Missionary Quotes-
Take some time to read through these quotes, digest them, and listen to what God may be saying to you about playing your part in His global mission.
“The purpose of the church is to bring God glory through the worldwide proclamation, reception and worship of His Son. This is our corporate purpose. It should be our individual purpose as well” -David Shibley
“We do not adequately confess Christ as the God of all men if we seek to be his witnesses only among our neighbors. We must seek at the same time to confess him to the ends of the earth” -Leslie Newbigin
To understand the role of mobilizers, think of World War II as a parallel. Only 10% of the American population went to the war. Of those, only 1% were actually on the firing lines. However, for them to be successful in their mission, the entire country had to be mobilized!” -Phil Parshall
“God requires no person to spend his or her life reiterating the gospel to people who will not receive it. He wants everyone to have an opportunity to hear. Then He would have us move on to other areas. The mistake of the church has been that she sits down to convert all the people in one country to the neglect of the great masses who have never had the chance to hear the gospel - not even once!”-A.B. Simpson
“The church is a subplot to the bigger story. If it exists for its own sake, or its own growth, it has probably already broken the first commandment”-Paul McKaughan
“Anyone who can help 100 missionaries to the field is more important than one missionary on the field. In fact, mission mobilization activity is more crucial than field missionary activity.”-Phil Parshall
“Not every believer has the missionary gift, but every Christian is called to some kind of involvement in missions. We are called to advance the gospel in some way and to participate in the fulfilling of God’s purposes in our generation”-David Shibley
“No pastor is fully obedient to Christ if he does not lead his church to pursue the Great Commission by making disciples both locally and around the world.” Bill Lawrence
“Churches realize that God will do more through their honest mistakes than their disobedience; more through their fumbled efforts than their lack of efforts; more through their awkward attempts to influence their global neighbors than through their grand programs within their comfort zone.”-Mark Mays
“Must you go to China? How much nicer it would be to stay here and serve the Lord at home!” She made it plain at last that she would not go to China.”- J. Hudson Taylor’s new ex-girlfriend
“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 “I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages - villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world.”- Robert Moffat
“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
“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
“I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China… I don’t know who it was… It must have been a man… a well-educated man. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing… and God looked down… and saw Gladys Aylward… And God said - “Well, she’s willing.”- Gladys Aylward
“Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.”- J. Hudson Taylor
“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
“Here am I. Send me.“- Isaiah
“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
“Jehovah Witnesses don’t believe in hell and neither do most Christians”- Leonard Ravenhill
“Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary.”- C.T. Studd
“Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.”- said to a young William Carey who later opened India to the modern missions movement
“Oh, that I had a thousand lives, and a thousand bodies! All of them should be devoted to no other employment but to preach Christ to these degraded, despised, yet beloved mortals.”- Robert Moffat
“We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.”- John Stott
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”- Jim Elliot
“A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.”- K.P. Yohannan
“I have but one passion - it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.”- Count Zinzindorf
“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies.”- J. Hudson Taylor
“He must increase, but I must decrease.”- John the Baptist
“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”- C.T. Studd
“The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.”- William Cameron Townsend
“Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes.”- Robert E. Speer
“The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is a “field full of wheat and tares.”- Amy Carmichael
“I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth.”- James O. Fraser
“It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ’s global cause has a Church as to say Christ’s Church has a global cause.”- David Bryant
“If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray.”- Frederick Franson
“What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?”- Malla Moe
“I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver.”- Robert Murray Mc’Cheyne
“It’s amazing what can be accomplished if you don’t worry about who gets the credit.”- Clarence W. Jones
“Two distinguishing marks of the early church were: 1) Poverty 2) Power.”- T.J. Bach
“Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give.”- David Livingstone
“From my many years’ experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross.”- Sadhu Sundar Singh
“I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been.”- Lottie Moon
“All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient.”- William Carey
“How little chance the Holy Ghost 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
“I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to.”- Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
“The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something.”- Clarence W. Jones
“Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.”- William Carey
“God’s part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith.”- Andrew A. Bonar
“All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!”- Jonathan Goforth
“I feel now, that Arabia could easily be evangelized within the next thirty years if it were not for the wicked selfishness of Christians.”-Samuel Zwemer
“The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same - that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West.”- E. Stanley Jones
“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” - Jesus
“All roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ.”- Keith Green
“Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.”- Oswald Chambers
“Christians don’t tell lies they just go to church and sing them”- A.W. Tozer
“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 Speer
“I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares.”- Alexander Duff
“Today Christians spend more money on dog food then missions”- Leonard Ravenhill
“It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.”- J. Hudson Taylor
“We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first.”- Oswald J. Smith
“God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know.”- David Bryant
“And thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named so that I would not build on another man’s foundation.”- Paul
“Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts?”- K.P. Yohannan
“If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ will continue on unchanged.”- C. Gordon Olson
“I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God’s global mission. Now I have another idea. Let’s take God’s global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!”- George Miley
“God provides the men and women needed for each generation.”-Mildred Cable
“Oh dear, I couldn’t say that my church is alive and I wouldn’t want to call it dead. I guess it’s just walking in its sleep!”- Church member
“When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.”- said of John Geddie
“I am ready to burn out for God. I am ready to endure any hardship, if by any means I might save some. The longing of my heart is to make known my glorious Redeemer to those who have never heard.”-William Burns
“At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.”- John G. Paton
“Save others, snatching them out of the fire.”- Jude
“The evangelization of the world in this generation.”- Student Volunteer Movement Motto
“Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring.”- Jesus
“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”- John Piper
“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 Stott
“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
“Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.”- Francis Xavier
“Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ.”- Luther Wishard
“We who have Christ’s eternal life need to throw away our own lives.”- George Verwer
“Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.”- C.T. Studd
“When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone.”- J. Hudson Taylor
“God has huge plans for the world today! He is not content to merely establish a handful of struggling churches among each tongue, tribe and nation. Even now He is preparing and empowering His Church to carry the seeds of revival to the uttermost ends of the earth.”- David Smithers
“The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.”- Mike Stachura
“Answering a student’s question, ‘Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?’ thus, ‘It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.’”- C.H. Spurgeon.
Twenty year-old John R. Mott walked in late to the meeting at Cornell while J.K. Studd was quoting, “Young man, are you seeking great things for yourself? Seek them not! Seek first the Kingdom of God!” He couldn’t sleep all night. He finally got up and had the courage to meet with Studd. He later said that the meeting with Studd was the “decisive hour of his life”. He went on to become the greatest missions mobilizer in world history. “There is something wonderfully misleading, full of hallucination and delusion in this business of missionary calls. With many of us it is not a missionary call at all that we are looking for; it is a shove. There are a great many of us who would never hear a call if it came.”- Robert Speer
“I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God; first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.”- J. Hudson Taylor
“I love to live on the brink of eternity.”- David Brainerd
“The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.”- Helen Keller
“‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.”- William Booth
“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn’t.”- Richard Bach
“If God has fit you to be a missionary, I would not have you shrivel down to be a king.”- Charles H. Spurgeon
“The world is my parish.”- John Wesley
“Why doesn’t your God speak my language?”- Guatemalan Indian to Cam Townsend, founder Wycliffe Bible Translators
“I am willing to go anywhere, at anytime, to do anything for Jesus.”- Luther Wishard
“The 3.5 billion unreached people on earth would form a single file line that would stretch around the equator 25 times! Can you picture 25 lines of Christless people, trampling endlessly toward hell? Let that vision stay with you day and night.”- Larry Stockstill
“God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him… When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.”- Oswald Chambers
“A little prayer, little power; no prayer, no power.”- A Chinese Christian motto
“When God’s finger points, God’s hand will open the door.”-Clarence Jones
“I will open Africa to the gospel or die trying.”- Rowland Bingham
