Elisabeth Elliot

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?

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.

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

Sometimes life is so hard you can only do the next thing.Whatever that is just do the next thing.God will meet you there.

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.

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.

This job has been given to me to do. Therefore, it is a gift. Therefore, it is a privilege. Therefore, it is an offering I may make to God. Therefore, it is to be done gladly, if it is done for Him. Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God’s way. In this job, not in some other, God looks for faithfulness.

God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus.

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

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.

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.

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

Remind me that not everything needs to be said, and that there are very few things that need to be said by me.

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.

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

But the things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.

The way we live ought to manifest the truth of what we believe. A messy life speaks of a messy and incoherent faith.

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.

Things which sound like platitudes become vital, living and powerful when you have to learn them in the bottom of the barrel, in dark tunnels.

One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.