Elisabeth Elliot Quotes

Sometimes we want things we were not meant to have. Because he loves us, the Father says no. Faith trusts that no. Faith is willing not to have what God is not willing to give. Furthermore, faith does not insist upon an explanation. It is enough to know His promises to give what is good-he knows so much more about us than we do.

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.

Psychology describes. The Bible prescribes. 'Turn from evil. Let that be the medicine to keep you in health.' Pr 3:7,8.

It is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself.

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 heart which has no agenda but God's is the heart at leisure from itself. Its emptiness is filled with the Love of God. Its solitude can be turned into prayer.

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

We must quit bending the Word to suit our situation. It is we who must be bent to that Word, our necks that must bow under the yoke.

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.

Nothing trains and teaches so powerfully as love. Love attracts. it does not coerce. If the aim of parents is to teach their children to love God they must show their love for Him by loving each other and loving the children.

Faith is not an instinct. It certainly is not a feeling - feelings don't help much when you're in the lions' den or hanging on a wooden Cross. Faith is not inferred from the happy way things work. It is an act of will, a choice, based on the unbreakable Word of a God who cannot lie, and who showed us what love and obedience and sacrifice mean, in the person of Jesus Christ

Experience had quickly taught her that she could not survive the storms without the anchor of the constraining love of Christ and what she called the "Rock-counsciousness" of the promise given her, "He goeth before.

In whatever God does in the course of our lives, he gives us, through the experience, some power to help others.

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.

The world cries for men who are strong--strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer. I pray that you will be that kind of man--glad that God made you a man, glad to shoulder the burden of manliness in a time when to do so will often bring contempt.

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

Virginity is something that can be offered to God.

Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person's seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next.

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

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

All our problems are theological ones, William Temple said. All of them have to do with our relationship to God and his to us, and this is precisely why it makes sense to come to God with them.

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

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

Waiting silently is the hardest thing of all.

The man whose eye is single for the glory of Another can be trusted.

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.

Lonely? Give it to Jesus. The loneliness itself is material for sacrifice.

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.

It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than to complain about what is not given. One or the other becomes a habit of life.

The difficulty is to keep a tight reign on our emotions. They may remain, but it is not they who are to rule the action. They have no authority. A life lived in God is not lived on the plane of the feelings, but of the will. In Scripture the heart is the will - the man himself, the spring of all action, the ruling power bestowed on him by his Creator, capable of choosing and acting.

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

If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily "ours" but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes.

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.

Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you

When the Constitution declares that 'all men are created equal,' it is not referring to intelligence, good looks, good humor, height, weight, or income. It is talking about certain rights, 'inalienable', in that they cannot be taken away.

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.

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

Where reasons are given, we don't need faith. Where only darkness surrounds us, we have no means for seeing except by faith.

Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.

The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived - not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.

The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it's going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.

God will never disappoint us… 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. …To the unbeliever the fact of suffering only convinces him that God is not to be trusted, does not love us. To the believer, the opposite is true.

The question is simply,'Who is your master?'Once that's settled, you ask whether any word have been spoken. If it has, you have your orders.

To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.

Have we the humility to thank our Father for the gift of pain?

[Amy Carmichael's] great longing was to have a "single eye" for the glory of God. Whatever might blur the vision God had give her of His work, whatever could distract or deceive or tempt other to seek anything but the Lord Jesus Himself she tried to eliminate.

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.

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.