Before I dive into some of the best Elisabeth Elliot quotes, I want to make sure you read Elisabeth Elliot’s books. Her wisdom is biblical, and timeless. She was a woman who did not compromise. Throughout the years that I have read her books and listened to her, I have picked up on the following themes: surrender, faith, submission, and contentment. She will not encourage your fleshly desires. She will encourage you to die to yourself and to let Jesus be the Lord of your life as a woman, a mother, a wife, and as a child of God.
So, use her words to inspire and challenge yourself. Dig in deeper to read her life’s story. Listen to her presentations and her old radio show. You will not be sorry.
About Elisabeth Elliot
1926-2015
Elisabeth Elliot was one of six children of missionary parents. She attended Wheaton College in the United States, where she met her future husband Jim. They both felt called to the mission field in Ecuador. In 1953, Jim and Elisabeth were married in Quito, Ecuador, where they continued to serve as missionaries. They had one daughter, Valerie.
I have benefitted so much from her wise words that I included them on some of my exclusive merchandise! Grab yourself a coffee mug or water bottle while you’re here!
Elisbeth Elliot quotes
Elisabeth always began her radio show with this quote: You are loved with an everlasting love,’ that’s what the Bible says, ‘and underneath are the everlasting arms.
On Faith
This is where faith begins—in the wilderness, when you are alone and afraid, when things don’t make sense.
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.
If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things.
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.
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.
Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.
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.
Faith is not an instinct. It certainly is not a feeling — feelings don’t help much when you’re in the lions’ den or hanging on a wooden Cross.
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.
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.
“Faith is not inferred from the happy way things work. It is an act of will, a choice, based on the unbreakable Word of a God who cannot lie, and who showed us what love and obedience and sacrifice mean, in the person of Jesus Christ.
Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you.
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.
Fear arises when we imagine that everything depends on us.
On 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.Â
We receive His poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.
God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus. (My favorite quote.)
The love of God did not protect His own Son. He will not necessarily protect us – not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.
I am not a theologian or a scholar, but I am very aware of the fact that pain is necessary to all of us. In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.
Christ is sufficient. We do not need “support groups” for each and every separate tribulation. The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the same old rugged cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.
A broken heart is a reminder of our only source of power.
On Contentment
The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.
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.
​A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace.
This job has been given to me to do. Therefore, it is a gift. Therefore, it is a privilege. Therefore, it is an offering I may make to God. Therefore, it is to be done gladly, if it is done for Him. Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God’s way. In this job, not in some other, God looks for faithfulness.
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.
On Obedience
When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.
A whole lot of what we call ‘struggling’ is simply delayed obedience.
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.
When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.
How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person’s seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next.
It is an act of the will, a choice, based on the Unbreakable Word of a God who cannot lie, and who showed us what love and obedience and sacrifice mean, in the person of Jesus Christ.
On womanhood
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.
The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care you take in your personal appearance, the things you spend your money on, all speak loudly about what you believe. The beauty of thy peace shines forth in an ordered life. A disordered life speaks loudly of disorder in the soul.
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.
You and I have the gift of femininity… the more womanly we are, the more manly men will be and the more God is glorified.
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.
On manhood
Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men.
On marriage
No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners.
In forfeiting the sanctity of sex by casual, nondiscriminatory ‘making out’ and ‘sleeping around,’ we forfeit something we cannot well do without. There is dullness, monotony, sheer boredom in all of life when virginity and purity are no longer protected and prized
Supreme authority in both church and home has been divinely vested in the male as the representative of Christ, who is Head of the church. It is in willing submission rather than grudging capitulation that the woman in the church (whether married or single) and the wife in the home find their fulfillment.
More Elisabeth Elliot quotes
Money holds terrible power when it is loved.
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 hearts desire except to give us something better.
The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.
There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for.
If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.
We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.
The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness.
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.
Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ‘ashes.
The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.
A Christian sees all men as made in the image of God. All are sinners too, which means that the image is marred, but it is a divine image nonetheless, capable of redemption and therefore to be held in honor.
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.
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.
I have one desire now – to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.
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.
To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.
Spiritual strongholds begin with a thought. One thought becomes a consideration. A consideration develops into an attitude, which leads then to action.
The clothes we wear are what people see. Only God can look on the heart. The outward signs are important. They reveal something of what is inside. If charity is there, it will become visible outwardly, but if you have no charitable feelings, you can still obey the command. Put it on as simply and consciously as you put on a coat. You choose it; you pick it up; you put it on. This is what you want to wear.
God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for.
When I am in need of refreshment, it isn’t easy to think of the needs of others. But I have found that if, instead of praying for my own comfort and satisfaction, I ask the Lord to enable me to give to others, an amazing thing often happens – I find my own needs wonderfully met.
Quotes by and about Jim Elliot
Elisabeth’s first husband was Jim Elliot, and they began their marriage in mission work in South America. The marriage was short-lived. Jim, along with four other missionaries, were killed by some Quichua Indians they were attempting to minister to. You can read the story in Through Gates of Splendor.
It was typical of Jim that, once sure of God’s leading, he did not turn aside easily. The “leading” was to Ecuador, so every thought and action was bent in that direction. Jim practiced what he preached when he wrote in his diary: “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God. (-Elisabeth Elliot)
We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with. But we are “harmless,” and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are “sideliners” — coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!
I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you Lord Jesus.
Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.
Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God.
Lord, give me firmness without hardness, steadfastness without dogmatism, love without weakness.
He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.
One does not surrender a life in an instant – that which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime. Nor is surrender to the will of God (per se) adequate to fullness of power in Christ. Maturity is the accomplishment of years, and I can only surrender to the will of God as I know what that will is. This may take years to know, hence fullness of the Spirit is not instantaneous but progressive as I attain fullness of the Word which reveals the will. If men were filled with the Spirit, they would not write books that subject, but on the Person whom the Spirit has come to reveal. Occupation with Christ is God’s object, not fullness of the Spirit. The apostles saw the effects – Christ exalted – and noted the cause. Then they realized and exhorted to fullness of the Comforter. Then they realized and exhorted, no toe fullness, not with fullness as the goal, but merely as the path to that great aim of a Christ-centered soul – drawing attention to its center.
Related posts:
- Real Heroes for Real Men (featuring Jim Elliot)
- Why You Need Elisabeth Elliot in Your Life
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