Elisabeth Elliot Quotes

“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.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.

— Elisabeth Elliot

Choices will continually be necessary and
let us not forget
possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.

— Elisabeth Elliot

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.

— Elisabeth Elliot

“God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that He act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice. It is the same spirit that taunted, "If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the Cross." There is unbelief, there is even rebellion, in the attitude that says, "God has no right to do this to five men unless ...”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“Don't dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

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

— Elisabeth Elliot

Jesus never pussyfooted

— Elisabeth Elliot

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

— Elisabeth Elliot

Jesus loved the will of His Father. He embraced the limitations, the necessities, the conditions, the very chains of His humanity as He walked and worked here on earth, fulfilling moment by moment His divine commission and the stern demands of His incarnation. Never was there a word or even a look of complaint.

— Elisabeth Elliot

“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.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“It would seem that unless we see through and beyond the physical, we shall not even see the physical as we ought to see it: as the very vehicle for the glory of God”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“Faith is not merely "feeling good about God" but a conscious choice, even in the utter absence of feelings or external encouragements to obey His word when He says, "Trust Me." This choice has nothing to do with mood but is a deliberate act of laying hold of the character of God whom circumstances never change.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

Let not him who accepts light in an instant despise him who gropes months in shadows.

— Elisabeth Elliot

We are always held in the love of God. We are never wholly at the mercy of other people - they are only "second causes," and no matter how many second or third or fiftieth causes seem to be in control of what happens to us, it is God who is in charge, He who holds the keys, He who casts the lot finally into the lap. Trusting Him, then, requires that I leave some things to be decided by others. I must learn to relinquish the control I might wield over somebody else if the decision properly belongs to him. I must resist my urge to manipulate him, needle and prod and pester until he capitulates. I must trust God in him, trust God to do for both of us better than I know.

— Elisabeth Elliot

The women of the Band were learning that if the Lord of Glory took a towel and knelt on the floor to wash the dusty feet of His disciples, then no work, even the relentless and often messy routine of caring for squalling babies, is demeaning. To offer it up to the Lord of Glory transforms it into a holy task.

— Elisabeth Elliot

“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!”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“Faith is a decision.It is not a deduction from the facts around us. We would not look at the world of today and logically conclude that God loves us. It doesn't always look as though He does.Faith is not an instinct. It certainly is not a feeling - feelings don't help much when you're in the lion's den or hanging on a wooden Cross. Faith is not inferred from the happy way things always work. It is an act of the 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.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“She stood, as it were, with her face to God and her back to the people, waiting to receive His word for the 'chose people.' She had a vision of holy living. She would not deviate from that no matter how well-established, rational, and practical the ways of older missions seemed to be.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“When life's flight is over, and we unload our cargo at the other end, the fellow who got rid of unnecessary weight will have the most valuable cargo to present to the Lord.
Nate”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“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.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“You yourself will be given light in exchange for pouring yourself out for the hungry; you yourself will get guidance, the satisfaction of your longings, and strength, when you "pour yourself out," when you make the satisfaction of somebody else's desire your own concern;”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“The believer alone will be able to hear the call. It comes from beyond ourselves, beyond our society, beyond the climate of opinion and prejudice and rebellion and skepticism in which we live, and beyond our time and taste. It draws toward the center of all things, that still place of which T.S. Eliot wrote :
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

Nothing has done more damage to the Christian view of life than the hideous notion that those who are truly spiritual have lost all interest in the world and its beauties.

— Elisabeth Elliot

“If I am to love the Lord my God with all my mind, there will not be room in it for carnality, for pride, for anxiety, for the love of myself. How can the mind be filled with the love of the Lord and have space left over for things like that?”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“There is no such thing as Christian work. That is, there is no work in the world which is, in and of itself, Christian. Christian work is any kind of work, from cleaning a sewer to preaching a sermon, that is done by a Christian and offered to God.
This means that nobody is excluded from serving God. It means that no work is "beneath" a Christian. It means there is no job in the world that needs to be boring or useless. A Christian finds fulfilment not in the particular kind of work he does, but in the way in which he does it.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“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.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“Loneliness comes over us sometimes as a sudden tide. It is one of the terms of our humanness, and, in a sense, therefore, incurable. Yet I have found peace in my loneliest times not only through acceptance of the situation, but through making it an offering to God, who can transfigure it into something for the good of others.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“What God gives in answer to our prayers will always be the thing we most urgently need, and it will always be sufficient.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners.

— Elisabeth Elliot

“O God, I confess I am not worthy to rock that little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of a child and its mother. How is it that I without any merit have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? Oh, how gladly will I do so. Though the duty should be even more insignificant and despised, neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor will distress me for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

The one who loves knows better than anyone else how to conduct himself, how to serve the one he loves. Love prescribes an answer in a given situation as no mere rule can do.

— Elisabeth Elliot

“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?'”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“Sometimes God's refusals are His mercies.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“I will offer to Him both my tears and my exultation. Nothing we offer to Him will be lost.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“If all struggles and sufferings were eliminated, the spirit would no more reach maturity than would the child.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

When you don't know what to do, do the thing in front of you.

— Elisabeth Elliot

New Year's Day is a good time to fix one's eyes on the only One who knows what the year is to hold.

— Elisabeth Elliot

“One morning I was reading the story of Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. The disciples could find only five loaves of bread and two fishes. 'Let me have them,' said Jesus. He asked for all. He took them, said the blessing, and broke them before He gave them out. I remembered what a chapel speaker ... had said: 'If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will satisfy only a little lad.'”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“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.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

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

— Elisabeth Elliot

“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.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

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

— Elisabeth Elliot

The pain of loneliness is one way in which he wants to get our attention. We may be earnestly desiring to be obedient and holy. But we may be missing the fact that it is here, where we happen to be at this moment and not in another place or another time, that we may learn to love Him - here where it seems He is not at work, where He seems obscure or frightening, where He is not doing what we expected Him to do, where He is most absent. Here and nowhere else is the appointed place. If faith does not got to work here, it will not work at all.

— Elisabeth Elliot

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

— Elisabeth Elliot

Our future may look fearfully intimidating, yet we can look up to the Engineer of the Universe, confident that nothing escapes His attention or slips out of the control of those strong hands.

— Elisabeth Elliot

“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.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“Most of the time we like the idea of our own freedom. There are times when we do not at all like the idea of the freedom of others. If we suffer because of their freedom, let us remember that they suffer because of ours.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“There is something that pretends to be christianity which is mostly mood. The measure of its faith is merely the measure of its feeling.”

— Elisabeth Elliot