Quotes by Elisabeth Elliot

If you take being a father seriously, you'll know that you're not big enough for the job, not by yourself. Being a father will put you on your knees if nothing else ever did.

The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.

A whole lot of what we call 'struggling' is simply delayed obedience.

A disordered life speaks loudly of disorder in the soul.

Faith has to be exercised in the midst of ordinary, down-to-earth living.

I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal.

Our Heavenly Healer often has to hurt us in order to heal us. We sometimes fail to recognize His mighty love in this, yet we are firmly held always in the Everlasting Arms.

If we love someone more than we love God, it is worse than inordinate -- it is idolatry.
When God is first in our hearts, all other loves are in order and find their rightful place.

Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first?

If men and women were surer of their God there would be more genuine manliness, womanliness, and godliness in the world, and a whole lot less fear of each other.

I seek the lessons God wants to teach me, and that means that I ask why.

Worry is the antithesis of trust. You simply cannot do both. They are mutually exclusive.

Faith is not a feeling. Faith is willed obedience in action.

If my life is surrendered to God, all is well. Let me not grab it back, as though it were in peril in His hand but would be safer in mine!

Sometimes God's refusals are His mercies.

Experience has taught me that the Shepherd is far more willing to show His sheep the path than the sheep are to follow. He is endlessly merciful, patient, tender, and loving. If we, His stupid and wayward sheep, really want to be led, we will without fail be led. Of that I am sure.

If deep in our hearts we suspect that God does not love us and cannot manage our affairs as well as we can, we certainly will not submit to His discipline.

So the woman who accepts the limitations of womanhood finds in those very limitations her gifts.

The woman who accepts the limitations of womanhood finds in those very limitations her gifts, her special calling which bears her up into perfect freedom, into the will of God.

Heaven is not here, it's There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for.

The preoccupations of young women-their looks, their clothes, their social life-don't seem to change much from generation to generation. But in every generation there are a few that make others choices.

He is not all we would ask for (if we were honest), but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency.

There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, why? is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for His meaning, or whether it is the challenge of unbelief and rebellion.

A man must at times be hard as nails: willing to face up to the truth about himself, and about the woman he loves, refusing compromise when compromise is wrong. But he must also be tender. No weapon will breach the armor of a woman's resentment like tenderness.

Needs multiply as they are met. Woe to the man who would live a disentangled life. Be on guard, my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth!

Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering.

To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise appointment.

Prostitutes dress obviously, so as to draw attention. It's their business, isn't it? The last thing that a Christian woman is thinking of is being like a prostitute.

The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian makes me a different kind of woman.

The only crown Jesus ever wore on earth was a crown of thorns.

She is free not by disobeying the rules but by obeying them.

A grandmother's special calling is to pray and to be a fellow worker in the battle in which her children or her grandchildren are engaged.

Everything if given to God can become your gateway to joy.

Prayer lays hold of God's plan and becomes the link between His will and its accomplishment on earth. Amazing things happen, and we are given the privilege of being the channels of the Holy Spirit's prayer.

The will of God is not something you add to your life. It's a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.

Praise and glory to God for whom nothing is too hard.

God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.

I asked Him to give me the prayers He wants me to pray and to give or withhold anything according to his plan for me. Nothing is too big to ask of Him, not even an ocean lot. It is God's business to decide if it is good for me. It is my business to obey Him.

You will never understand why God does what He does, but if you believe Him, that is all that is necessary. Let us learn to trust Him for who He is.

A spirit of restlessness and resistance can never wait, but one who believes he is loved with an everlasting love, and knows that underneath are the everlasting arms, will find strength and peace.

For one who has made thanksgiving the habit of his life, the morning prayer will be, 'Lord, what will you give me today to offer back to you?'

When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.

I'm convinced that there is nothing that can happen to me in this life that is not precisely designed by a sovereign Lord to give me the opportunity to learn to know Him.

We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.

When the time comes to die, make sure that all you have to do is die! ~Jim Elliot.

