QUOTES
“Lord, enable us to search our hearts and humble ourselves before Thee. Oh, for a closer walk with God, more faith, more sincerity, more earnestness, and more love. I must study more the Word of God. ‘If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ The Master said so, and His words are true.”
Alexander Murdoch Mackay, Missionary to Uganda. (1849-1890)
“This day last year Livingstone died—a Scotsman and a Christian, loving God and his neighbour in the heart of Africa. Go thou and do likewise!”
Alexander Murdoch Mackay wrote in his diary, 4th May, 1874
“Tell them to live more with Christ, to preach Christ, to catch his spirit, for the spirit of Christ is the spirit of Missions. The nearer we get to Him the more intensely missionary we become.”
Henry Martyn – Missionary to to the peoples of India and Persia. (1781-1812)
“I do not know that anything would be a heaven to me but the service of Christ and the enjoyment of His presence. Oh, how sweet is life when spent in His service.”
Henry Martyn
“And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.”
Nate Saint, Missionary to Ecuador, martyr – 1956.
“As we have a high old time this Christmas may we who know Christ hear the cry of the damned as they hurtle headlong into the Christless night without ever a chance. May we be moved with compassion as our Lord was. May we shed tears of repentance for these we have failed to bring out of darkness. Beyond the smiling scenes of Bethlehem may we see the crushing agony of Golgotha”
Nate Saint, two weeks before he was martyred by the Aucas.
“Let eloquence be flung to the dogs rather than souls be lost. What we want is to win souls. They are not won by flowery speeches.”
Charles H. Spurgeon, preacher. (1834-1892)
By the love and wounds and death of Christ, by your own salvation, by your
indebtedness to Jesus, by the terrible condition of the heathen, and by that awful
hell whose yawning mouth is before them, ought you not to say, “Here am I; send me”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“If the faith whereby I have laid hold on Christ to be my Savior be altogether wrought in me by the Holy Spirit through grace, then I defy the devil to take away that which he never gave me or to crush that which Jehovah Himself created in me. I defy my free will to fling what it never brought to me. What God has given, created, introduced, and established in the heart; He will maintain there.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“Let the purpose of God, for which you ought to adore Him every day, be plenteously fulfilled in you, and let it be seen that He has chosen you to know Christ that you may make Him known to others!”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“You shall find it greatly mitigates the sorrow of bereavements, if before bereavement you shall have learned to surrender every day all the things which are dearest to you into the keeping of your gracious God.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes – that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens – that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence – the fall of leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“You have a factor here [Matthew 28:18, 20, i.e., power or authority] that is absolutely infinite, and what does it matter as to what other factors may be. ‘I will do as much as I can,’ says one. Any fool can do that. He that believes in Christ does what he cannot do, attempts the impossible and performs it.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
Is it not possible to find missionaries who will gladly give everything for Christ? Not the life in hand business, or the sacrifice I have made, but men and women who think that preaching and living the Gospel to the unconverted, to be the greatest work on earth, and the grandest of heaven’s communications.”
James Chalmers, “Martyr in New Guinea – 1901”.
“Gladly would I make the floor my bed, a box my chair, and another box my table, rather than that men should perish for want of the knowledge of Christ.”
Robert Arthington, philanthropist. (1823-1900)
The Church’s task is not to keep inventing new gospels, new theologies, new moralities, and new Christianities, but rather to be a faithful guardian of the one and only eternal gospel.
John R.W. Stott, cleric, theologian, author. (1921-2011)
“We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior. Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.”
John R.W. Stott
‘The nations are not gathered in automatically. If God has promised to bless “all the families of the earth,” he has promised to do so “through Abraham’s seed” (Genesis 12:3, 22:18). Now we are Abraham’s seed by faith, and the earth’s families will be blessed only if we go to them with the gospel. That is God’s plain purpose.’
John R.W. Stott
“His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice.”
John R.W. Stott
“Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men but from doing something worthwhile. The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of this world is not ‘to have and to hold’ but “to give and serve.”
Wilfred Grenfell, Medical Missionary, Labrador, Canada. (1865-1940)
“To love is to stop comparing.
