But over the course of the book, the reader sees him grow into a more mature and stable Christian, with a more holistic worldview. In this book we get the raw, unedited Jim Elliot. As such, his journals are filled with passionate, dogmatic statements which are often immature and short-sighted. This book tells us his inner thoughts, recording not just the events of his life but how he thought about them too. The book covers the period of seven years from when he is in college to when he sets out with his friends on the final trek to find the Auca Indians of Ecuador. She begins by recounting his early life herself, then lets him take over once his journals pick up the story, which is around his college-years. Living life for the joy of God and the good of the world was the narrow aim of Jim Elliot, and if the Christian world caught onto his fervor, who knows how the world would change.Įlisabeth Elliot harvested the material for this book out of his journals. Too often it is used only in terms of missions, but it really belongs plastered on Sunday School room walls and on the Christian truck driver’s dashboard.

In college he wrote the phrase, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose,” which has provided countless Christians with just the right expression to encapsulate their mission as redeemed humanity in the Kingdom of God.

For many, he serves as the quintessential example of being on mission in the world. The life of Jim Elliot is one of the most encouraging, compelling stories of modern Christianity.

Shadow of the almighty elliot