“None but women can reach Muslim Women… So we have a solemn duty in this matter that we cannot shift. The blood of souls is on our skirts, and God will demand them at our hands.”- Missionary wife from the Middle East
“The church that does not evangelize will fossilize.”-Oswald J. Smith
“As long as there are millions destitute of the word of God and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, it will be impossible for me to devote my time and energy to those who have both.”- J.L. Ewen
“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.”- Charles Spurgeon
“We have a God who delights in impossibilities.”- Andrew Murray
“Why do you need a voice when you have a verse.”-Jim Elliot
“The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph.”-Samuel Zwemer
“They are making a living when they could be making a life.”-Samuel Zwemer
“Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.” -Bishop Phillips Brooks
“Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.” -David Livingstone“
My business is to witness for Christ. I make shoes just to pay my expenses” -William Carey
“Some retorted upon me, `There are heathen at home; let us seek and save, first of all, the lost ones perishing at our doors.”’ We must evangelize our home front first, before we worry about the rest of the world. Aren’t there millions of sinners living all around us? Isn’t it logical and right to preach to them first?’ “This I felt to be most true, and an appalling fact; but I unfailingly observed that those who made this retort neglected those home heathen themselves. They would ungrudgingly spend more on a fashionable party at dinner or tea, on concert or ball or theatre, or on some ostentatious display, or worldly or selfish indulgence, ten times more, perhaps in a single day, than they would give in a year, or in half a lifetime, for the conversion of the whole heathen world, either at home or abroad.” -John Paton, Missionary from Scotland to the South Sea Islands“
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession” (Psalm 2:8)
“There are frontier or pioneer missionaries, and there are evangelists. Missionaries cross cultures and learn languages. And frontier missionaries pour out their lives “by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God” to break through thousands of years of darkness and the reign of Satan over a people who do not know the King of kings and the Savior of the world. This was Paul’s ambition. And since the great commission to make disciples of all nations is still valid and there are peoples today who do not know the gospel, therefore every church should pray that God raise up many frontier missionaries, and make all of us evangelists.” -John Piper
“I can imagine—indeed I pray—that ten years from now someone—perhaps ten of you—will write a letter home from an unreached people and say, “I am here to speak the gospel to those who have never heard, for as it is written in Romans 15:20, ‘I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation.’ God burned that word onto my heart and turned it into a holy ambition.” -John Piper to his congregation-August, 2006.”
“The Bible is not the basis of missions; missions is the basis of the Bible” — Ralph Winter, U.S. Center for World Mission
“If ten men are carrying a log — nine of them on the little end and one at the heavy end — and you want to help, which end will you lift on?” — William Borden, as he reflected on the numbers of Christian workers in the U.S. as compared to those among unreached peoples in China
“The reason some folks don’t believe in missions is that the brand of religion they have isn’t worth propagating.” — unknown
When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages.” To that, Calvert replied, “We died before we came here.”
“Never pity missionaries; envy them. They are where the real action is — where life and death, sin and grace, Heaven and Hell converge.” — Robert C. Shannon
“It is possible for the most obscure person in a church, with a heart right toward God, to exercise as much power for the evangelization of the world, as it is for those who stand in the most prominent positions.” — John R. Mott“
Love is the root of missions; sacrifice is the fruit of missions” — Roderick Davis“
Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love” — Roland Allen“
I believe that in each generation God has called’ enough men and women to evangelize all the yet unreached tribes of the earth…. It is not God who does not call. It is man who will not respond!” — Isobel Kuhn, missionary to China and Thailand
“To know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map.” — William Carey, pioneer missionary to India“God is a God of missions. He wills missions. He commands missions. He demands missions. He made missions possible through His Son. He made missions actual in sending the Holy Spirit.” — George W. Peters“The best remedy for a sick church is to put it on a missionary diet.” — Unknown“The Church must send or the church will end.” — Mendell Taylor“Only as the church fulfills her missionary obligation does she justify her existence.” — Unknown“Go, send, or disobey.” — John Piper
“I like what I’m doing better than what you’re not doing.” - Dr. Charles Keen
“Why do what others can and will do, when there is so much that needs to be done that others will not do?”– Dawson Trotman, Founder of Navigators
“Whom God would use greatly He will hurt deeply.” - A.W. Tozer
“May the time come when rich men and great men would think it an honor to support whole stations of missionaries in Africa, instead of spending their money on hounds and horses.”- David Livingstone
“God cannot bless your ignorance – no matter how much you dedicate it!”- David Mays
“There are three stages in the work of God: Impossible; Difficult; Done.”- J. Hudson Taylor
“If you want the Kingdom speeded, go out and speed it yourselves. Only obedience rationalizes prayer. Only Missions can redeem your intercessions from insincerity.”