Our worship is the subjective echo of Jesus’ objective worth. The intensity of our gladness echoes the immensity of his glory.
The prayer closet is the battlefield of the Church; its citadel; the scene of heroic and unearthly conflicts.
The closet is the base of supplies for the Christian and the Church.
Cut off from it there is nothing left but retreat and disaster.
The energy for work, the mastery over self, the deliverance from fear, all spiritual results and graces, are much advanced by prayer.”
E.M. Bounds, author, attorney, clergy. (1835-1913)
“God’s Word will never pass away, but looking back to the Old Testament and since the time of Christ, with tears we must say that because of lack of fortitude and faithfulness on the part of God’s people, God’s Word has many times been allowed to be bent, to conform to the surrounding, passing, changing culture of that moment rather than to stand as the inerrant Word of God judging the form of the world spirit and the surrounding culture of that moment. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, may our children and grandchildren not say that such can be said about us.”
Francis Schaeffer, American evangelical theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor. (1912-1984)
“Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.”
John Wesley, English cleric, theologian and evangelist. (1703-1791)
“To preach the eternal lostness of unbelievers without tears would be a cold and dead orthodoxy indeed. And to teach it without a great emphasis upon our own responsibility, in the light of hell, to do all we can, regardless of the cost, so that men might know the gospel – that would be totally ugly and opposed to this biblical message that those who are lost are my kind.”
Letter to David Bryson, January, 14, 1983.
“The “romance” of a missionary is often made up of monotony and drudgery; there often is no glamour in it; it doesn’t stir a man’s spirit or blood. So don’t come out to be a missionary as an experiment; it is useless and dangerous. Only come if you feel you would rather die than not come. Don’t come if you want to make a great name or want to live long. Come if you feel there is no greater honour, after living for Christ, than to die for Him.”
C.T. Studd, British missionary. (1860-1931)
“How little chance the Holy Spirit has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.”
C.T. Studd
“Send us people with initiative, who can carry themselves and others too; such as need to be carried hamper the work and weaken those who should be spending their strength for the heathen. Weaklings should be nursed at home! If any have jealousy, pride, or talebearing traits lurking about them, do not send them, nor any who are prone to criticize. Send only Pauls and Timothys; men who are full of zeal, holiness and power. All others are hindrances. If you send us ten such men the work will be done. Quantity is nothing; quality is what matters.”
C.T. Studd
“Mission is the very lifeblood of the church. As the body cannot survive without blood, so the church cannot survive without mission. Without blood the body dies; without mission the church dies. As the physical body becomes weak without sufficient oxygen-carrying red blood cells, so the church becomes anemic if it does not express its faith. The church . . . establishes its rationale for being—its purpose for existing—while articulating its faith. An unexpressed faith withers. A Christian fellowship without mission loses its vitality. Mission is the force that gives the body of Christ vibrancy, purpose, and direction. When the church neglects its role as God’s agent for mission, it is actually neglecting its own lifeblood.”
Gailyn Van Rheenen, church-planting missionary in East Africa for 14 years, taught Missions and Bible at Abilene Christian University for 18 years, and is the founder and currently a facilitator of church planting and renewal within Mission Alive. Born 1946.
“When I cannot read, when I cannot think, when I cannot even pray, I can trust.”
James Hudson Taylor, missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission. (1832-1905)
“I have seen many men work without praying, though I have never seen any good come out of it; but I have never seen a man pray without working.”
James Hudson Taylor
“We did not come to China because missionary work here was either safe or easy, but because He has called us. We did not enter upon our present positions under a guarantee of human protection, but relying on the promise of His presence. The accidents of ease or difficulty, of apparent safety or danger, of man’s approval or disapproval, in no wise affect our duty. Should circumstances arise involving us in what may seem special danger, we shall have grace, I trust, to manifest the depth and reality of our confidence in Him, and by faithfulness to our charge to prove that we are followers of the Good Shepherd who did not flee from death itself…”
James Hudson Taylor
“When you are involved in missions, when you are laying down your life to rescue people from perishing – it tends to authenticate your faith and deepen your assurance and sweeten your fellowship with Jesus.”
John Piper, American Reformed Baptist continuationist pastor and author who is the founder and leader of desiringGod.org and is the chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Born 1946.
