We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.
Interpretation
Our thoughts may be flawed, and only by comparing them to Scripture can we recognize their imperfections.
Elisabeth Elliot emphasizes the importance of aligning our thoughts and beliefs with the teachings of Scripture to gain a clearer understanding of truth. This quote suggests that without such a reference point, we may remain unaware of the distortions in our thinking, highlighting the need for a moral or spiritual benchmark in our reasoning.
In practice
During a sermon, a pastor could use this quote to illustrate the importance of seeking divine guidance in our decisions.
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.
Experience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be.
The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred.
I know, to banish anger altogether from one's breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God's grace.
Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.
He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows
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