One year after the “Auca Five” (Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian) were martyred by Wuaorani Indians, their wives wrote a powerful prayer that was published in Christianity Today, (January 7, 1957, pp. 6-8). First, they prayed that Christ would be glorified in their own lives:
Our hearts are filled with gratitude for the privilege He gave us in beings the wives of men who were chosen to be slain for His sake. None of us is worthy. It is all of His grace, but we know that the Lamb is worthy, a thousand times, the lives of our husbands and of us. He chose to glorify Himself in their death—may He now glorify Himself in our lives.
Then, in what I think is the most powerful part, they prayed for their children:
Not only do we ask that Christ be glorified in the Aucas and in us, but also in our children. Most of them will have no recollection of their fine fathers. But our Lord gave His word, ‘All they children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of they children.’ We ask for His wisdom in training them, for His Spirit in us, that they may be as obedient as their fathers. How wonderful it would be if He should prepare one or more of them to go to the Aucas! We would give them to Him for his use, asking that they come to know Him as Savior and Lord at an early age. Far be it from us to withhold from the Lord the lives of these little ones, children of the men who did not withhold their own lives. May they sing from true hearts,
Faith of our Fathers, Holy faith
We would be true to Thee till death.
For some of the story of how their prayer was answered, read The Savage My Kinsman, which tells the story of how Elisabeth Elliot (Jim Elliot’s wife), along with her three-year-old daughter, Valerie, and Nate Saint’s sister, Rachel, went to live among and witness to the Wuaorani people.