Read the Bible praying, “Father, hold my mind’s attention. Wake my heart’s affection. Speak for your glory and my holy joy.”
John Piper
“The purpose of Jesus’ death was to glorify the Father. To be willing as the Son of God to suffer the loss of so much glory Himself in order to repair the injury done to God’s glory by our sin showed how infinitely valuable the glory of God is. To be sure, the death of Christ also shows God’s love for us. But we are not at the center.”
John Piper
“Life is precarious, and life is precious. Don’t presume you will have it tomorrow, and don’t waste it today. “
John Piper
“When your love for Christ is enflamed and your grasp of the Gospel is clear, a passion for world missions follows.”
John Piper
“If you are sufficient for your task, it’s too small.”
John Piper
“What I have learned from about twenty years of serious reading is this: It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%.
From “Quantitative Hopelessness and the Immeasurable Moment”
John Piper
“The job is not done! The work that Christ gave us to do and the mandate is still binding on us today. That is why we speak of unreached people groups, but missions is the backbreaking, culture penetrating, darkness shattering, initial work to penetrate, plant the Church, see it flourish, train its own people and evangelize. It’s the task of missions. It is not over. Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven and the alternative is hell!”
John Piper
“The highest of missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor the love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, but rather zeal – burning and passionate zeal – for the glory of Jesus Christ”
John Piper
“Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter around on the porch of eternity.”
John Piper
“It was becoming clearer and clearer … I would need to press all the way in, and all the way up, to the ultimate purpose of God and join him in it. If my life was to have a single, all-satisfying, unifying passion, it would have to be God’s passion.”
John Piper
“Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in every pain. What was once foolishness to us—a crucified God—must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.”
John Piper
“What I have learned from about twenty years of serious reading is this: It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%.
From “Quantitative Hopelessness and the Immeasurable Moment”
John Piper
“You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing.”
John Piper
“We are not as Christ-centered and cross-cherishing as we should be, because we do not ponder the truth that everything good, and everything bad that God turns for the good, was purchased by the sufferings of Christ.”
John Piper
“Church buildings and paid church leaders are the greatest hindrance to the growth of a movement.”
Floyd McClung, senior pastor of a large, growing church in Kansas City, Missouri, and the international director of All Nations Family. He has lectured on more than 100 university campuses and traveled in more than 175 countries. Born 1945.
There are too many over-fed, under-motivated Christians hiding behind the excuse that God has not spoken to them. They are waiting to hear voices or see dreams – all the while living to make money, to provide for their future, to dress well and have fun.
Floyd McClung
“When church takes the edge off being radical and the risk out of the adventure of following Jesus, church has died. It is no longer the irresistible revolution Jesus intended it to be.”
Floyd McClung
“For me, passion means whatever a person is willing to suffer for….’Apostolic passion,’ therefore, is a deliberate, intentional choice to live for the worship of Jesus in the nations. It has to do with being committed to the point of death to spreading His glory. It’s the quality of those who are on fire for Jesus, who dream of the whole earth being covered with the Glory of the Lord.”
Floyd McClung
“Church is not a temple-like building to attend on Sundays, but a community of revolutionary people who make Jesus the Lord of their whole lives and live to accomplish His mission. If Jesus is the Lord of every day and every part of life, and the church is the people who live for His mission, then church happens every day, everywhere! Church is not limited to a holy-day meeting, led by a holy man; it is a mission force of radical people invading every vocation and every nation of the world.”
Floyd McClung
“If we are not careful, time and effort can be spent maintaining the institutions of church instead of fulfilling the main calling of the church.”
Floyd McClung
“Jesus Christ died for us, and His death prepares us to take risks, suffer pain, endure abuse, give up rights, and even die—without despair but with meaning.”
Floyd McClung
If I’m not showing grace . . . have I forgotten the grace I’ve been shown?
John F. MacArthur, an American pastor and author known for his internationally syndicated Christian teaching radio program Grace to You. He has been the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, since February 9, 1969. Born 1939.
Christians actually need to be confronted by their real need-an understanding of God’s holiness and their own sinfulness-so they can be usable to Him for His Glory. When we have a right relationship to God, every aspect of our lives will settle into its divinely ordained place. … We are still to need other needs but it begins with a high view of God.
