50 Elisabeth Elliot Quotes on Suffering

One of my favorite all-time writers is Elisabeth Elliot. These powerful Elisabeth Elliot quotes on suffering show her steadfast faith in deep grief and loss while also wrestling through hard questions and raw emotions.

I’ve recently been diving into Elisabeth Elliot’s writings–from her new autobiography, Becoming Elisabeth Elliot (so good!), and the book Suffering is Never for Nothing, published posthumously, to re-reading classics like Shadow of the Almighty and These Strange Ashes. I’ve read through old newsletters from her ministry days and early books that are new to me. 

Elisabeth Elliot was twice-widowed and in my own grief, I’ve often wondered whether her second loss was harder or easier. It was likely a messy mix of both. She also suffered other losses: the theft of all her language work with the Colorado people and ministry strife that caused her to leave her work with the Waodani (formerly called the Auca). Find inspiration and strength from these favorite Elisabeth Elliot quotes on suffering to inspire and strengthen you in your own journey.  

{Find a full list of Elisabeth Elliot books here.}

50 Elisabeth Elliot Quotes on Suffering

“The question remains, is God paying attention? If so why doesn’t he do something? I say He has, He did, He is doing something and He will do something .”(Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.” (These Strange Ashes)

“Teach me never to let the joy of what has been pale the joy of what is.” (Becoming Elisabeth Elliot)

“The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.” (These Strange Ashes)

“The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.” (Keep a Quiet Heart)

“Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ‘ashes.'” (Made for the Journey)

“God’s presence did not change the fact of my widowhood. Jim’s absence thrust me, forced me, hurried me to God, my only hope and my only refuge.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“The will of God is love. And love suffers…Loves is always inextricably bound up in sacrifice.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“This is where faith begins—in the wilderness, when you are alone and afraid, when things don’t make sense.”  (The Path of Loneliness)

“You can never lose what you have offered to Christ.” (A Path Through Suffering)

“The Lord’s decrees (His promises, His plans, His every word) stand fast, no matter what news we receive.” (A Lamp Unto My Feet)

“Things to do in suffering: 1. Recognize it. 2. Accept it. 3. Offer it to God as a sacrifice. 4. Offer yourself with it.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“The deepest things 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 I know about God.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“We’re not adrift in chaos. We’re held in the everlasting arms.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“There is in fact no redemptive work done anywhere without suffering.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“All things come from You, Lord, and of Your own we have given to You.”

“If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it may be because pieces will feed a multitude when a loaf would only satisfy a little boy.” Unknown, quoted by Elisabeth Elliot, (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“Settle it once and for all –we can never lose what we have offered to Christ. We live and die in Him, and there is always the resurrection.” (A Path through Suffering)

“I do not ‘make’ him Lord, I acknowledge Him Lord.” 

“The bigger our pain now, the bigger that “weight of glory” will be. It’s mysterious, it’s unimaginable, but it’s going to be, and for that we give thanks.”

“He puts those tears into His bottle, for He gave you the love that brings those tears and He made you so you could cry, and you cast it all on the Rock that never moves.”

“There will be those who can “explain” to you God’s purposes in all of this. They’ll “see” what it’s supposed to mean for you. Don’t worry about them. They are blind. No explanation this side of Heaven can possibly cover the data. It’s imponderable, inexplicable, and far, far beyond any explanations. You have to cast all that nonsense on the Rock too.”

“To ask why implies a conviction that there is a reason somewhere. Somebody must be responsible for this.”(A Path Through Suffering)

“The most overwhelming losses of my life, those I feared most, have in fact been ‘far outweighed by the gain of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord.’” 

“My heart was saying, ‘Lord take away this longing, or give me that for which I long.’ The Lord was answering, ‘I must teach you to long for something better.’”

“Some of God’s greatest mercies are his refusals. He says no in order that He may, in some way we cannot imagine, say yes.”

“Nothing that comes to me is devoid of divine purposes.”

“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.”

