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Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot (1926 - 2015)

Was born in Brussels, Belgium to a pair of missionaries, Philip and Katherine Howard. However, Elisabeth’s time abroad didn’t last long; her family moved back to the Philadelphia area when she was five months old because her father had accepted a job as the editor of a small newspaper. As Elisabeth grew up, missionaries were regularly visiting the Howard household, having a profound impact on Elisabeth's choice to attend Wheaton College, in order to study classical Greek so that she could work in the missions field as a Bible translator. It was there that Elisabeth met Jim Elliot, who would become her first husband after the two had served independently as mission workers in Ecuador. Tragically, Jim was brutally murdered by the Aucan Indians—the very tribe Jim was trying to save. Instead of returning to the States, Elisabeth continued to commit her life to Christ and lived with the very tribe that had speared her husband to death.

Elisabeth and her daughter, Valerie, moved back to Massachusetts in 1963. She later married a professor named Addison Leitch, who died of cancer in 1973. In 1974, Elisabeth accepted a position as an Adjunct Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She taught off-and-on for a few years, until she took the Writer in Residence at Gordon College. In 1977, she married again. This time to a man by the name of Lars Gren. Elisabeth is the author of nearly twenty books, including Shadow of the Almighty and Passion and Purity, which both tell the story of Jim and Elisabeth’s lives. Elisabeth toured the nation for the majority of her life, telling all that she had learned in her widely experienced life. She also hosted a daily radio show, Gateway to Joy for thirteen years, until 2001. Now, she and her husband, Lars, live in Beverly, Massachusetts.


Elisabeth Elliot is a Christian author and speaker. Her first husband, Jim Elliot, was killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca (now known as Huaorani) of eastern Ecuador.

She later spent two years as a missionary to the tribe members who killed her husband. Returning to the United States after many years in South America, she became widely known as the author of over twenty books and as a speaker in constant demand.

Elliot toured the country, sharing her knowledge and experience, well into her seventies.

      Elisabeth Elliot is a Christian author and speaker. Her first husband, Jim Elliot, was killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca (now known as Huaorani) of eastern Ecuador. She later spent two years as a missionary to the tribe members who killed her husband. Returning to the United States after many years in South America, she became widely known as the author of over twenty books and as a speaker in constant demand. Elliot toured the country, sharing her knowledge and experience, well into her seventies.

      Elisabeth Elliot is one of the most influential Christian women of our time. For a half century, her best selling books, timeless teachings and courageous faith have influenced believers and seekers of Jesus Christ throughout the world. She uses her experiences as a daughter, wife, mother, widow, and missionary to bring the message of Christ to countless women and men around the world.

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A man's thoughts dye his soul, attributed to Marcus Aurelius
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Eve's daughters are as flowers and none can ever say they are through unfolding. And what man can predict the consummate end of such a life when its ultimate center is Sharon's Rose?
topics: women  
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It is altogether fitting and proper that we should enjoy things made for us to enjoy. What is not at all fitting or proper is that we should set our hearts on them. Temporal things must be treated as temporal things - received, given thanks for, offered back, but enjoyed. They must not be treated like eternal things.
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And so it often is. Faith, prayer, and obedience are our requirements. We are not offered in exchange immunity and exemption from the world’s woes. What we are offered has to do with another world altogether.
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​A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace. Elisabeth Elliot
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Missionary work in a place where Christ has never been named is sometimes less arduous than in places where, though named, He has not been honored by lives of holy obedience.
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Our loneliness cannot always be fixed, but it can always be accepted as the very will of God for now, and that turns into something beautiful. Perhaps it is like the field wherein lies the valuable treasure. We must buy the field. It is no sun drenched meadow embroidered with wildflowers. It is a bleak and empty place, but once we know it contains a jewel the whole picture changes. In my case, "selling everything" meant giving up the self-pity and the bitter questions. I do not mean we are to go out looking for chances to be as lonely as possible. I am talking about acceptance of the inevitable. And when, through a willed act we receive this thing we did not want, then Loneliness, the name of the field nobody wants, is transformed into a place of hidden treasure.
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The secret is Christ in me, not in a different set of circumstances.
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What we don't have now we don't need now. Possibly His very withholding is in order that the boy may learn, at this crucial juncture in his life, to turn to God in prayer for a deeply felt need.
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If He is God, He is still in charge.
topics: christianity  
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Matters of the heart still can never put us beyond His love and redemption.
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When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.
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To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss. The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact.
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But God has set no traps for us. Quite the contrary. He has summoned us to the only true and full freedom.
topics: christianity  
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It appears that God has deliberately left us in a quandary about many things. Why did He not summarize all the rules in one book, and all the basic doctrines in another? He could have eliminated the loopholes, prevented all the schisms over morality and false teaching that have plagued His Church for two thousand years. Think of the squabbling and perplexity we would have been spared. And think of the crop of dwarfs He would have reared! He did not spare us. He wants us to reach maturity. He has so arranged things that if we are to go on beyond the “milk diet” we shall be forced to think.
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Jim devoted ten days largely to prayer to make sure that this was indeed what God intended for him. He was given new assurance, and wrote to his parents of his intention to go to Ecuador. Understandably, they, with others who knew Jim well, wondered if perhaps his ministry might not be more effective in the United States, where so many know so little of the Bible's really message He replied: "I dare not stay home while Quiches perish. What if the well-filled church in the homeland needs stirring? They have the Scriptures Moses, and the prophets, and a whole lot more. Their condemnation is written on their bank books and in the dust on their Bible covers.
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Señor Jaime,” said little Moquetin, a bright-eyed imp of six, “why is it that your face is always red?” Jim countered, “Why is it that your face is always brown?” “Because it is much prettier that way,” was the unexpected reply.
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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.
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If we love someone more than we love God, it is worse than inordinate - it is idolatry. When God is first in our hearts, all other loves are in order and find their rightful place.
topics: idolatry , love  
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Nothing has done more damage to the Christian view of life than the hideous notion that those who are truly spiritual have lost all interest in the world and its beauties.
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