John F. MacArthur
“You say you do not know what God’s will is, but I’ll tell you what it is. Above all it is that you know Christ and then that your neighbors hear about Christ. That is His will. So often we sit around twiddling our thumbs, dreaming about God’s will in some distant future when we are not even willing to stand up on our own two feet, walk down the street, and do God’s will right now.”
John F. MacArthur
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. (1803-1882)
“This is the curse of superficial religion: the constant attempt to do outward things apart from inward transformation.”
David Platt, an American pastor and author. Born 1978.
Passionate worship always leads to personal witness…..always. And what that means is . . . if we’re not witnessing, there’s a problem with our worship. We’re not seeing God for who He is! We’re not realizing what He’s done! We’re not realizing the magnitude of what He’s done for our souls!
David Platt
“The modern-day gospel says, ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.’ Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, ‘You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, and in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do.”
David Platt
“If we were left to ourselves with the task of taking the gospel to the world, we would immediately begin planning innovative strategies and plotting elaborate schemes. We would organize conventions, develop programs, and create foundations… But Jesus is so different from us. With the task of taking the gospel to the world, he wandered through the streets and byways…All He wanted was a few men who would think as He did, love as He did, see as He did, teach as He did and serve as He did. All He needed was to revolutionize the hearts of a few, and they would impact the world.”
David Platt
Faith is the realization that God’s pleasure in you will never be based upon your performance for him.
David Platt
“I want to move from what we let go of to whom we hold on to. I want to explore not just the gravity of what we forsake in this world, but also the greatness of the one we follow in this world.”
David Platt
As Elisabeth Elliot points out, not even dying a martyr’s death is classified as extraordinary obedience when you are following a Savior who died on a cross. Suddenly a martyr’s death seems like normal obedience.
David Platt
Do you realize the weight of the one who has invited us to follow him? He is worthy of more than church attendance and casual association; he is worthy of total abandonment and supreme adoration.
David Platt
Consider the cost when Christians ignore Jesus commands to sell their possessions and give to the poor and instead choose to spend their resources on better comforts, larger homes, nicer cars, and more stuff. Consider the cost when these Christians gather in churches and choose to spend millions of dollars on nice buildings to drive up to, cushioned chairs to sit in, and endless programs to enjoy for themselves. Consider the cost for the starving multitudes who sit outside the gate of contemporary Christian affluence.
David Platt
“Disciple making is not a call for others to come to us to hear the gospel but a command for us to go to others to share the gospel.”
David Platt
“Disciple making is not a call for others to come to us to hear the gospel but a command for us to go to others to share the gospel.”
David Platt
“Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.”
David Platt
“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy… It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.”
David Platt
‘Somewhere along the way we have subtly and tragically taken the costly command of Christ to go, baptize, and teach all nations and mutated it into a comfortable call for Christians to come, be baptized, and listen in one location.’
David Platt
Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.” “He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
David Platt
“Suddenly contemporary Christianity sales pitches don’t seem adequate anymore. Ask Jesus to come into your heart. Invite Jesus to come into your life. Pray this prayer, sign this card, walk down this aisle, and accept Jesus as your personal Savior. . . We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for us to accept him. Accept him? Do we really think Jesus needs our acceptance? Don’t we need him?”
David Platt
‘No sound system. No band. No guitar. No entertainment. No cushioned chairs. No heating or air-con. Nothing but the people of God and the word of God. And strangely, that’s enough. God’s Word is enough for millions of believers who gather in house churches… Jungles… Rainforests, and middle-eastern cities. But is his Word enough for us?’
David Platt
“Do you and I believe him (Christ) enough to obey him and to follow him wherever he leads, even when the crowds in our culture – and maybe in our churches – turn the other way?…For the sake of an increasingly marginalized and relatively ineffective church in our culture, I want to risk it all. For the sake of my life, my family, and the people who surround me, I want to risk it all.”
David Platt
“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy… It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And He is more than enough for us.”
David Platt
“Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.”
Corrie Ten Boom, writer, watchmaker. (1892-1983)
‘Don’t bother to give God instructions, just report for duty’
Corrie Ten Boom
“We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.”
