Quotes about Missions-Passion
I’ve heard people say, “I want more of a heart for missions.” I always respond, “Jesus tells you exactly how to get it. Put your money in missions – and in your church and the poor – and your heart will follow.”
The Treasure Principle, 2002, p. 42, Used by Permission from Eternal Perspective Ministries, www.epm.org. Get this book!
There’s not one door in the world closed where you want to witness for Jesus…Show me a closed door and I will tell you how you can get in I won’t however, promise you a way to get out…Jesus didn’t say, "Go if the doors are open," because they weren’t. He didn’t say, "Go if you have an invitation or a red carpet treatment." He said, "Go," because people needed his Word…We need a new approach to missions — an aggressive, experimental, evangelical, no-holds-barred approach…A pioneering spirit… I’m afraid we’ll have to go through a deep valley of need and threatening situations, blood baths; but we’ll get there. God will take away what hinders us if we mean business. If we say, "Lord, at any cost" — and people should never pray that unless they truly want God to take them at their word — He will answer. Which is scary. But we have to go through the process. This is how it has worked in the Bible for the last two thousand years. So we face potentially hard times, and we have to go through that…We play church and we play Christianity. And we aren’t even aware we are lukewarm…We should have to pay a price for our faith. Read 2 Timothy 3:12: "Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." The church has been much purified in countries where there was lot of pressure…All I can say is to be ready.
Do not come unless you can say to your Lord and to us, “The Cross is the attraction.”
Surely those who know the great passionate heart of Jehovah must deny their own loves to share in the expression of His. Consider the call from the Throne above, “Go ye,” and from round about, “Come over and help us,” and even the call from the damned souls below, “Send Lazarus to my brothers, that they come not to this place.” Impelled, then, by these voices, I dare not stay home while Quichuas perish. So what if the well-fed church
in the homeland needs stirring? They have the Scriptures, Moses, and the Prophets, and a whole lot more. Their condemnation is written on their bank books and in the dust on their Bible covers. American believers have sold their lives to the service of Mammon, and God has His rightful way of dealing with those who succumb to the spirit of Laodicea.
A church that says no to missions is not just saying no to men. It is not just a matter of leaving men in their sins. It is saying no to God’s greatest concern: the spreading of His glorious name among the peoples of the world. This is His passionate concern; it must be ours.
The Great Commission is not a calling for some; it is a mandate for all… When it comes to a calling, we don’t need a voice; we have a verse (Mt. 28:19). It is now our responsibility, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, to evaluate how we are best suited to fulfill that call… We…see every member of our church as a potential missionary to be equipped and mobilized. Our goal is not to send some, or even our best, but to send all into the mission – to our city, across the country, or to the other side of the world.
The motto of every missionary, whether preacher, printer, or schoolmaster, ought to be "Devoted for life."
For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. 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 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 be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.
The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, and the nearer we get to Him the more intensely missionary we must become.
There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command. It has been customary to speak of “the missionary mandate.” This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point. It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel. If one looks at the New Testament evidence one gets another impression. Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact? The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is more like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving.
Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love (Roland Allen).
I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light (John Falconer).
I do not appeal to you to screw up your courage and sacrifice for Christ. I appeal to you to renounce all you have to obtain life that satisfies your deepest longings. I appeal to you to count all things as rubbish for the surpassing value of standing in the service of the King of kings. I appeal to you to take off your store-bought rags and put on the garments of God’s ambassadors. I promise you persecutions and privations, but “remember the joy!” “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:10).
Desiring God, p. 210, Copyright 1996, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org. Get this book!
Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God’s delight in being God.
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.
If God would grant us the vision, the word “sacrifice” would disappear from our lips and thoughts; we would hate the things that seem now so dear to us; our lives would suddenly be too short; we would despise time-robbing distractions and charge the enemy with all our energies in the name of Christ. May God help us to judge ourselves by the eternities that separate the Aucas from a comprehension of Christmas, and Him, who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor so that we might, through His poverty, be made rich. Lord God, speak to my own heart and give me to know Thy holy will and the joy of walking in it. Amen.
If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.
Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, believed that if money could motivate the merchants of England to cross life-threatening oceans and enter the interior of China at great personal risk of loss of life, could not the love of Christ motivate missionaries to do the same for the sake of the gospel?
Leading With Love, Lewis and Roth, 2006, p. 29, Used by Permission. Get this book!