A prayerful heart and an obedient heart will learn, very slowly and not without sorrow, to stake everything on God Himself.
Interpretation
Trusting in God requires dedication and may involve challenges along the way.
In this quote, Elisabeth Elliot emphasizes that a genuine relationship with God is built on prayer and obedience. While the journey of faith may be slow and filled with difficulties, it ultimately encourages individuals to fully rely on God for guidance and support, leading to a deeper spiritual understanding.
In practice
Using this quote in a sermon to illustrate the importance of faith in difficult times.
We are not asked to SEE," said Amy. "Why need we when we KNOW?" We know--not the answer to the inevitable Why, but the incontestable fact that it is for the best. "It is an irreparable loss, but is it faith at all if it is 'hard to trust' when things are entirely bewildering?
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.
What sort of world might it have been if Eve had refused the servants offer and had said to him instead, βlet me not be like God. Let me be what I was made to be - let me be a woman'?
Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship ''in spirit and in truth.'' Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.
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.
If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.
The glory of God's faithfulness is that no sin of ours has ever made Him unfaithful.
My entire theology can be condensed into four words, 'JESUS DIED FOR ME'.
Pray and learn to pray! Deepen your knowledge of the Word of the Living God by reading and meditating on the Scriptures.
Even when things are getting worse instead of better - I believe God!
Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our own minds. Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of unsyllabled isolation. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life. Much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive.
I realized that everything I had to do I could not do on my own, and so I was almost obliged to put myself in God's hands, to trust in Jesus who - while I wrote my book on him - I felt bound to by an old and more profound friendship.
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