Zenani > Zenani's Quotes

“The books the Holy Spirit is writing are living, and every soul a volume in which the divine author makes a true revelation of his word, explaining it to every heart, unfolding it in every moment.”
― Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

“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, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God's story never ends with 'ashes.”
― 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

“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

“Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Keep a Quiet Heart

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

“Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Discipline: The Glad Surrender

“There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, “If God gave it to me,” we say, “its 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

“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, Let Me Be a Woman

“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

“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

“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. The love of God did not protect His own Son. The cross was the proof of His love – that He gave that Son, that He let Him go to Calvary’s cross, though “legions of angels” might have rescued Him. He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.”
― 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 did not protect His own Son.... He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.”
― 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, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

“God will never disappoint us… If deep in our hearts we suspect that God does not love us and cannot manage our affairs as well as we can, we certainly will not submit to His discipline. …To the unbeliever the fact of suffering only convinces him that God is not to be trusted, does not love us. To the believer, the opposite is true.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Discipline: The Glad Surrender

“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

“Experience had quickly taught her that she could not survive the storms without the anchor of the constraining love of Christ and what she called the "Rock-counsciousness" of the promise given her, "He goeth before.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael

“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!”
― Elizabeth Elliot

“We never know what God has up His sleeve. You never know what might happen; you only know what you have to do now.”
― 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, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

“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

“When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable).”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

“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

“But, in the words of a Portuguese proverb, “God writes straight with crooked lines”, and He is far more interested in getting us where He wants us to be than we are in getting there. He does not discuss things with us. He leads us faithfully and plainly as we trust Him and simply do the next thing.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Secure in the Everlasting Arms