some Elisabeth Elliot's writings about Jim

“Some had thought it strange that a young man with his opportunities for success should choose to spend his life in the jungles among primitive people. Jim’s answer, found in his diary, had been written a year before: ‘My going to Ecuador is God’s counsel, as is my leaving Betty, and my refusal to be counseled by all who insist I should stay and stir up the believers in the US. And how do I know it is His counsel? ‘Yea, my heart instructeth me in the night seasons.’ Oh, how good! For I have known my heart is speaking to me for God! …No visions, no voices, but the counsel of a heart which desires God.’”

“We have arrived at the destination decided on in 1950. My joy is full. Oh how blind it would have been to reject the leading of these days. How it has changed the course of life for me and added such a host of joys!”

“At twenty-six years how good God has been and how full and blessed His ways. How continually I thank God for bringing me here, almost overcoming the impossible and pushing me out. I felt ‘thrust out’ and how grateful I am for God’s impelling.”

“The ruts are worn deep and it won’t be easy to change habits and give up the lost ground or let it be gained by the Lord. But surely it will be worth the battle. My mind was made only to love Him; my body, also, which includes my tongue in all its activities. How slow some of us are to learn.”

“I will be led and taught of the Holy Spirit. God desires full development, use and activity of our faculties. The Holy Spirit can and will guide me in direct proportion to the time and effort I will expend to know and do the will of God. I must read the Bible to know God’s will. At every point I will obey and do.”

“Lord, God, speak to my own heart and give me to know Thy Holy will and the joy of walking in it. Amen.”

“Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth! I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Mayhap in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the cast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, touch His garments, and smile into His eyes – ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself.”

“O Jesus, Master and Center and End of all, how long before that Glory is thine which has so long waited Thee? Now there is no thought of Thee among men; then there shall be thought for nothing else. Now other men are praised; then none shall care for any other’s merits. Hasten, hasten, Glory of Heaven, take Thy crown, subdue They Kingdom, enthrall Thy creatures.”

“God is God. If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.”

“God is the God of human history, and He is at work continuously, mysteriously, accomplishing His eternal purposes in us, through us, for us, and in spite of us.”

“It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God’s and the call is God’s and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package – our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses.”

“We are not always sure where the horizon is. We would not know which end is up were it not for the shimmering pathway of light falling on the white sea. The One who laid earth’s foundations and settled its dimensions knows where the lines are drawn. He gives all the light we need for trust and for obedience.”