Elisabeth Elliot (née Howard; December 21, 1926 – June 15, 2015) was a Christian author and speaker. Her first husband, Jim Elliot, was killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca people (now known as Huaorani; also rendered as Waorani or Waodani) of eastern Ecuador. She later spent two years as a missionary to the tribe members who killed her husband. Returning to the United States after many years in South America, she became widely known as the author of over twenty books and as a speaker. Elliot toured the country, sharing her knowledge and experience, well into her seventies.
Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
1. “God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
2. “Fear arises when we imagine that everything depends on us.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
3. “You are loved with an everlasting love. And underneath are the everlasting arms.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
4. “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
5. “It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than to complain about what is not given. One or the other becomes a habit of life.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
6. “God has promised to supply all our needs. What we don’t have now, we don’t need now.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
7. “When you don’t know what to do, do the thing in front of you.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
8. “God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
9. “When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
10. “God never denies us our heart’s desire except to give us something better.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
11. “The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived – not always looked forward to as though the “real” living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
12. “I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
13. “Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ’ashes.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
14. “A whole lot of what we call ‘struggling’ is simply delayed obedience.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
15. “Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
16. “Today is mine. Tomorrow is none of my business. If I peer anxiously into the fog of the future I will strain my spiritual eyes so that I will not see clearly what is required of me now!”
— Elisabeth Elliot
17. “Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
18. “I have one desire now – to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
19. “It is impossible to love deeply without sacrifice.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
20. “If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
21. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
22. “If my life is surrendered to God, all is well. Let me not grab it back, as though it were in peril in His hand but would be safer in mine!”
— Elisabeth Elliot
23. “We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
24. “Ordinary work, which is what most of us do, most of the time, is ordained by God every bit as much as is extraordinary.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
25. “It is God to whom and with whom we travel, and while He is the end of our journey, He is also at every stopping place.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
26. “No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long-term commitment between two sinners.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
27. “Discipline, for the Christian, begins with the body. We have only one. It is this body that is the primary material given to us for sacrifice. We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
28. “Lead me, Lord, to the Rock that is higher than I. Let me hear your word, give me grace to obey, to build steadily, stone upon stone, day by day, to do what You say. Establish my heart where floods have no power to overwhelm, for Christ’s sake. Amen.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
29. “Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
30. “A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
31. “A grandmother’s special calling is to pray and to be a fellow worker in the battle in which her children or her grandchildren are engaged.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
32. “Praise and glory to God for whom nothing is too hard.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
33. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
34. “No one whose first concern is feeling good can be a disciple. We are called to carry a cross and to glorify God.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
35. “The willingness to be and to have just what God wants us to be and have, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else would set our hearts at rest, and we would discover the simpler life, the greater peace.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
36. “Remind me that not everything needs to be said and that there are very few things that need to be said by me.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
37. “For one who has made thanksgiving the habit of his life, the morning prayer will be, ‘Lord, what will you give me today to offer back to you?’”
— Elisabeth Elliot
38. “New Year’s Day is a good time to fix one’s eyes on the only One who knows what the year is to hold.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
39. “You will never understand why God does what He does, but if you believe Him, that is all that is necessary. Let us learn to trust Him for who He is.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
40. “Things happen which would not happen without prayer. Let us not forget that.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
41. “Worry is the antithesis of trust. You simply cannot do both. They are mutually exclusive.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
42. “The world is full of noise. Might we not set ourselves to learn silence, stillness solitude?”
— Elisabeth Elliot
43. “The way we live ought to manifest the truth of what we believe. A messy life speaks of a messy and incoherent faith.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
44. “We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
45. “To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise appointment.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
46. “By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
47. “You can never lose what you have offered to Christ.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
48. “Blessings taken for granted are often forgotten.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
49. “The heart set to do the Father’s will, need never fear defeat.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
50. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
51. “God’s command ‘Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature’ was the categorical imperative. The question of personal safety was wholly irrelevant.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
52. “One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
53. “There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
54. “Sometimes God’s refusals are His mercies.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
55. “Loneliness is a required course for leadership.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
56. “Do the next thing.” I don’t know any simpler formula for peace, for relief from stress and anxiety than that very practical, very down-to-earth word of wisdom. Do the next thing. That has gotten me through more agonies than anything else I could recommend.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
57. “Whatever is in the cup that God is offering to me, whether it be pain and sorrow and suffering and grief along with the many more joys, I’m willing to take it because I trust Him.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
58. “A spirit of restlessness and resistance can never wait, but one who believes he is loved with an everlasting love, and knows that underneath are the everlasting arms, will find strength and peace.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
59. “God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that he act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
60. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
61. “Choices will continually be necessary and – let us not forget – possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
62. “The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it’s going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
63. “Waiting silently is the hardest thing of all.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
64. “Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
65. “The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the Church. And the wife is there to bless and support and help him.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
66. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
67. “The only crown Jesus ever wore on earth was a crown of thorns.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