“This grief, this sorrow, this total loss that empties my hands and breaks my heart, I may, if I will, accept, and by accepting it, I find in my hands something to offer. And so I give it back to Him, who in mysterious exchange gives Himself to me.” (Made for the Journey)

“…I cannot say to you I know exactly what you are going through. But I can say I know the One who knows. And I’ve come to see that it’s through the deepest suffering that God has taught me the deepest lessons.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“How often I am troubled about something that looms ahead, wondering how I am to cope when the time comes. Why do I not bring it at once to the Lord, who stands ready with next grace for the next thing.” (A Path Through Suffering)

“There would be no intellectual satisfaction on this side of Heaven to that age-old question why. Although I have not found intellectual satisfaction, I have found peace. The answer I say to you is not an explanation but a person, Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“If your prayers don’t get answered the way you thought they were supposed to be, what happens to your faith? The world says God doesn’t love you. The scriptures tell me something very different.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“…to God nothing is finally lost. 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.” (These Strange Ashes)

“For a Christian, the pattern is Jesus. What did He do? He offered himself, a perfect and complete sacrifice, for the love of God. And you and I should be prepared, also, to be broken bread and poured out wine for the world.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“Whatever is in the cup that God is offering to me, whether it be pain and sorrow and suffering and grief along with the many more joys, I’m willing to take because I trust Him. Because I know that what God wants for me is the very best.”

“So when the answer was no with the thorn in the flesh, and {for} Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, we know there’s nothing wrong with praying that God will solve our problems and heal our diseases and pay our debts and sort out our marital difficulties. It’s right and proper that we should bring our requests to God. We’re not praying against His will. But when the answer is no, then we know that God has something better at stake. There is another level, another kingdom, an invisible kingdom which you and I cannot see now but toward which we move and to which we belong.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

Psalm 55:22: “Cast your burden on the Lord and he shall sustain you.” (NASB) “To my amazement and delight I discovered that the word burden in the Hebrew is the same word as gift. This is a very transforming truth for me. If I thank God for this very thing which is killing me, I can begin dimly and faintly to see it as a gift. I can realize that it is through that very thing which is so far from being the thing I would have chosen, that God wants to teach me His way of salvation.”

“The first principle is that of the cross: Life comes out of death. I bring God my sorrows, He gives me His joy. I bring him my losses, he gives me his gains. I give him my sins, he gives me his righteousness. I bring him my deaths, he gives me his life.” (Suffering is Never for Nothing)

“If the cross is the places where the worst thing that could happen happened, it’s also the place where the best that could happen happened. Ultimate hatred and ultimate love met on those two crosspieces. Suffering and love were brought into harmony.” (A Path Through Suffering)

“The hand of the Gardener holds the knife. It is His glory that is at stake when the best grapes are produced so we need not think He has something personal against us, or has left us wholly to His enemy, Satan. He is always and forever for us.” (The Path through Suffering)

“Faith need never ask, ‘But what good did this do me?’ Faith already knows that everything that happens fits into a pattern for good to those who love God.” (A Path Through Suffering)

“We may rest in the promise that God is fitting together a good many more things than are any of our business. We may never see “what good it did” or how a given trouble accomplishes anything. It is peace to leave it all with Him, asking only that He do with me anything He wants, anywhere, anytime, that God may be glorified.”

“There is always enough time to do the will of God. For that we can never say, “I don’t have enough time.” When we find ourselves frantic and frustrated, harried and harassed and “hassled,” it is a sign that we are running on our own schedule, not God’s.”

“What is good, it is generally assumed, ought to make us feel good. For example, if it is the will of God, we will feel good about it. This is not always the case. Jonah had no good feelings about going to Joppa.”

“But safety, as the Cross shows, does not exclude suffering….I learned that trust in those strong arms means that even our suffering is under control. We are not doomed to meaninglessness. A loving Purpose is behind it all, a great tenderness, even in the fierceness.” (The Path of Loneliness)

“At the Cross of Jesus our crosses are changed into gifts.” (The Path of Loneliness)

“God never withholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God’s refusals are always merciful — “severe mercies” at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.” (The Path of Loneliness)

“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.”

“‘Do the next thing.’ I don’t know any simpler formula for peace, for relief from stress and anxiety that that very practical, very down-to-earth word of wisdom. Do the next thing. That has gotten me through more agonies than anything else I could recommend.” (Suffering is Never For Nothing)