For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. (Matt. 16:25)
“HE IS NO FOOL who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Jim Elliot wrote these wise words when he was twenty-two. Seventeen years later, in 1956, he and four other missionaries suffered martyrdom at the hands of Huaorani people that they were trying to reach for Christ. The Huaorani spears ended the five missionaries’ lives on earth, but their spirits entered heaven through “Gates of Splendor.” Jim Elliot’s eternal rewards confirmed the truth he had written when he was twenty-two.
I was a student at Moody Bible Institute when the news broke about the five martyred missionaries. Upon hearing the news, about two hundred Moody students pledged their willingness to “lose” their lives for Christ. Their commitment was joined by a similar commitment by thousands of other Christian young people throughout North America.
The missionary outreach to the Huaorani people did not end with the deaths of the five martyred missionaries. Others continued the missionary effort, and eventually many Huaorani trusted in the Savior.
We can choose either to spend—and waste—our lives in the pursuit of what is only temporal or to invest our lives in what is eternal.
Invest your life today in that which yields eternal dividends!
Jim Dyet is a retired editor, a part-time pastor, and an avid golfer. He and his wife, Gloria, have been married fifty-five years.
