The problem in our church world is that we’re so fixated on pastors and pulpits. The vast majority of people in the Christian world will never see a pulpit. If we don’t get unimpressed with the pulpit and pastors, then we’ll never see the reformation and harvest we all want. Whatever you affirm, you empower. Not afirming the ministry that goes on through the saints in their daily life, work, family, the mundane but necessary things, etc., has caused the repetitive strongholds that don’t get a breakthrough. We wonder why we don’t see a breakthrough in our churches, so we try harder and harder to preach better sermons and have better speakers because we hope that it’s the way to bring transformation. In this reformation, God is moving the pulpit from center stage to the back corner. The pulpit will still have a role. But our view of the pulpit will drastically change, and preaching in a church building behind the pulpit will become a smaller part of the transformation needed in the church, not the largest part. Now don’t get me wrong, most of my world is built around the pulpit. I love to preach and spend a lot of time preaching, teaching and training. But God is up to something different.
Missions
Elisabeth Elliot
Speaking of the 5 missionaries, including her husband, Jim, who were martyred this day in 1956:
Each had made a personal transaction with God, recognising that he belonged to God, first of all by creation, and secondly by redemption through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. This double claim on his life settled once and for all the question of allegiance. It was not a matter of striving to follow the example of a great Teacher. To conform to the perfect life of Jesus was impossible for a human being. To these men, Jesus Christ was God, and had actually taken upon Himself human form, in order that He might die, and, by His death, provide not only escape from the punishment which their sin merited, but also a new kind of life, eternal both in length and in quality. This meant simply that Christ was to be obeyed, and more than that, that. He would provide the power to obey.
Brian D. McLaren
To be truly good means more than not robbing people. To be truly good means more than being righteously religious, to be truly good means being a good neighbor. And to be a good neighbor means recognizing that there are ultimately no strangers. Everybody is my neighbor! Everybody is my brother! There are no isolated wounded on the other side of the street! We’re all connected.
Heidi Baker
We would learn very little if everything in life fell into place without challenge or difficulty. In terms of faith, we would be spiritual weaklings. Just as athletes “test” their bodies over and over again in order to build endurance and, therefore, be able to perform at their best, our faith must be tested so we can become mature soldiers for Jesus who are able to endure and continue to persevere, with reckless devotion, in all He sets before us.
William Booth
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. 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.
John R. W. Stott
February 9, 2020
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.
Ed Silvoso
When I became aware of the immensity of God’s love for this world and I compared it to how little I cared for my nation, much less for other nations, I cried out to God in desperation to give me a new heart. He heard me, and I underwent heart surgery at the hands of the great physician, who implanted in my heart compassion for the nations.
Taken from: “Ekklesia: Rediscovering God’s Instrument for Global Transformation”
Amy Carmichael
We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home and meant to stay as long as we could. I don’t wonder apostolic miracles have died. Apostolic living certainly has.
Arthur Tappan (A. T.) Pierson
If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is not obeyed until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together.
Luis Palau
A nation will not be moved by timid methods.