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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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isn’t the problems that determine our destiny. It’s how we respond.
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Take from me, O Lord, that self-pity which love of myself so readily produces, and from the frustration of not succeeding in the world as I would naturally desire, for these have no regard for your glory. Rather, create in me a sorrow that is conformable to your own. Let my pains rather express the happy condition of my conversion and salvation. Let me no longer wish for health or life, but to spend it and end it for you, with you, and in you. I pray neither for health nor sickness, life nor death. Rather I pray that you will dispose of my health, my sickness, my life, and my death, as for your glory, for my salvation, for the usefulness to your church and your saints, among whom I hope to be numbered. You alone know what is expedient for me. You are the Sovereign Master. Do whatever pleases you. Give me or take away from me. Conform my will to yours, and grant that with a humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may dispose myself utterly to you. May I receive the orders of your everlasting, provident care. May I equally adore whatever proceeds from you. (The Mind on Fire, An Anthology of the Writings of Blaise Pascal, Multnomah Press, 1989, p. 291)
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His enthusiasm and willingness to use what he learned made him get ahead in Spanish.
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As we have a high old time this Christmas, may we who know Christ hear the cry of the damned as they hurtle headlong into the Christless night without ever a chance. May we be moved with compassion as our Lord was. May we shed tears of repentance for these we have failed to bring out of darkness. Beyond the smiling scenes of Bethehem may we see the crushing agony of Golgotha. May God give us a new vision of His will concerning the lost and our responsibility.
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The Indians had become people to me - they were no longer my "field." While I had once declared them to be my equals, I now regarded myself as theirs. Instead of saying, "Oh, you are as good as I - let me help you," I now said, "I am as poor as you. God help us all.
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All the Scriptural metaphors about the death of the seed that falls into the ground, about losing one’s life, about becoming the least in the kingdom, about the world’s passing away—all these go on to something unspeakably better and more glorious. Loss and death are only the preludes to gain and life. It was a temptation to foreshorten the promises, to look for some prompt fulfillment of the loss-gain principle….
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He who had known the ceaseless worship of angels came to be a slave to men. Preaching, teaching, healing the sick, and raising the dead were parts of his ministry, of course, and the parts we might consider ourselves willing to do for God if that is what He asked. He could be seen to be God in those. But Jesus also walked miles in dusty heat. He healed, and people forgot to thank Him. He was pressed and harried by mobs of exigent people, got tired and hungry, was "tailed" and watched and pounced upon by suspicious, jealous, self-righteous religious leaders, and in the end was flogged and spat on and stripped and had nails hammered through His hands. He relinquished the right (or the honour) of being publicly treated as equal with God.
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Whatever dark tunnel we may be called upon to travel through, God has been there.
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If I am to love the Lord my God with all my mind, there will not be room in it for carnality, for pride, for anxiety, for the love of myself. How can the mind be filled with the love of the Lord and have space left over for things like that?
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Young people sometimes say to me, "I'll just die if the Lord calls me to be a missionary," or words to that effect. "Wonderful!" I say. That's the best possible way to start. You won't be of much use on the mission field unless you 'die' first. The conditions for discipleship begin with 'dying', and if you take the first step, very likely you will find that you have indeed been 'called'.
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A willing acceptance of all that God assigns and a glad surrender of all that I am and have constitute the key to receiving the gift of a quiet heart. Whenever I have balked, the quietness goes. It is restored, and life immeasurably simplified, when I have trusted and obeyed.
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Thanksgiving is a spiritual exercise, necessary to the building of a healthy soul. It takes us out of the stuffiness of ourselves into the fresh breeze and sunlight of the will of God.
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Does God ask us to do what is beneath us? This question will never trouble us again if we consider the Lord of heaven taking a towel and washing feet.
topics: Service  
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Silence, as someone has said, is the mother of prayer and the nurse of holy thoughts. Silence cuts down on our sins, doesn't it? We can't be sinning in so many different ways if we are being quiet before God. Silence nourishes patience, charity, discretion.
topics: Sin , Prayer  
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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. - Discipline: The Glad Surrender
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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.
topics: Submission  
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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.
topics: Suffering , Vision  
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We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.
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Prayer is a law of the universe. As God has ordained that certain physical laws should govern the law of this universe, so He has ordained the spiritual law. Books simply will not stay put on the table without the operation of gravity - although God could cause them, by divine fiat, to stay. Certain things simply will not happen without the operation of prayer, although God could cause them, by divine fiat, to happen. The Bible is full o examples of people doing what they could do and asking God to do what they couldn't do. In other words, the pattern given to us is both to work and pray.
topics: bible , christian , prayer  
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Guidance for Israel in their wanderings was unquestionable (Numbers 9). There could be no doubt if God wished them to move. Shall my Father be less definite with me? I cannot believe so. Often I doubt, for I cannot see, but surely the Spirit will lead as definitely as the pillar of cloud. I must be as willing to remain as to go, for the presence of God determines the whereabouts of His people.
topics: jim-elliot  
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