- William Carey
“As we seek to find out why, with such millions of Christians, the real army of God that is fighting the hosts of darkness is so small, the only answer is – lack of heart. The enthusiasm of the kingdom is missing. And that is because there is so little enthusiasm for the King.”- Andrew Murray
“I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man [or any different ethnic group] or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb not a new birth. I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I’d like to buy $3 worth of God, please [How much do you want?].”- Wilbur Reese
“Is is one thing for a minister to be an advocate and supporter of missions: it is another and very different thing for him to understand that missions are the chief end of the church, and therefore the chief end for which his congregation exists. It is only when this truth masters him in its spiritual power that he will be able to give the subject of missions its true place in his ministry.”- Bishop Hendrix
“Is what you’re living for worth Christ dying for”? Leonard Ravenhill
“Missionaries are like a pile of manure. When you spread them out, they do some good. But if you let them pile up in one place, they begin to stink.”- (unknown)
“Every person ought to pray at least one violent prayer everyday.”– Gordon Lindsay (founder of Christ for the Nations)
“There are no closed doors to the gospel - provided that, once you get inside, you don’t care if you ever come out.”– Brother Andrew
“History’s one great lesson is that reactionaries are losers.”– George Otis, Jr.
“The God of the Bible confronts entire nationalities, challenges whole peoples, takes seriously every cultural sphere. And the God of the Bible doesn’t talk about most of the people (individuals) of the world. God has not commanded us to go into most of the world. We do not read in the Bible that in the End Times every tribe and tongue and people will be represented. The Bible talks about every people - that is, every nation, tribe, and tongue.”– Ralph Winter (U.S. Center for World Mission)
“What we need to be assured of is not that we possess an excellent system of doctrine and ritual, but that the gift of the Holy Spirit is a reality.”- Roland Allen
“We dare not go on awakening interest in the gospel unless somehow we can nourish and preserve the results.”- Clarence W. Jones
“Every step in the progress of missions is directly traceable to prayer.”- A.T. Pierson
“I do not know how to make a man think seriously about sin and judgment, and must look to the work of the Holy Spirit for any hint of such a working.”- Jim Elliot
“Gain all you can; save all you can; give all you can.”- John Wesley
“I am driven to keep going for Christ by the filling of the Holy Spirit and the knowledge that the harvest is not forever. It will soon be past.”– Bill Bright
“We must be constantly weaving into our organization the new generation. My work the world over and across the many years has shown me that young people can be trusted with great loads and great responsibilities. Youth have never disappointed me when I have put heavy burdens on them.”– John R. Mott
“This generation is waiting for the challenge that will demand their all. They are waiting to find something they can pour their lives into - something to sink their teeth into. They have become disallusioned with both the secular world and the Christian world. Our greatest natural resources - the vision and energy of a whole generation of youth - are being squandered. We must show them a Christianity that will answer their cry for a meaningful life. It is time to call them to give their lives away to a cause greater than themselves. We need to let them know there is a Christ to live for and a cause worth dying for.”- Ron Luce
“The first joint priority of the churches of any city should be that of making it hard for people to go to hell from that city.”- David Shibley
“Do you wake up in the morning with Jesus on your mind? Do you go to sleep with Jesus on your mind? Do you eat, sleep, breathe Jesus?” Steve Hill
“I am convinced that when we stand before God…we will discover that every soul ever brought to a knowledge of Christ was in some way related to intercessory prayer.”- Dick Eastman
“The Bible in its totality ascribes only one intention to God: to save mankind. Every task of the church makes sense and has a purpose only as it leads to the mission.”– Georg F. Vicedom
“All my forefathers have passed away into darkness without knowing anything of what was to befall them; how is it that your forefathers knowing all these things, did not send word to my forefathers sooner?”– (an African chief speaking to Missionary David Livingstone)
