Tribute to 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

     She was indeed a different kind of women. From her concerns to her prayers she exemplified a soul longing every day to be nearer to her Saviour. From the hours of my youth spent, head down, eyes focused, reading her words my heart has been changed. I still remember reading my mom`s very old copy of "These Strange Ashes." I remember trying to understand the depression and darkness she struggled with in those moments. She poured out the difficult, the questions, the doubts. Yet she claimed truth and she didn`t for a second give up meeting with God and allowing him to meet with her in those moments. 

          Never did I expect I would later understand much more what she felt during those moments. That book has meant more to me than I ever thought possible. Just the ramblings of a women of faith fighting to believe in a lost and doubting world. 

    Here are two of her beautiful thoughts from that book:

“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. If God were God, if He were omnipotent, if He had cared, would this have happened?” 

“This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart, I may, if I will, accept, and by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. And so I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange gives Himself to me.” 

        That is only one book. Each of the books I have read by Elisabeth Elliot have spoken to my heart in ways it is hard to put into words. Her quotes, her story, her testimony; all have remained a constant encouragement in my fight against the flesh and desiring to please the Lord. What perhaps drew me to Elisabeth the most is seeing how utterly human she was in her writings. She was simply a women of faith longing to please her Father and learning how to flesh that out in following his calling over her life as a missionary, wife, and mother.

       I wish I could have told her face to face how thankful I am that she wrote, that she allowed God to use her as a vessel for his mighty plan, though she often may have doubted why she wrote at all. Thank you, Elisabeth, for pouring your heart out on pages, for the world to see the grace of God abundantly in the life of just another woman.

     Below are more of my favorite quotes:

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“One reason we are so harried and hurried is that we make yesterday and tomorrow our business, when all that legitimately concerns us is today. If we really have too much to do, there are some items on the agenda which God did not put there. Let us submit the list to Him and ask Him to indicate which items we must delete. There is always time to do the will of God. If we are too busy to do that, we are too busy.”

“Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.” 

“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?” 

“God has promised to supply all our needs. What we don’t have now, we don’t need now.”

“Don’t dig up in doubt what you have planted in faith.”

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

“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).” 

"Leave it all in the hands that were wounded for you."