Sermon Illustrations
Elisabeth Elliot: Wounded Healer
What God wants us to be as a family of faith is a group of wounded healers, taking our wounds, however big or small, and transforming them into a healing ministry for Christ.
After the death of her first husband, Elisabeth Elliot married Addison Leitch, who shortly after was diagnosed as having two entirely distinct, unique, unrelated, painful types of cancer. Day and night, literally, Elliot had to care for this godly man. She said she used to pray that God would give her strength to get her through the week. Then it got so difficult that all she could pray for was that God would give her strength to get through the day. Then she used to pray that somehow God would just give her the strength to get through the hour, because at 9 a.m. it was unbearable to think about praying somehow about getting strength for 10 a.m.
In the midst of her struggle, when it was the most difficult, when Addison Leitch was going through the greatest amount of pain, she reread in her quiet time the story of (John 6), where the Lord Jesus met a little boy who had five loaves and two fish. The disciples, as always, wanted to push the little ones away, but Jesus, as always, reached out in love to the little ones. He reached forward to that little one, took that offering, as meager as it was, blessed it, and transformed it, and it fed a multitude. She realized on that day that that was what Jesus Christ wanted to do with her suffering.