“There is no argument for missions. The entire action of God in history, the whole revelation of God in Christ — that is the argument.”– James S. Stewart
“God is a missionary God. The Bible is a missionary book. The Gospel is a missionary message. The church is a missionary institution. And when the church ceases to be missionary minded, it has denied its faith and betrayed its trust.”– J. Herbert Kane
“Essentially, the church has many responsibilities but only one mission, and that is the evangelization and discipling of all nations.”– Daniel Bacon
“Missions are the chief end of the Church….the chief end of the ministry ought to be to equip the Church for this. Each congregation is meant to be a training class.”
– Andrew Murray (The Key to the Missionary Problem)
“Watch out for teachers who preach all manner of insight, yet have no passion for the ends of the earth. When they say that it is ‘just not their ministry,’ they are people who have not seen the heart of God and who are not committed to the complete Lordship of Christ.”– John Willis Zumwalt (Founder of Heart of God Ministries)
“Don’t aim to plant churches. Aim to plant a church that will plant many other churches.”
– George Patterson
“Look to the heathen without Christ, and you will find an altar…and may God help you to be a sacrifice.”– Warren Chastain (OMF Missionary to Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia)”We have the means of evangelizing our country, but they are slumbering in the pews of our churches.”- John Stott
“For one, I hold we must either give up the inspiration of the Word, or accept the lost condition of the world. The epistle of the Romans deals with these very questions and leaves no standing room for any candid doubt, unless we deny that Paul spake under the moving of the Holy Ghost. We can scarcely read the introductory chapter of that masterly epistle, which is logic on fire, without observing a fearful indictment on the whole pagan world from idolatry and iniquity. Yet he does not hesitate to affirm that they are WITHOUT EXCUSE, because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God.”
– A.T. Pierson
“I meet a good many people who say to me, ‘I cannot believe that the heathen are lost, because they have not heard the Gospel’; and I fully agree with them. I believe they are lost, because they are now in sin and go on in sin. It is not a delusion as to whether people will be lost. We are lost, because it is a state of nature. The unconverted are lost already, but they can learn that Jesus Christ came to seek and to save, not those who are in danger of being lost, but those that are lost.”– James Hudson Taylor
“I continually heard…the wail of the perishing heathen in the South Seas.”– John G. Paton
“Would that God would make hell so real to us that we cannot rest.”– James Hudson Taylor
“There is no better way to measure the self centeredness in the Church than the lip service that we give to the heart of God concerning those who are living in total darkness.”– Dr. James L. West
“Missions is the reason we live. The minute the Church gets on her knees, the minute the Church sells out to advancing the Gospel into these dark areas, Satan is done.”– John Willis Zumwalt
“It is not clever technology that will see salvation brought to the ends of the earth. It is the taking on of His Name, His nature and character, the living of His life and the partaking in His sufferings and death.”– John Willis Zumwalt
“Is it possible to get close to the Master’s heart without getting close to the Master’s mission?”– Larry Moyer
“Jesus was moved with compassion concerning the miseries of men. He saw them as lost, hungry, sick and bewildered. And just as His Father’s heart had been moved in love to send Christ into the world to redeem them, so our Lord’s own heart was moved in compassion toward them.”– G. Christian Weiss
“You would believe in pioneer missions if your family were part of an unevangelized people group.”– Norm Lewis
“The shore waters are largely over-fished. Out in the deeps are fish that have never had smell or sight of bait or net. Here, near shore, the lines get badly tangled sometimes, and committees have to be appointed to try to untangle the lines and sweeten up the fishermen. And the fish get very particular about the sort or shape of the bait. Some men have taken to fishing wholly with pickles, but with very unsatisfying results. The fish nibble, but are seldom landed apparently. And just a little bit out are fish that never have gotten a suggestion of a good bite.”– S.D. Gordon
“We are never closer to God than when we share His heart for the unevangelized.”
