Taking a Stand

Elizabeth Elliot, in her wonderful book Keep a Quiet Heart, says "that is where we must take up our stand, Beneath the Cross of Jesus."   http://www.hymnal.net/hymn.php/h/621  "This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself, so painful and bewildering, is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him, to travail in prayer, and to learn long-suffering, gentlenss, meekness-in short, to learn the depths of love that Christ Himself has poured out on all of us.  It is His love that must be manifest in you as you quietly submit to what hurts you (Jesus submitted, too); treat your husband as we are commanded to treat enemies-with love (so did Jesus); refrain from taking moral responsibility for your husband (it is not our assignment as wives to do an overhal job!), except as you daily lift him up to God. This form of suffering is your opportunity to learn to leave with God what only God can do....  One of the most transfiguring truths I know is that of our being called to share the sufferings og Christ.  Colossians 1:24 and IPeter 4:12-19 put a wholly different perspective on the matter than any of us could have come up with.  It's up to God to change hearts.  It's up to us to do the simple (not always easy), humble, sacrificial thing, and to faithfully leave the rest to God.  'Continue to do good' (I Peter 4:19, NIV), which means just do this next thing, whatever that may be (mend those trousers? starch a white shirt?)."