Quotes from Elisabeth Elliot

George Macdonald said, 'If you knew what God knows about death you would clap your listless hands', but instead I find old people in North America just buying this whole youth obsession. I think growing older is a wonderful privilege. I want to learn to glorify God in every stage of my life.

The devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds. He will not allow quietness.

God has promised to supply our needs. What we don't have now we don't need now.

Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.

Of all things difficult to rule, none were more so than my will and affections.

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.

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 only basis of peace is the cessation of the conflict of two wills: my will vs God's.

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

The principles of gain through loss, of joy through sorrow, of getting by giving, of fulfillment by laying down, of life out of death is what the Bible teaches, and the people who have believed it enough to live it out in simple, humble, day-by-day practice are people who have found the gain, the joy, the getting, the fulfillment, the life.

My heart was saying, Lord, take away this longing, or give me that for which I long. The Lord was answering, I must teach you to long for something better.

You can never lose what you have offered to Christ.

If God gave it to me, we say it's mine. I can do what I want with it. No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of - if we want to find our true selves, if we want real Life, if our hearts are set on glory.

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

Failure means nothing now, only that it taught me life.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.

The work of God is done on God's timetable. His answers to our prayers come always in time--His time. His thoughts are far higher than ours, His wisdom past understanding.

TO understand the meaning of womanhood we have to start with God. If He is indeed "Creator of all things visible and invisible" He is certainly in charge of all things, visible and invisible, stupendous and miniscule, magnificent and trivial. God has to be in charge of details if He is going to be in charge of the overall design.

A young woman asked the great preacher Charles Spurgeon if it was possible to reconcile God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. "Young woman," said he. "You don't reconcile friends