Elisabeth Elliot - Passion and Purity (1984)

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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.

Elisabeth Elliot
The heart set to do the Father's will need never fear defeat. His promises of guidance may be fully counted upon. Does it make sense to believe that the Shepherd would care less about getting His sheep where He wants them to go than they care about getting there?

Elisabeth Elliot
Faith receives, day by day, what a loving Heavenly Father apportions...

Elisabeth Elliot
If all struggles and sufferings were eliminated, the spirit would no more reach maturity than would the child.

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
Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering.

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 able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.

Elisabeth Elliot
If God gave it to me," we say "it's mine. I can do what I want with it." No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of - if we want to find our true selves, if we want real Life, if our hearts are set on glory.

Elisabeth Elliot
A little quiet reflection will remind me that yes to God always leads in the end to joy.

Elisabeth Elliot
By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.

Elisabeth Elliot
I took it for granted that there must be a few men left in the world who had that kind of strength. I assumed that those men would also be looking for women with principle. I did not want to be among the marked-down goods on the bargain table, cheap because they'd been pawed over. Crowds collect there. It is only the few who will pay full price. "You get what you pay for.

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
Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.

Elisabeth Elliot
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
Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His lordship.

Elisabeth Elliot
One morning I was reading the story of Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. The disciples could find only five loaves of bread and two fishes. 'Let me have them,' said Jesus. He asked for all. He took them, said the blessing, and broke them before He gave them out. I remembered what a chapel speaker...had said: 'If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will satisfy only a little lad.'

Elisabeth Elliot
Of all things difficult to rule, none were more so than my will and affections.

Elisabeth Elliot
When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.

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
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
But the question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives is What do I really want? Was it to love what God commands, in the words of the collect, and to desire what He promises? Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?

Elisabeth Elliot
Women still dream and hope, pin their emotions on some man who doesn't reciprocate, and end up in confusion.

Elisabeth Elliot