"Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him" Ps. 37:7a
One of my favorite things to do is read missionary bios and quotes. These are some very random thoughts, that are also some of my favorites quotes that give a picture of the things that are weighing heavy on my heart lately. As this year comes to a close and thoughts of plans for next year begin to surface, even as worry and fear attempt to rear their ugly heads, I find so much comfort knowing that fellow Christian missionaries have struggled through some of the same thoughts and passions. As I prepare my heart for the mission opportunities coming next year, I'm so thankful to serve a God that is so compassionate, strong, and my true Refuge. My love for Him stirs me to worship and service. In this life, no matter where we're placed in this world, we're definitely never alone- we always carry the love of God in our hearts. He blesses us, so that we can be a blessing to others. Missions will continue to be necessary until God's name has been preached to the ends of the earth. Missions, as is any service to God, is a free act of the will, in servitude to God, to bring glory and honor to His name. Until every tribe, tongue, and nation can worship the LORD, missions is a necessary vehicle to bring and proclaim the Gospel and make disciples. Lately this has been a huge tug on my heart. There are those who refuse the Gospel and that Jesus died for their sins and don't want Him as their Lord and Savior... but what about those who have never heard and have never been given that choice? Who's Jesus to them? Who's interceding for them? Who's showing them the true God of Love? For that matter, who's loving them?
"Cast your burden on the LORD,And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved." -Ps. 55:22
"What would I do with starry crowns except to cast them at His feet?"- Mary Slessor
"God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies." -J. Hudson Taylor
"Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell." -C.T. Studd
"We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first." -Oswald J. Smith
"We must be global Christians, with a global mission, because our God is a global God." - John Stott
"If God has fit you to be a missionary, I would not have you shrivel down to be a king." -Charles H. Spurgeon
"Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees." -J. Hudson Taylor
"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
"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
"He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it." -1 Thess. 5:24
Friday, December 23, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
God is love
Some things that are heavy on my heart this month...
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
'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
Some interesting thoughts from an article I read today...
"There is the command, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." We say,"That means other people." There is the promise, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." We say, "That means me." We must have a special divine indication that we fall under the command; we do not ask any special divine indication that we fall under the blessing. By what right do we draw this line of distinction between the obligations of Christianity and its privileges? By what right do we accept the privileges as applying to every Christian and relegate its obligations to the conscience of the few?
If I were standing by the bank of a stream, and some little children were drowning, I would not need any officer of the law to come along and serve on me some legal paper commanding me under such and such a penalty to rescue those children. I should despise myself if I should stand there with the possibility of saving those little lives, waiting until, by some legal proceeding, I was personally designated to rescue them!
Seeing a need and realizing God has prepared you to meet that need. “Every one of us rests under a sort of general obligation to give life and time and possession to the evangelization of the souls everywhere that have never heard of Jesus Christ. And we are bound to go, unless we can offer some sure ground of exemption which we could with a clear conscience present to Jesus Christ and be sure of His approval upon it.
"We have taken our lives in our own hands and proposed to go our own way unless God compels us to go some other way. What I ask is that, until God reveals to us some special, individual path on either side, we should give our lives over into Jesus' hands to go in that path which He has clearly marked out before His church."
"I think love will hear calls where the loveless heart will not know that they are sounding. If there were a hundred little children crying, a mother would be able to pick out the voices of her own - especially if they were voices of pain and suffering.
There is a mighty keenness in the ears of love, and I wonder, after all, whether that may not explain a great deal that one is perplexed over in this matter of a special missionary call. Is it possible that, in many cases, it is just a matter of a callused heart, a reluctant will, or a sealed mind?
God so loved the world that He gave. It was need in the world plus love in God that constituted a call for Jesus. Do we need more than what sufficed for Him? If they were our own, would we hesitate and hold back?"
"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
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
John Piper
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
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.
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
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
'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
Some interesting thoughts from an article I read today...
"There is the command, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." We say,"That means other people." There is the promise, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." We say, "That means me." We must have a special divine indication that we fall under the command; we do not ask any special divine indication that we fall under the blessing. By what right do we draw this line of distinction between the obligations of Christianity and its privileges? By what right do we accept the privileges as applying to every Christian and relegate its obligations to the conscience of the few?
If I were standing by the bank of a stream, and some little children were drowning, I would not need any officer of the law to come along and serve on me some legal paper commanding me under such and such a penalty to rescue those children. I should despise myself if I should stand there with the possibility of saving those little lives, waiting until, by some legal proceeding, I was personally designated to rescue them!
Seeing a need and realizing God has prepared you to meet that need. “Every one of us rests under a sort of general obligation to give life and time and possession to the evangelization of the souls everywhere that have never heard of Jesus Christ. And we are bound to go, unless we can offer some sure ground of exemption which we could with a clear conscience present to Jesus Christ and be sure of His approval upon it.
"We have taken our lives in our own hands and proposed to go our own way unless God compels us to go some other way. What I ask is that, until God reveals to us some special, individual path on either side, we should give our lives over into Jesus' hands to go in that path which He has clearly marked out before His church."
"I think love will hear calls where the loveless heart will not know that they are sounding. If there were a hundred little children crying, a mother would be able to pick out the voices of her own - especially if they were voices of pain and suffering.
There is a mighty keenness in the ears of love, and I wonder, after all, whether that may not explain a great deal that one is perplexed over in this matter of a special missionary call. Is it possible that, in many cases, it is just a matter of a callused heart, a reluctant will, or a sealed mind?
God so loved the world that He gave. It was need in the world plus love in God that constituted a call for Jesus. Do we need more than what sufficed for Him? If they were our own, would we hesitate and hold back?"
"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
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
John Piper
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
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.
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
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