– Patrick Johnstone
“The way I see it, we ought to be willing to die. In the military, we are taught that to obtain our objectives, we have to be willing to be expendable. Missionaries must face that same expendability.”– Naint Saint (martyred missionary)
A missionary working on the borders of Tibet wrote these impressive words: ‘The eyes of Christians should turn as instinctively toward the lands closed to the Gospel in this missionary age as do the eyes of a conquering army toward the few remaining outposts of the enemy which withstand the victors and hinder complete victory, and without which the commander-in-chief is unable to close the campaign.’”– Robert Hall Glover
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”– C.S. Lewis
“Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself but because it contradicts them.”
– Frank Mead
“If the church is to be missionary, she must be spiritual; and if the church is to be spiritual, she must be missionary.”– G. Campbell Morgan
“No one can do everything, but everyone can do something; and together, we can change the world.”– Ron Sider (Author, Rich Christians in An Age of Hunger)
“What is to give light, must endure burning.”– Victor Frankyl
“If you want to go fast, go alone: if you want to go far, go together.”– African Proverb
“If we in the West insist on keeping our blessing instead of sharing it, then we will, like other nations before us, have to lose our blessing for the nations to receive it.”
– Ralph Winter
“Evangelism is a church growing where it is: Missions is a church growing where it isn’t.”
– Ralph Winter
“Do not bring us the Gospel as a potted plant. Bring us the seed of the Gospel and plant it in our soil.”– Mr. Murthis (Indian Evangelist)
“World Christians are heaven’s expatriates, camping where the Kingdom is best served.”
– David Bryant
“If God has called you to China or any other place and you are sure in your own heart, let nothing deter you….Remember, it is God who has called you and it is the same as when He called Moses or Samuel.”– Gladys Aylward (Missionary to China)
“There are individuals ripe to receive the Lord in the most resistant and hostile situations. We must take the Gospel to them.”– Virgil Amos
“It seems to me personally that our failure to have as complete and perfect an understanding of ‘fairness’ as God does, stems from two things. First, we do not have all the facts. Trying to decide if what He does in a given situation is fair or not, is like coming into a room half way through an argument. Not having all the background information, we are in no real position to cast a verdict. And we won’t have all the information until the Judgment Day, when we’ll be able to see things in the light of an eternal perspective. The second reason…is our own failure to appreciate the seriousness and hideousness of sin. I know that it seldom really strikes me that God owes this utterly rebellious and ungrateful planet absolutely nothing. In fact, that is an understatement. Actually He does owe us something – hell.”– Joni Eareckson Tada
“The modern habit throughout the Christian church is to play this subject down. Those who still believe in the wrath of God (not all do) say little about it; perhaps they do not think much about it. To an age which has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of greed, pride, sex, and self-will, the church mumbles on about God’s kindness, but says virtually nothing about His judgment…The fact is that the subject of divine wrath has become taboo in modern society, and Christians by and large have accepted the taboo and conditioned themselves never to raise the subject.”– J.I. Packer
“Men are in this plight, not because they are unevangelized, but because they are men. Sin is the destroyer of the soul and the destruction of the knowledge of God which is life. And it is not the failure to have heard the Gospel which makes men sinners. The Gospel would save them if they heard it and accepted it, but it is not the ignorance or rejection of the Gospel which destroys them, it is the knowledge of sin.”– Robert E. Speer
“The history of missions is the history of answered prayer….It is the key to the whole mission problem. All human means are secondary.”– Samuel Zwemer
“If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 6 hours sharpening my ax.” -Abraham Lincoln
“It is conceivable that God might have ordained to preach the Gospel directly to man through dreams, visions and revelations. But as a matter of fact, He has not done this; but rather has committed the preaching to man, telling them to go and disciple all nations. The responsibility lies squarely on our shoulders.”– J. Oswald Sanders
“That land is henceforth my country which most needs the gospel.”– Count Nikolus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf
“Obedience to God’s will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. It is not willingness to know, but willingness to DO (obey) God’s will that brings certainty.”
