Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015) was a prominent Christian missionary, author and speaker.
Her life was dedicated to sharing the love of Jesus, obedience to God and overcoming sorrow with joy.
Despite facing the murder of her husband, Jim Elliot, by the Auca/Waodani tribe in Ecuador in 1956, she and her daughter, Valerie, later returned to live and minister among them.
Elliot believed the deepest understanding of God came from enduring the most profound suffering.
She authored over twenty books, notably ‘Passion and Purity,’ and ‘Through Gates of Splendor,’ highlighting her missionary work and her husband’s martyrdom.
She is survived by her second husband, Lars Gren, daughter Valerie and eight grandchildren. This site aims to honor her legacy and share her teachings.
I have made a list of the top quotes by Elisabeth Elliot.
Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
Waiting silently is the hardest thing of all. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Sometimes God’s refusals are His mercies. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Loneliness is a required course for leadership. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Blessings taken for granted are often forgotten. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
It is impossible to love deeply without sacrifice. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Virginity is something that can be offered to God. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
You can never lose what you have offered to Christ. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Powerful Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
Action that is clearly right needs no justification. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Praise and glory to God for whom nothing is too hard. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Maturity starts with the willingness to give oneself. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Muddled thinking inevitably results in muddled living. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
A broken heart is a reminder of our only source of power. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
True faith goes into operation when there are no answers. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Fear arises when we imagine that everything depends on us. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
When you don’t know what to do, do the thing in front of you. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Inspiring Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
The heart set to do the Father’s will, need never fear defeat. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
The only crown Jesus ever wore on earth was a crown of thorns. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
The man whose eye is single for the glory of Another can be trusted. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ’ashes. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
A whole lot of what we call ‘struggling’ is simply delayed obedience. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Great Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
What I ought to do and what I feel like doing are seldom the same thing. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Faith has to be exercised in the midst of ordinary, down-to-earth living. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Lonely? Give it to Jesus. The loneliness itself is material for sacrifice. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Things happen which would not happen without prayer. Let us not forget that. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
You are loved with an everlasting love. And underneath are the everlasting arms. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Inspirational Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
There is no need for faith where there is no consciousness of an element of risk. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
God has promised to supply all our needs. What we don’t have now, we don’t need now. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
In order to learn what it means to be a woman we must start with the One who made her. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Worry is the antithesis of trust. You simply cannot do both. They are mutually exclusive. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
The world is full of noise. Might we not set ourselves to learn silence, stillness solitude? ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
The world cries for men who are strong; strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
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.
No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners. ~ 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 is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that he act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Ultimate Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
We can’t really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
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.
Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
If all struggles and sufferings were eliminated, the spirit would no more reach maturity than would the child. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
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.
In whatever God does in the course of our lives, he gives us, through the experience, some power to help others. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
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.
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.
Wise Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
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.
The devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds. He will not allow quietness. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
Ordinary work, which is what most of us do, most of the time, is ordained by God every bit as much as is the extraordinary. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
A prayerful heart and an obedient heart will learn, very slowly and not without sorrow, to stake everything on God Himself. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
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.
Holiness has never been the driving force of the majority. It is, however, mandatory for anyone who wants to enter the kingdom. ~ Elisabeth Elliot.
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.
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.
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.
Meaningful Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thought-Provoking Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thoughtful Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
