At a glance: this is a 13-week study and discussion guide for Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot, with 92 questions organized by reading assignment. Week 1 is free to read, with no card required.
Elisabeth Elliot wrote Passion and Purity out of her own experience of loving Jim Elliot — a man she was not sure she would ever marry — and waiting on God through years of uncertainty, longing, and disciplined hope. The book's central argument is simple but countercultural: the passions God gives us are not meant to be suppressed or indulged, but offered back to Him as an act of trust and worship. Using her own love story as the primary illustration, Elliot weaves together personal memoir, letters exchanged with Jim, Scripture, poetry, and practical counsel to show that sexual purity is not merely a rule to follow but a posture of the heart — one that flows from the conviction that God is Lord of every desire, every relationship, and every unanswered prayer.
This study guide is designed for 13 weeks of individual or small-group engagement. Each week, read the assigned chapter (or chapters) slowly — perhaps twice — and come to your time of discussion or journaling with an open, honest heart. Many of the questions will ask you to name specific things: desires you have been reluctant to surrender, patterns you recognize in yourself, fears that drive your decisions about relationships. Take time to write before you speak. The most fruitful discussions will happen when people are willing to be specific rather than general. If you are using this guide in a group, agree at the outset to hold one another's honesty in confidence.
By the end of this study, you will have thought carefully about what it means to treat romantic desire as a gift to be stewarded rather than a need to be met. You will have considered what integrity, honor, commitment, and servanthood look like in the context of dating and singleness. And you will have been invited — repeatedly — to bring the whole of your longing for love before the God who knows that longing better than you do, and who is, as Elliot believed, entirely trustworthy with it.