Quotes from Elisabeth Elliot

The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self-abandonment. 'If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,' Jesus said, 'he will find his true self.

God withholds blessing only in wisdom, never in spite or aloofness.

Whoever is ashamed of marriage is also ashamed of being thought a man, or else he thinks that he can make himself better than God made him.

The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman.

Must we always comment on life? Can it not simply be lived in the reality of Christ's terms of contact with the Father, with joy and peace, fear and love full to the fingertips in their turn, without incessant drawing of lessons and making of rules?

The disciplined Christian will be very careful what sort of counsel he seeks from others. Counsel that contradicts the written Word is ungodly counsel. Blessed is the man that walketh not in that.

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.

The gate is narrow but not the life. The gate opens out into largeness of life.

Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective in their aims.

The willingness to sacrifice that springs from a loving heart rather than the desire for spiritual distinction is surely acceptable to God. But, as in the case of Abraham's offering of his son Isaac, the sacrifice itself is not always finally required. What is required is obedience.

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.

Insistence that both lead means there won't be any dance.