and were made into the sort of people wild-eyed prophets mythologize.
Whatever that strange magic is, I want it. The courage. The discipline. The toughness.
Someone tamed our faith, but I want more.
If you, too, want more, you may be tempted to follow a worldly path to courage, discipline, and toughness. Despite our culture’s softness and obsession with comfort, there are voices in the desert issuing calls to resistance.
These voices tell us that if we dig deep, metabolize pain, develop resilience, and show grit, then we can become people who do hard things. And here’s the challenge: there’s much wisdom in what they say about discipline and grit.
But there’s also a profound foolishness. Because the gospel of grit—try harder, do better, suffer more—tells you that you have what it takes inside yourself to become a person of discipline and courage. Just look inside, and you’ll find what you need.
The problem is that this isn’t true. It may work for a short time. Or even a season of life. But on your own, you don’t have what you need. What you need isn’t grit, but grace. And God will do everything he can to teach you that lesson.
How? By taking you to the wilderness.
God wants to take you to the wilderness to unmake you so that you learn to mistrust the lies of self-reliance, and instead lean on his grace.
I’ve been to the wilderness of Israel. The real-life, physical location the Bible speaks so often about. It’s a mountainous desert of rolling limestone where wadis—deep paths cut by flash floods—sometimes blossom green. But otherwise, it is desolate. The deer pants for water because there is so little to be found. It’s a place to be undone. To die.
Abraham pitched his tent there. Moses wandered there. David hid there. Elijah escaped there. Jesus faced the devil there. For most of them, the wilderness was a place of initiation. A place of severance. Where you go to die to the old way of things, and learn to lean on God’s grace.
The wilderness takes many forms in our lives, and it is always a severe mercy. An opportunity to meet God, be tried by the elements of life, and discover that by grace you can do hard things.
This fall on Not Just Sunday, we want to prepare you for that wilderness. We want to train you to lean on God’s grace, not your own grit. And we want to invite you to try your hand at the hard things God invites all followers to experience.
We’ll learn together how to live with courage, discipline, and mental toughness—not by grit, but by grace. And if God so wills it, we’ll walk a bit in the wilderness and meet him there as many saints have before us.