Elisabeth Elliot – Women in their best

“This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience – it looks for a way of being constructive.
Love is not possessive.
Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas.
Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.
Love is not touchy.
Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.
Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that stands when all else has fallen.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman

Elisabeth Elliot is one of the most influential Christian women of our time. For a half century, her best selling books, timeless teachings and courageous faith have influenced believers and seekers of Jesus Christ throughout the world. She uses her experiences as a daughter, wife, mother, widow, and missionary to bring the message of Christ to countless women and men around the world.

“Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael

“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, These Strange Ashes

“Where does your security lie? Is God your refuge, your hiding place, your stronghold, your shepherd, your counselor, your friend, your redeemer, your saviour, your guide? If He is, you don’t need to search any further for security.”
― 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, These Strange Ashes

“If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily “ours” but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ’s Control

“One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.”
― 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

“Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? 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.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Quest for Love: True Stories of Passion and Purity

“Often a Christian man or woman falls prey to that cruel and vexatious spirit, wondering how to find marriage, who, when, where? It is on God that we should wait, as a waiter waits–not for but on the customer–alert, watchful, attentive, with no agenda of his own, ready to do whatever is wanted. ‘My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.’ (Ps. 62:5 KJV) In Him alone lie our security, our confidence, our trust. 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, Quest for Love: True Stories of Passion and Purity

“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

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Jim Elliot, missionary to Auca indians in Ecuador”
― Elisabeth Elliot, The Journals of Jim 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. Its easy to talk oneself into a decision that has no permanence – easier sometimes than to wait patiently.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ’s Control

“Remember, you are loved with an everlasting love and underneath are the everlasting arms! ”
“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

“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

The gift of virginity, given to everyone to offer back to God for His use, is a priceless and irreplaceable gift. It can be offered in the pure sacrifice of marriage, or it can be offered in the sacrifice of a life’s celibacy. —Elisabeth Elliot

“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, The Mark of a Man

Read her own brief biography here: http://www.elisabethelliot.org/about.html

Excerpts: My parents were missionaries in Belgium where I was born. When I was a few months old, we came to the U.S. and lived in Germantown, not far from Philadelphia, where my father became an editor of the Sunday School Times…which was used by hundreds of churches for their weekly unified Sunday School teaching materials…

After the discovery of their (an unreached tribe. The Aucas) whereabouts, Jim (her first husband) and four other missionaries entered Auca territory. After a friendly contact with three of the tribe, they were speared to death. Our daughter Valerie was 10 months old when Jim was killed. I continued working with the Quichua Indians…After having worked for two years with the Aucas, I returned to the Quichua work and remained there until 1963 when Valerie and I returned to the U.S. Since then, my life has been one of writing and speaking…