Elisabeth Elliot Quotes
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Where reasons are given, we don't need faith. Where only darkness surrounds us, we have no means for seeing except by faith.
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Sometimes we want things we were not meant to have. Because he loves us, the Father says no. Faith trusts that no. Faith is willing not to have what God is not willing to give. Furthermore, faith does not insist upon an explanation. It is enough to know His promises to give what is good-he knows so much more about us than we do.
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God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that He act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice. It is the same spirit that taunted, "If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the Cross." There is unbelief, there is even rebellion, in the attitude that says, "God has no right to do this to five men unless...
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The cross means suffering. Suffering's meaning is to be learned through the cross.
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No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners.
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I believe with all my heart God's Story has a happy ending. . . But not yet, not necessarily yet. It takes faith to hold on to that in the face of the great burden of experience, which seems to prove otherwise.
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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.
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The deepest lessons come out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires.
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To those of us who are not theologians, does it matter whether a thing is ordained or merely allowed? Are events that seem out of control caused by God? Or does He allow them to occur at the hands of human beings? You can spend a lot of time pondering that one and end up pretty much where you started. In either case, the purpose remains the same - our sanctification. God is in the business of making us walking, breathing examples of the invisible reality of the presence of Christ in us.
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The willingness to be and to have just what God wants us to be and have, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else, would set our hearts at rest, and we would discover the simpler life, the greater peace.
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Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy.
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If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To that you were called.
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Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you.
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O God, I confess I am not worthy to rock that little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of a child and its mother. How is it that I without any merit have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? Oh, how gladly will I do so. Though the duty should be even more insignificant and despised, neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor will distress me for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.
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If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look 'little' or 'big'.
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Spiritual strongholds begin with a thought. One thought becomes a consideration. A consideration develops into an attitude, which leads then to action. Action repeated becomes a habit, and a habit establishes a "power base for the enemy," that is, a stronghold.
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I will offer to Him both my tears and my exultation. Nothing we offer to Him will be lost.
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I asked Him to give me the prayers He wants me to pray and to give or withhold anything according to his plan for me. Nothing is too big to ask of Him, not even an ocean lot. It is God's business to decide if it is good for me. It is my business to obey Him.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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A wife, if she is very generous, may allow that her husband lives up to perhaps eighty percent of her expectations. There is always the other twenty percent that she would like to change, and she may chip away at it for the whole of their married life without reducing it by very much. She may, on the other hand, simply decide to enjoy the eighty percent, and both of them will be happy.
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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?
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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.