The need is not the call. This piece of wisdom has saved the lives of many a missionary, especially in Africa, where the needs are so great that they can pull you to pieces. A missionary can put out so many fires trying to meet needs around him that he suffers burnout. I have known missionary friends who said, “I hear the cry of lost souls calling me into the mission field.” These workers are headed for the missionary bone yard. They have responded to the call of the need rather than the call of God. We must go where God sends us, speak what He gives us to speak, hear His voice and obey it – this is our best protection from burnout.
Missions
Henry M Stanley
When Stanley went out in 1871 and found Livingstone, he spent some months in his company but Livingstone never spoke to him about spiritual things. Throughout those months Stanley watched the old man. Livingstone’s habits were beyond his comprehension and so was his patience. He could not understand Livingstone’s sympathy for the Africans. For the sake of Christ and His gospel the missionary doctor was patient, untiring, eager, spending himself and being spent for his master. Stanley wrote, “When I saw that unwearied patience, that unflagging zeal, those enlightened sons of Africa, I became a Christian at his side, though he never spoke to me about it.”
Mike Stachura
The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.
Samuel Zwemer
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
Count von Zinzendorf
I have loved Him for a long time, but I have never actually done anything for Him. From now on I will do whatever he leads me to do.
(Father of Modern Day Missions)
James Hudson Taylor
In a letter written to his wife, Taylor says, “We have twenty-five cents – and all the promises of God!”
Nate Saint
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.
Jim Elliot
Our young men are going into the professional fields because they don’t ‘feel called’ to the mission field. We don’t need a call; we need a kick in the pants. We must begin thinking in terms of ‘going out’, and stop our weeping because ‘they won’t come in’. Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the churches. May God send us forth.
Eli E. Stanley Jones
“I need no outer props to hold up my faith, for my faith holds me.”
Said when a stroke had rendered him immobile and almost speechless after years of missionary work in India
C.T. Studd
Christ’s call is to save the lost, not the stiff-necked; He came not to call scoffers but sinners to repentance; not to build and furnish comfortable chapels, churches, and cathedrals at home in which to rock Christian professors to sleep by means of clever essays, stereotyped prayers, and artistic musical performances, but to capture men from the devil’s clutches and the very jaws of Hell. This can be accomplished only by a red-hot, unconventional, unfettered devotion, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Lord Jesus Christ.