Corrie Ten Boom
“Prayer needs no passport, visa or work permit. There is no such thing as a ‘closed country’ as far as prayer is concerned…much of the history of missions could be written in terms of God moving in response to persistent prayer.”
Stephan Gaukroger, Over his 40 years in Christian leadership, Stephen has had opportunities to preach, teach and consult in more than 50 different countries.
“The command has been to “go,” but we have stayed – in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth… but 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland.”
Robert Savage – Missionary to Latin America. Died 1931.
“Missions is a specialized term. By it I mean the sending forth of authorized persons beyond the borders of the New Testament church and her immediate gospel influence to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in gospel-destitute areas, to win converts from other faiths or non-faiths to Jesus Christ, and to establish functioning, multiplying local congregations who will bear the fruit of Christianity in that community and to that country.”
George W. Peters, A Biblical Theology of Missions.
“You can do something other than working with God in His purpose, but it will always be something lesser, and you couldn’t come up with something better.”
Steve Hawthorne, founder and director of WayMakers. He is also co-editor of Perspectives.
“Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them.”
David Bryant, formerly a pastor, minister-at-large with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, president of Concerts of Prayer International (COPI), and chairman of America’s National Prayer Committee, today David provides leadership to Proclaim Hope! whose mission is to foster and serve a nationwide Christ-awakening movement. Born 1931.
“Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them.”
David Bryant
Some are trapped in boxes of pea-sized Christianity, full of myths about missions that rob them of incentive to care about the unreached.
David Bryant
“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
D.A. Carson, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is a prominent evangelical scholar and author. He is one of the founders of The Gospel Coalition. Born 1946.
“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger.”
Keith Green, American contemporary Christian music pianist, singer, and songwriter. (1953-1982)
“The Gospel is not an old, old story, freshly told. It is a fire in the Spirit, fed by the flame of Immortal Love; and woe unto us, if through our negligence to stir up the Gift of God which is within us, that fire burns low.”
Dr. R. Moffat Gautrey, was a Scottish pioneer missionary to South Africa who arrived in Cape Town in 1817. He opened mission stations in the interior, translated the Bible into the language of the Bechuanas, and wrote two missionary books on South Africa: Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa and Rivers of Water in a Dry Place. His oldest daughter Mary, married David Livingstone. (1795-1883)
“If there is no passionate love for Christ at the center of everything, we will only jingle and jangle our way across the world, merely making a noise as we go”
William Wilberforce speaking of the Moravians missionaries.
British politician and philanthropist who from 1787 was prominent in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery itself in British overseas possessions. (1759-1833)
“I have said that there is nothing in the world or the Church, except it’s disobedience, to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility.”
Robert E. Speer, an American Presbyterian religious leader and an authority on missions. (1867-1947)
“The man who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelization in history.”
Andrew Murray, a South African writer, teacher and Christian pastor. Murray considered missions to be “the chief end of the church”. (1828-1917)
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
T. E. Lawrence, a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer. (1888-1935)
“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”
T. E. Lawrence
“There is a tendency nowadays to relax discipleship. In many Christian churches the motto is, “Brief, bright and brotherly”. There are sermonettes of fifteen minutes, and Christianettes whose religion costs them nothing by the collection. If there is a meeting between Sundays, it is the “Weekly Happy Hour”, or the “Pleasant Social Circle.”, or some other beautifully innocuous rendezvous. The minister must never preach on final retribution, or the “wrath to come”. Great doctrines such a free grace, election, and predestination, etc., must all be sacrificed to brevity and brightness, while hungry souls starve for lack of Biblical nourishment.”
Dr. J. Sidlow Baxter – Awake My Heart.
“Does it not stir up our hearts, to go forth and help them, does it not make us long to leave our luxury, our exceeding abundant light, and go to them that sit in darkness?”
Amy Carmichael, Missionary to India. (1867-1951)
“God Hold us to that which drew us first, when the Cross was the attraction, and we wanted nothing else”
Amy Carmichael
“Does it not stir up our hearts, to go forth and help them, does it not make us long to leave our luxury, our exceeding abundant light, and go to them that sit in darkness?”
