Recently, I read Elisabeth Elliot’s book Discipline: The Glad Surrender. What a treasure trove of wisdom Elliot was, and her books continue to encourage Christian women around the globe! This book is no exception. While a struggled a bit with her style in the beginning, I finished the book with a renewed sense of purpose.
Elliot encourages us to live a disciplined life, one which is completely surrendered to God. She leaves no area untouched as she speaks to the discipline of our inner world as well as our outer world. In the book, Elliot addresses our body, time, possessions, mind, work, and even our feelings. Leaving no room for argument, Elliot gently pushes us to be better—better at worship, better at productivity, better at life, and better at walking with Christ.
Below, I have listed my favorite quotes from the book. Somehow, I was able to cut the list down to fifteen quotes. They are in the order in which they appear in the book. After reading these quotes, I have no doubt you’ll feel compelled to read the book for yourself. Therefore, I am not offering any explanation with the quotes but am simply listing them as she wrote them. Enjoy!
To learn more about Elisabeth Elliot, check out this website.
Top 15 Quotes in Discipline: The Glad Surrender
“If I trust Him, I will obey Him gladly” (12).
“The unwillingness to be obedient is a violation of our humanity” (16).
“Certainty comes with obedience. It is only through action that the call of God is known” (18-19).
“Discipline is not my claim on Christ, but the evidence of His claim on me” (27).
“He expects us to work, just as the designer of a precision instrument, if he understands the principles involved and designs it accordingly, expects the thing to work. It is no great credit to the instrument if it does” (30).
“Noah’s willed action and his faith went hand in hand. We see again that faith is a far cry from feeling or religious mood. It is not vague. It hears the Word of the Lord, and it acts. ‘If it does not lead to action, it is in itself, a lifeless thing’” (34).
“When the will of man acts in accord with the will of God, that is faith. When the will of man acts in opposition to the will of God, that is unbelief” (35).
“If we hold back our obedience until we have plumbed the theological depths of this mystery, we shall be disobedient. There are truths that cannot be known except by doing them” (38).
“The Bible does not explain everything necessary for our intellectual satisfaction, but it explains everything necessary for our obedience and hence for God’s satisfaction” (41).
“There is a common belief that a frank expression of what one naturally feels and thinks is always a good thing because it is ‘honest.’ This is not true. If the feelings and thoughts are wrong in themselves, how can expressing them verbally add up to something good? It seems to me they add up to three sins: wrong feeling, wrong thought, wrong action” (63).
“Christianity teaches righteousness, not rights. It emphasizes honor, not equality. A Christian’s concern is what is owed to the other, not what is owed to himself” (81).
“Frustration is not the will of God. Of that we can be quite certain. There is time to do anything and everything that God wants us to do. Obedience fits smoothly into His given framework. One thing that most certainly will not fit into it is worry” (101).
“People wish they had more leisure time. The problem is not too little of it, but too much of it poorly spent” (102).
“There is no such thing as Christian work. That is, there is no work in the world which is, in and of itself, Christian. Christian work is any kind of work, from cleaning a sewer to preaching a sermon, that is done by a Christian and offered to God […] A Christian finds fulfillment not in the particular kind of work he does, but in the way in which he does it” (118).
“Let us be honest in recognizing feelings and honest enough to reject them when they are wrong” (143).
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