A prayerful heart and an obedient heart will learn, very slowly and not without sorrow, to stake everything on God Himself.

I am not a theologian or a scholar, but I am very aware of the fact that pain is necessary to all of us. In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.

If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.

A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace.

A little quiet reflection will remind me that yes to God always leads in the end to joy.

It seems disrespectful to me to see ladies in church in very short skirts or skimpy, sleeveless tops. I would imagine that it could be distracting to men who are trying to keep their minds on God.

We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves.

The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective in their aims.

Spiritual strongholds begin with a thought. One thought becomes a consideration. A consideration develops into an attitude, which leads then to action. Action repeated becomes a habit, and a habit establishes a power base for the enemy, that is, a stronghold.

The God who created, names, and numbers the stars in the heavens also numbers the hairs of my head..He pays attention to very big things and to very small ones. What matters to me matters to Him, and that changes my life.

Freedom begins way back. It begins not with doing what you want but with doing what you ought -- that is, with discipline.

One step at a time, over the years, as I sought to plumb the mystery of suffering (which cannot be plumbed), I began to see that there is a sense in which everything is a gift. Even my widowhood.

Faith receives, day by day, what a loving Heavenly Father apportions.

When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable).

Among the most joyful people I have known have been some who seem to have had no human reason for joy. The sweet fragrance of Christ has shown through their lives.

Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone accept, His Lordship. The Cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart's truth.

This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him, to spend time in prayer, and to learn long-suffering, gentleness, meekness -- in short, to learn the depths of the love that Christ Himself has poured out on all of us.

We fundamentalists are a pack of mood-loving showoffs. I'm sure the Minor Prophets would have found subject for correction.

God's command 'Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature' was the categorical imperative. The question of personal safety was wholly irrelevant.

Ponnammal set the example for the others by quietly doing what they did not care to do. Her spirit created a new climate in the place, and the time came when there was not one nurse who would refuse to do whatever needed to be done.

There is no need for faith where there is no consciousness of an element of risk.

The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care you take in your personal appearance, the things you spend your money on, all speak loudly about what you believe. The beauty of thy peace shines forth in an ordered life. A disordered life speaks loudly of disorder in the soul.

It is when we come to the Lord in our nothingness, our powerlessness and our helplessness that He then enables us to love in a way which, without Him, would be absolutely impossible.

Women still dream and hope, pin their emotions on some man who doesn't reciprocate, and end up in confusion.

Silence, as someone has said, is the mother of prayer and the nurse of holy thoughts. Silence cuts down on our sins, doesn't it? We can't be sinning in so many different ways if we are being quiet before God. Silence nourishes patience, charity, discretion.

Self-pity is... a sinkhole from which no rescuing hand can drag you because you have chosen to sink.

We never know what God has up His sleeve. You never know what might happen; you only know what you have to do now.

I have one desire now -- to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.

Does God ask us to do what is beneath us? This question will never trouble us again if we consider the Lord of heaven taking a towel and washing feet.

True faith goes into operation when there are no answers.

The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self-abandonment. 'If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,' Jesus said, 'he will find his true self.

Christ is sufficient. We do not need support groups for each and every separate tribulation. The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the same old rugged cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.

It is God to whom and with whom we travel, and while He is the end of our journey, He is also at every stopping place.

Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you.

Virginity is something that can be offered to God.

The deepest lessons come out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires.

We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.

Lead me, Lord, to the Rock that is higher than I. Let me hear your word, give me grace to obey, to build steadily, stone upon stone, day by day, to do what You say. Establish my heart where floods have no power to overwhelm, for Christ's sake. Amen.

God never witholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God's refusals are always merciful -- severe mercies at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.

Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?

God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.

Christianity teaches righteousness, not rights. It emphasizes honor, not equality. A Christian's concern is what is owed to the other, not what is owed to himself.

Thanksgiving is a spiritual exercise, necessary to the building of a healthy soul. It takes us out of the stuffiness of ourselves into the fresh breeze and sunlight of the will of God.