Amy Carmichael
Where, oh, where are the eternity-conscious believers? Where are the souls white-hot for God because they fear His holy name and presence and so live with eternity’s values in view?”
Leonard Ravenhill, an English Christian evangelist and author. (1907-1994)
“Today Christians spend more money on dog food than on missions”
Leonard Ravenhill
“While vast continents are shrouded in darkness…the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by God to keep you out of the foreign mission field.”
Ion Keith-Falconer, Scottish missionary and Arabic scholar. (1856-1887)
Missions is not about “What can I spare?” The question is “What’s it going to take?” Risk…, Abandon…, Sacrifice. …, Radical dependence on Christ…, Everything… Are you passionately committed to God’s glory among all peoples?
AsiaLink Worker
“We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.”
Oswald Chambers, Scottish Baptist and Holiness Movement evangelist and teacher. (1874-1917)
“It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him.”
Oswald Chambers
“God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, “. . . who will go for Us?” The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude.”
Oswald Chambers
“Beware of reasoning about God’s Word––obey it”.
Oswald Chambers
“I want to be where there are out and out pagans.”
Francis Xavier , a Navarrese Catholic missionary who was a co-founder of the Society of Jesus. (1506-1552)
“Here am I, send me; send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the rough, the savage lost of the wilderness; send me from all that is called comfort on earth; send me even to death itself, if it be but in your service, and to promote your kingdom”
David Brainerd, Presbyterian missionary to the Seneca and Delaware Indians of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. (1718-1747)
“It is impossible for any rational creature to be happy without acting all for God. God Himself could not make him happy any other way… There is nothing in the world worth living for but doing good and finishing God’s work, doing the work that Christ did. I see nothing else in the world that can yield any satisfaction besides living to God, pleasing Him, and doing his whole will.”
David Brainerd
“The zealous man burns to advance God’s glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it – he is content. He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn, and if consumed in burning he has but done the work for which God appointed him. “
J.C. Ryle, an English evangelical Anglican bishop. (1816-1900)
“A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed up on one thing, and that one thing is to please God.”
J.C. Ryle
Observe, there cannot be a secret Christian. … If you truly feel the sweetness of the cross of Christ, you will be constrained to confess Christ before men.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne, a preacher, a pastor, a poet, and wrote many letters. (1813-1843)
“As I was walking in the fields, the thought came over me with almost overwhelming power, that every one of my flock must soon be in heaven or hell. Oh, how I wished that I had a tongue like thunder, that I might make all hear; or that I had a frame like iron, that I might visit every one and say, ‘Escape for thy life! Ah sinner! You little know how I fear that you will lay the blame of your damnation at my door.”
Robert Murray M’Cheyne
“[Suffering] brings out graces that cannot be seen in a time of health. It is the treading of the grapes that brings out the sweet juices of the vine; so it is affliction that draws forth submission, weanedness from the world, and complete rest in God. Use afflictions while you have them.”
Robert Murray M’Cheyne
“Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love.”
Roland Allen, an English missionary to China sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG). (1868-1947)
“This generation can only reach this generation.”
David Livingstone, a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa. (1813-1873)
“I’d rather be in the heart of Africa in the will of God, than on the throne of England, out of the will of God.”
David Livingstone
God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to Yours.
David Livingstone
“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am”
John Newton, an English Anglican clergyman and abolitionist. (1725-1807)
“We are not here to loll and frolic but to bring in a harvest for God.”
Don Richardson, a Canadian Christian missionary, teacher, author and international speaker who worked among the tribal people of Western New Guinea, Indonesia. (1935-2018)
“We get ‘caught’ in our boxes – when we pray outside of them, and ask God, the impossible can be done. We need to take the posture of asking above and beyond ‘what we could ask or think’ then God moves beyond the impossible.”
Loren Cunningham, founder of the international Christian missionary movement Youth With A Mission and the University of the Nations. Cunningham founded YWAM in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1960. (Born 1936)
“If God wills the evangelization of the world, and you refuse to support missions, then you are opposed to the will of God.”
Oswald J. Smith, a Canadian pastor, author, and missions advocate. (1889-1986)
Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist.