– Eric Liddell
“Let us press on. All Africa must be won for Christ. Though a thousand missionaries die, send more.”– Missionary Andreas Riis (Missionary to Africa)
“Too many people want the fruit of Paul’s ministry without paying the price that Paul paid. He died. He died to everything. He died daily He was crucified with Christ…I challenge you to pray this prayer: ‘Lord, be ruthless with me in revealing my selfish ambition and my lack of willingness to die to myself.’ I guarantee that He will answer your prayer – and quickly.”– Floyd McClung
“I want my breakfast served at eight, with ham and eggs upon my plate; a well-broiled steak I’ll eat at one, and dine again when day is done. I want an ultramodern home. And in each room a telephone; soft carpets, too, upon the floors, and pretty drapes to grace the doors. A cozy place of lovely things, like easy chairs with inner springs, and then I’ll get a small TV – Of course, ‘I’m careful’ what I see. I want my wardrobe, too, to be of neatest, finest quality, with latest style in suit and vest: why should not Christians have the best? But then the Master I can hear in no uncertain voice, so clear: ‘I bid you come and follow Me, the lowly Man of Galilee. Birds of the air have made their nest, And foxes in their holes find rest, but I can offer you no bed; no place have I to lay My head.’ In shame, I hung my head and cried. How could I spurn the Crucified? Could I forget the way He went. The sleepless nights in prayer He spent? For forty days without a bite, alone He fasted day and night; despised, rejected – on He went, and did not stop till veil He rent. A man of sorrows and of grief, no earthly friend to bring relief; ‘Smitten of God,’ the prophet said – ‘Mocked, beaten, bruised, His blood ran red.’ If He be God, and died for me, no sacrifice too great can be for me, a mortal man, to make; I’ll do it all for Jesus’ sake. yes, I will tread the path He trod, no other way will please my God; so, henceforth, this my choice shall be, my choice for all eternity.”– William “Smiling Bill” McChesney (age 28; 5′ 2″; 110 lb.; single missionary to the Congo – he was shoved into a truck by Simba rebels in the Congo in 1964, stripped and mercilessly beaten by soldiers while suffering from malaria, imprisoned in a small cell with 40 other prisoners, he was turned over to a rioting mob armed with clubs and fists who struck him down, dead.)
“That the Lamb who was slain would receive the reward of His suffering.”(the missionary motivation of the Moravians)
“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
“Our eyes must be on the entire world, but never off the individual.”– Unknown
“We should not ask, ‘What is wrong with the world?’ for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather, we should ask, ‘What has happened to the salt and light?’”- John Stott
“Where passion for God is weak, zeal for missions will be weak.”– John Piper
“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).– Apostle Paul
“And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. But there shall not an hair of your head perish” (Luke 21:16-18).– Jesus Christ
“If your church wouldn’t miss them, we probably don’t want them!”– Unknown
“You must go or send a substitute.”– Oswald J. Smith
“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. ‘FORWARD EVER; BACKWARD, NEVER!’”– C.T. Studd
“Jesus will judge us not only for what we did, but also for what we could have done and didn’t.”– George Otis
“Give according to your income lest God make your income according to your giving.”– Peter Marshall
“We have eternity to tell of victories won for Christ, but we have only a few hours before sunset to win them.”– Unknown
“Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29, 30).– Jesus Christ
“Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it” (Mark 8:34, 35).– Jesus Christ
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