Suffering Is Never for Nothing

by Elisabeth Elliot

The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

“Christ leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before.” I love those words.

And my faith enables me to say, “Yes, Lord. I don’t like what You’re doing. I don’t understand it. You’re going to have to take care of those poor people at the other end that thought I was coming to speak on this particular day. But God, You’re in charge.”

We need Jesus Christ, our refuge, our fortress, the stronghold of my life. It takes desolation to teach us our need of Him.

I have never thanked God for cancer. I have never thanked God specifically that certain Indians murdered my husband. I don’t think I need to thank God for the cancer or for the murder. But I do need to thank God that in the midst of that very situation the world was still in His hands.

“If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it may be because pieces will feed a multitude when a loaf would satisfy only a little boy.”

The wilderness into pasture. Deserts into springs. Perishable into imperishable. Weakness into power. Humiliation into glory. Poverty into riches. Morality into immortality. This vile body into a resplendent body. My mourning into the oil of joy. My spirit of heaviness, He gives me in exchange a garment of praise. And beauty for ashes.