Oswald J. Smith
God is seeking men and women of reckless faith today…to be reckless in your faith does not mean to be unthinking, but the reverse – concentrated, single-minded in your concern that God should be glorified and souls won.
George Verwer, an Evangelist and was the founder of Operation Mobilisation. (Born 1938)
“I have found the more I do for Christ, the better it is with me. I never enjoyed so much the pleasures of religion, as I have within the last 2 years, since we have engaged in the Missions business.”
Andrew Fuller, an English Particular Baptist minister and theologian. Known as a promoter of missionary work. (1754-1815)
“I pray that the Lord might crown this year with His goodness and in the coming one give you a hallowed dare-devil spirit in lifting the biting sword of Truth, consuming you with a passion that is called by the cultured citizen of Christendom ‘fanaticism’, but known to God as that saintly madness that led His Son through bloody sweat and hot tears to agony on a rude Cross—and Glory!”
Jim Elliot, an evangelical Christian who was one of five missionaries killed while participating in Operation Auca, an attempt to evangelize the Huaorani people of Ecuador. (1927-1956)
“We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with. But we are “harmless,” and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are “sideliners” — coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh, that God would make us dangerous!”
Jim Elliot
“We need to recover the grand, cosmic significance of Jesus’ saving activity that moves the gospel out of the narrow realm of self-preoccupation. One of the marvelous things about the gospel is that He has saved us so that we can be a part of His redeeming activity. The gospel, properly understood, is much broader than our concerns for personal survival, security, significance, success, or even self-centered sanctification. It presents us with a plunderer, and it bids us to throw ourselves away in the pursuit of this new world order.”
Bob Heppe, Area Director for U.K. and South Asian Ministries.
.“The missionary heart: Care more than some think is wise. Risk more than some think is safe. Dream more than some think is practical. Expect more than some think is possible. I was called not to comfort or success but to obedience. There is no joy outside of knowing Jesus and serving him.”
Karen Watson,
martyr, March 15, 2004.
“The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but it’s sending capacity”
Mike Stachura, served as cross-
“Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within His followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world He came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of His eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.”
J. Campbell White (the secretary of the Laymen’s Missionary Movement, 1909). (1870-1962)
“Pray, O pray, my brother! never, never quit your hold of the fullness of God; for time is nearly over, and if this fullness be lost it will be lost forever. I am astonished that we do not pray more, yea, that we do not live every moment as on the brink of the eternal world, and in the blessed expectation of that glorious country.”
William Bramwell, revivalist, an outstanding evangelistic preacher ministering in a number of Wesleyan circuits. (1759-1818)
“I long to be filled with divine knowledge, divine wisdom, divine love, divine holiness, to the utmost extent of my capacity. I want to feel that all the currents of my soul are interfused in one channel deep and wide, and all flowing towards the heart of Christ.”
Griffith John, a Welsh Christian translator and Missionary to China. (1831-1912)
“What we have once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
Helen Keller, an American author, political activist, and lecturer. (1880-1968)
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. (1808-1882)
“Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment”
Aiden Wilson Tozer, was an American Christian pastor, author, magazine editor, and spiritual mentor. (1897-1963)
“I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.”
Aiden Wilson Tozer
“To me, it has always been difficult to understand those evangelical Christians who insist upon living in the crisis as if no crisis existed. They say they serve the Lord, but they divide their days so as to leave plenty of time to play and loaf and enjoy the pleasures of this world as well. They are at ease while the world burns; and they can furnish many convincing reasons for their conduct, even quoting Scripture if you press them a bit. I wonder whether such Christians actually believe in the Fall of Man.”
Aiden Wilson Tozer
“Spirit filled souls are ablaze for God. They love with a love that glows. They serve with a faith that kindles. They serve with a devotion that consumes. They hate sin with fierceness that burns. They rejoice with a joy that radiates. Love is perfected in the fire of God.”
Samuel Chadwick, was a Wesleyan Methodist minister. He served as President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, 1918–1919. (1860-1932)
“God’s greatest gifts to man come through travail. Whether we look into the spiritual or temporal sphere, can we discover anything, any great reform, any beneficial discovery, any soul-awakening revival, which did not come through the tolls and tears, the vigils and blood-shedding of men and woman whose sufferings were the pangs of Its birth?”
