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

Categorized in : Promise Desire Cost

Fear arises when we imagine that everything depends on us.

Elisabeth Elliot

arise imagine inspiring

God never witholds 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.

Elisabeth Elliot

heart giving children

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

eye spiritual inspiring

This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him, to spend time in prayer, and to learn long-suffering, gentleness, meekness - in short, to learn the depths of the love that Christ Himself has poured out on all of us.

Elisabeth Elliot

prayer opportunity long

Sometimes life is so hard you can only do the next thing.Whatever that is just do the next thing.God will meet you there.

Elisabeth Elliot

next life-is sometimes

God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus.

Elisabeth Elliot

protect protect-you jesus

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.

Elisabeth Elliot

faith giving father

The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.

Elisabeth Elliot

different secret inspiring

Prayer lays hold of God's plan and becomes the link between His will and its accomplishment on earth. Amazing things happen, and we are given the privilege of being the channels of the Holy Spirit's prayer.

Elisabeth Elliot

accomplishment links prayer

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 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

Elisabeth Elliot

mean lying jesus

I'm convinced that there is nothing that can happen to me in this life that is not precisely designed by a sovereign Lord to give me the opportunity to learn to know Him.

Elisabeth Elliot

opportunities-to-learn opportunity giving

Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you

Elisabeth Elliot

quiet-heart inspiring hands

The deepest lessons come out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires.

Elisabeth Elliot

lessons fire water

Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.

Elisabeth Elliot

inspiration christian inspiring

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.

Elisabeth Elliot

stories heart believe

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

small-acts events lying

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

Elisabeth Elliot

i-love-him inspiring thinking

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

spiritual inspiring inspirational

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.

Elisabeth Elliot

women pain thinking

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.

Elisabeth Elliot

greater want heart