More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Just pull-yourself-up by the grace of God, hoist your cross on your shoulder, and follow your Savior down the bloodstained path to Calvary. And don’t complain about it.
“Suffering is never for nothing, Joni.” It’s a different era now. Many young people I know don’t recognize the name of Elisabeth Elliot. They live in an egalitarian culture where everyone’s story is extraordinary, whether it has the stamp of Christ or not. The leaders they look up to lack heroic qualities. Courage is rare. Good character, rarer. Moral purity feels arcane. Suffering should be mitigated at all costs. And if it cannot be avoided, it must be drugged, divorced, escaped from, or prayed away.
It was practicing—through both the high dramas and the low, dull days that constitute any human life—the daily self-death required for one’s soul to flourish.
She really did see dying to self, and taking up her cross to follow Jesus—at all costs—as a biblical mandate to be obeyed. Period.
For Elisabeth, the central question was not, “How does this make me feel?” but simply, “Is this true?” If so, then the next question was, “What do I need to do about it to obey God?” Boom.
“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.” —Andrew Murray
“The soul who loves God only for Himself, apart from His gifts, knows indescribable peace.”
“The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.” —Elisabeth Elliot
Do it immediately, do it with prayer, do it reliantly, casting all care. Do it with reverence, tracing His hand who placed it before thee with earnest command. Stayed on omnipotence, safe ’neath His wing, leave all resultings, do the next thing.
When He doesn’t fix broken situations in our lives, it’s usually because He is fixing us through them.