Frederick. B. Meyer, was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic. (1847-1929)
“Here is the great secret of success, my Christian reader. Work with all your might, but never trust in your work. Pray with all your might for the blessing in God, but work at the same time with all diligence, with all patience, with all perseverance. Pray, then, and work. Work and pray. And still again pray, and then work. And so on, all the days of your life. The result will surely be abundant blessing. Whether you see much fruit or little fruit, such kind of service will be blessed.”
George Muller, was a Christian evangelist and the director of the Ashley Down orphanage in Bristol, England. He was one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren movement. Later during the split his group was labelled as the Open Brethren. (1805-1898)
“All great soul-winners have been men of much and mighty prayer, and all great revivals have been preceded and carried out by persevering, prevailing knee-work in the closet.”
Samuel Logan Brengle, was a Commissioner in The Salvation Army and a leading author, teacher and preacher on the doctrine of Holiness. (1860-1936)
“f we are going to wait until every possible hindrance has been removed before we do a work for the Lord, we will never attempt to do anything.”
Thomas John Bach, Missionary to Venezuela. (1881-1963)
“It is the sincere and deep conviction of my soul when I declare that if the Christian faith does not culminate and complete itself in the effort to make Christ known to all the world, that faith appears to me a thoroughly unreal and insignificant thing, destitute of power for the single life and incapable of being convincingly proved to be true.”
Bishop Phillips Brooks, an American Episcopal clergyman and author. (1835-1893)
The man…looking at him with a smile that only half concealed his contempt, inquired, ‘Now Mr. Morrison do you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the Chinese Empire?’ ‘No sir,’ said Morrison, ‘but I expect that God will.’”
Robert Morrison, Missionary, Linguist, and Bible Translator to China. (1782-1834)
“Come as the fire, and purge our hearts with sacrificial flame; let our whole soul an offering be to our Redeemer’s Name”.
Andrew Reed, was an English Congregational minister and hymn-writer, who became a prominent philanthropist and social reformer. (1787-1862)
“The great Pioneer Missionaries all had ‘inverted homesickness’ this passion to call that country their home which was most in need of the Gospel. In this passion all other passions died; before this vision all other visions faded; this call drowned all other voices. They were the pioneers of the Kingdom, the forelopers of God, eager to cross the border-marches and discover new lands or win new-empires”
Samuel Zwemer, nicknamed “The Apostle to Islam”, was an American missionary, traveler, and scholar. (1867-1952)
“When I left England, my hope of India’s conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstition of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God’s cause will triumph.”
William Carey, Missionary, Bible Translator, and much more to India. (1761-1834)
“I had utterly abandoned myself to Him. Could any choice be as wonderful as His will? Could any place be safer than the center of His will? Did not he assure me by His very presence that His thoughts toward us are good, and not evil? Death to my own plans and desires was almost deliriously delightful. Everything was laid at His nail-scarred feet, life or death, health or illness, appreciation by others or misunderstanding, success or failure as measured by human standards. Only He himself mattered.”
Victor Raymond Edman, served as a missionary to the Quichua people in Ecuador from 1923 to 1927. Also,, an American minister and author who served as the fourth President of Wheaton College in Illinois from 1941 to 1965. (1900-1967)
“Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God’s plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. Our broken lives are not lost or useless. God’s love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out His wonderful plan of love.”
Eric Liddell was a Scottish Olympic Gold Medalist runner, rugby union international player, and Christian missionary. Liddell was born in China to Scottish missionary parents. (1902-1945)
“The value of a life is computed not by its duration but by its donation.”
William James was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. (1842-1910)
“I will not labour the point. You will see from what I am saying that I am not asking you just to give ‘help’ in prayer as a sort of sideline, but I am trying to roll the main responsibility of this prayer warfare on you. I want you to take the burden of these people upon your shoulders. I want you to wrestle with God for them.”
James O. Fraser was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He pioneered work among the Lisu people, of Southwestern China, in the early part of the 20th century. He is credited with the Fraser alphabet for their language. (1886–1938)
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. (2018-2013)