68. “Lonely? Give it to Jesus. The loneliness itself is material for sacrifice.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
69. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
70. “Holiness has never been the driving force of the majority. It is, however, mandatory for anyone who wants to enter the kingdom.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
71. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
72. “Where reasons are given, we don’t need faith. Where only darkness surrounds us, we have no means for seeing except by faith.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
73. “The process of shaping the child, shapes also the mother herself. Reverence for her sacred burden calls her to all that is pure and good, that she may teach primarily by her own humble, daily example.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
74. “Does God ask us to do what is beneath us? This question will never trouble us again if we consider the Lord of heaven taking a towel and washing feet.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
75. “The woman who accepts the limitations of womanhood finds in those very limitations her gifts, her special calling which bears her up into perfect freedom, into the will of God.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
76. “Sometimes when we are called to obey, the fear does not subside and we are expected to move against the fear. One must choose to do it afraid.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
77. “The devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds. He will not allow quietness.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
78. “In order to learn what it means to be a woman we must start with the One who made her.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
79. “And I’ve come to see that it’s through the deepest suffering that God has taught me the deepest lessons. And if we’ll trust Him for it, we can come through to the unshakable assurance that He’s in charge. He has a loving purpose. And He can transform something terrible into something wonderful. Suffering is never for nothing.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
80. “Where does your security lie? Is God your refuge, your hiding place, your stronghold, your shepherd, your counselor, your friend, your redeemer, your savior, your guide? If He is, you don’t need to search any further for security.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
81. “The preoccupations of young women’s looks, their clothes, and their social life don’t seem to change much from generation to generation. But in every generation, there are a few that make others choices.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
82. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
83. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
84. “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?”
— Elisabeth Elliot
85. “To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
86. “A prayerful heart and an obedient heart will learn, very slowly and not without sorrow, to stake everything on God Himself.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
87. “Muddled thinking inevitably results in muddled living.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
88. “In whatever God does in the course of our lives, he gives us, through the experience, some power to help others.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
89. “Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
90. “If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To that you were called.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
91. “Faith has to be exercised in the midst of ordinary, down-to-earth living.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
92. “True faith goes into operation when there are no answers.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
93. “A broken heart is a reminder of our only source of power.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
94. “The question is simply,’ Who is your master?’Once that’s settled, you ask whether any word have been spoken. If it has, you have your orders.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
95. “There is no need for faith where there is no consciousness of an element of risk.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
96. “Action that is clearly right needs no justification.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
97. “Our Heavenly Healer often has to hurt us in order to heal us. We sometimes fail to recognize His mighty love in this, yet we are firmly held always in the Everlasting Arms.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
98. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
99. “Everything if given to God can become your gateway to joy.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
100. “Loneliness itself is material for sacrifice. The very longings themselves can be offered to Him who understands perfectly. The transformation into something He can use for the good of others takes place only when the offering is put into his hands.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
101. “Modesty means to be free from undue familiarity, from indecency, from lewdness, pure in thought and conduct. Speaking of modest apparel, it means decent, seemly. The opposite of modesty is conceit, boldness, immodesty, brazenness, lewdness.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
102. “We can’t really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
103. “The world cries for men who are strong; strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
104. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
105. “He is always doing something – the very best thing, the thing we ourselves would certainly choose if we knew the end from the beginning. He is at work to bring us to our full glory.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
106. “Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
107. “When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
108. “Maturity starts with the willingness to give oneself.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
109. “The only basis of peace is the cessation of the conflict of two wills: my will vs God’s.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
110. “I will offer to Him both my tears and my exultation. Nothing we offer to Him will be lost.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
111. “What I ought to do and what I feel like doing are seldom the same thing.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
112. “Virginity is something that can be offered to God.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
113. “There is something that pretends to be Christianity which is mostly mood. The measure of its faith is merely the measure of its feeling.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
114. “If your faith rests in your idea of how God is supposed to answer your prayers, your idea of heaven here on earth or pie in the sky or whatever, then that kind of faith is very shaky and is bound to be demolished when the storms of life hit it. But if your faith rests on the character of Him who is the eternal I AM, then that kind of faith is rugged and will endure.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
115. “I’m convinced that there is nothing that can happen to me in this life that is not precisely designed by a sovereign Lord to give me the opportunity to learn to know Him.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
116. “If it were not for uncertainties, we would have no need to walk by faith.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
117. “If you are married, then accept that. Accept the husband that God has given you. If you are single, accept your singleness and take it as if today was the last day of your life. Don’t be looking constantly to the future.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
118. “Nothing trains and teaches so powerfully as love. Love attracts. it does not coerce. If the aim of parents is to teach their children to love God they must show their love for Him by loving each other and loving the children.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
119. “The deepest lessons come out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
120. “If all struggles and sufferings were eliminated, the spirit would no more reach maturity than would the child.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
121. “The man whose eye is single for the glory of Another can be trusted.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
122. “Faith’s most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
123. “All our problems are theological ones, William Temple said. All of them have to do with our relationship to God and his to us, and this is precisely why it makes sense to come to God with them.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
124. “God never withholds 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 heart’s desire except to give us something better.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
125. “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.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
