By Elisabeth Elliot, the beloved missionary and author, personified a remarkable array of qualities, and her wisdom continues to resonate through her enduring Elisabeth Elliot Quotes. She left an indelible mark on our world for five decades with her inspiring life and experiences. On June 15, 2015, she crossed “Through Gates of Splendor” into heaven. Yet, her words and influence persist, continuously motivating and challenging us to lead lives steeped in love and to place unwavering trust in God’s boundless hope, even in the face of the challenges and losses we encounter in this world.
Many of us first encountered Elisabeth Elliot through her remarkable story and work with the Auca Indians. Even in the face of profound personal grief, after her husband and four other missionaries tragically lost their lives at their hands, she chose to remain and share the greatest gift of all with a people who had not yet discovered the truth of Jesus Christ.
Her profound wisdom was forged through the crucible of enduring great pain in this life. Yet, many of us have gleaned invaluable nuggets of truth from her experiences, testifying that God uses all the trials we navigate in this world for greater purposes and sound, far beyond what we can fathom.
Several timeless themes that permeate Elisabeth Elliot’s writings are still as relevant today as ever. These include God’s all-encompassing love, discovering joy amidst sorrow, faith, contentment, courage, and hope.
Best Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for.
Elisabeth Elliot
God has promised to supply all our needs. What we don’t have now, we don’t need now.
Elisabeth Elliot
You can never lose what you have offered to Christ.
Elisabeth Elliot
The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.
Elisabeth Elliot
The question remains, ‘Is God paying attention? If so, why doesn’t He do something?’ I say He has, He did, He is doing something, and He will do something.
Elisabeth Elliot
Of one thing I am perfectly sure, God’s story never ends with ashes.
Elisabeth Elliot
Leave it all in the hands that were wounded for you.
Elisabeth Elliot
When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.
Elisabeth Elliot
God never denies us our heart’s desire, except to give us something better.
Elisabeth Elliot
Faith does not eliminate questions, but faith knows where to take them.
Elisabeth Elliot
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
The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God, or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.
Elisabeth Elliot
One way to begin to see how vastly indulgent we usually are is to fast. It is a long day that is not broken by the usual three meals. One finds out what an astonishing amount of time is spent in the planning, purchasing, preparing, eating, and cleaning up of meals.
Elisabeth Elliot
While I disparage the exercise of building one’s self-esteem, I indulge in it every time I imagine myself free from the defects I perceive in someone else.
Elisabeth Elliot
Throughout the millennia of human history, up until the past two decades or so, people took for granted that the differences between men and women were so obvious as to need no comment. They accepted the way things were. But, our easy assumptions have been assailed and confused, we have lost our bearings in a fog of rhetoric about something called equality, so that I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to belabor to educated people what was once perfectly obvious to the simplest peasant.
Elisabeth Elliot
Quotes By Elisabeth Elliot
Virginity is something that can be offered to God.
Elisabeth Elliot
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
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
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 honestly able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray, ‘Thy will be done.’
Elisabeth Elliot
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
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.
Elisabeth Elliot
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
Don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.
Elisabeth Elliot
Lord, break the chains that hold me to myself; free me to be your happy slave—that is, to be the happy foot washer of anyone today who needs his feet washed, his supper cooked, his faults overlooked, his work commended, his failure forgiven, his griefs consoled or his button sewed on. Let me not imagine that my love for You is very great if I am unwilling to do for a human being for something very small.
Elisabeth Elliot
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
The Devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements—noise, hurry, and crowds. He will not allow quietness.
Elisabeth Elliot
The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the Cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.
Elisabeth Elliot
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
Maturity starts with the willingness to give oneself.
Elisabeth Elliot
I do know that 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
Elisabeth Elliot Quotes About Suffering
The deepest things I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things I know about God.
Elisabeth Elliot
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
The hand of the Gardener holds the knife. It is His glory that is at stake when the best grapes are produced so we need not think He has something personal against us, or has left us wholly to His enemy, Satan. He is always and forever for us.
Elisabeth Elliot
For a Christian, the pattern is Jesus. What did He do? He offered himself, a perfect and complete sacrifice, for the love of God. And you and I should be prepared, also, to be broken bread and poured out wine for the world.
Elisabeth Elliot
If your prayers don’t get answered the way you thought they were supposed to be, what happens to your faith? The world says God doesn’t love you. The scriptures tell me something very different.
Elisabeth Elliot
How often I am troubled about something that looms ahead, wondering how I am to cope when the time comes. Why do I not bring it at once to the Lord, who stands ready with next grace for the next thing.
Elisabeth Elliot
Some of God’s greatest mercies are His refusals. He says no in order that He may, in some way we cannot imagine, say yes.
Elisabeth Elliot
This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart, I may, if I will, accept, and by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. And so I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange gives Himself to me.
Elisabeth Elliot
My heart was saying, ‘Lord take away this longing, or give me that for which I long.’ The Lord was answering, ‘I must teach you to long for something better.’
Elisabeth Elliot
He puts those tears into His bottle, for He gave you the love that brings those tears and He made you so you could cry, and you cast it all on the rock that never moves.
Elisabeth Elliot
There is in fact no redemptive work done anywhere without suffering.
Elisabeth Elliot
The bigger our pain now, the bigger that ‘weight of glory’ will be. It’s mysterious, it’s unimaginable, but it’s going to be, and for that we give thanks.
Elisabeth Elliot
Things to do in suffering; recognize it, accept it, offer it to God as a sacrifice, and offer yourself with it.
Elisabeth Elliot
The Cross means suffering. Suffering’s meaning is to be learned through the Cross.
Elisabeth Elliot
In a world marked by uncertainty, it is vital to maintain your faith and entrust matters to God’s intervention. Faith in God entails trusting Him to manage situations beyond our control. Nurturing our faith can be achieved through reading His teachings and engaging in prayer.
Elisabeth Elliot emphasized the pivotal role of prayer as a means of connecting with God. Despite her trials, she dedicated her life to glorifying God, highlighting that corresponding actions should accompany every prayer.
The unpredictable nature of the future underscores the importance of continual prayer and recognising the Lord’s grace and mercy. Let our prayers resound louder than our problems!
Which quote from this collection resonates most with you? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please share in the comments below!
