Elisabeth Elliot

This woman and her wisdom have impacted my life in so many ways. I have several of her books and have read them over and over again! Here is a devotional she wrote that I just read and loved it oh so much. I am so tempted to allow my fear to creep up and take captive of my mind. These are great words for us all to be reminded of, and take rest with the fact that our Soverign Lord has it all under control! :)


Elisabeth Elliot's Daily Devotional

Title: I Will Not Be Afraid

Author: Elisabeth Elliot

News reports come every day concerning economic and political calamities about to befall us all, not to mention famines, tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanoes, things which may at any moment strike us or people we love. There are always plenty of good reasons to be afraid--unless you know that things are under control. A Christian has this "inside information." Things are, in fact, under control. God is our Refuge, our Strength, our Mighty Fortress. Nothing will get by the moat of his protection without his permission. To be afraid of what happens today or what may happen tomorrow is not only an awful waste of energy, it is not only useless, it is disobedient. We are forbidden to fear anything but the Lord Himself.

When Christians in China were being hounded to death in the 1930s, one of them (I am told) wrote this simple song, which has helped me in countless times of fear ever since I learned it as a high school girl:

I will not be afraid.
I will not be afraid.
I will look upward, and travel onward,
And not be afraid.

Will power, of course, will not always overcome human emotions. But willed obedience to the One who is in charge, coupled with prayer for his help in vanquishing our natural fears, is something else.