Jim Elliot

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

"So many missionaries, intent on doing something, forget that His main work is to make something of them..."

C.T. Studd

"True religion is like the smallpox.  If you get it, you give it to others and it spreads."

"Had I cared for the comments of the people, I should never have become a missionary..."

"Some wish to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell; I want to run a Rescue Shop within a yard of hell."

"A good thing to have up your sleeve is a sanctified funny-bone."

"How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays.  The churches and mission societies have so bound Him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves."

"Sometimes I feel... that my cross is heavy beyond endurance...  My heart seems worn out and bruised beyond repair, and in my deep loneliness I often wish to be gone, but God knows best, and I want to do every ounce of work He wants me to do."

"I cannot tell you what joy it gave me to bring the first soul to the Lord Jesus Christ.  I have tasted almost all the pleasures that this world can give ... but those pleasures were as nothing compared to the joy that the saving of that one soul gave me."

"My only joys therefore are that when God has given me a work to do, I have not refused it."

William Carey

"I can plod; I can persevere in any definite pursuit.  To this I owe everything."

"Those who would be employed in propagating the Gospel should be familiar with the doctrines he is to combat and the doctrines he is to teach, and acquire a complete knowledge both of the Sacred Scriptures and of these philosophical and mythological dogmas which form the souls of the Buddhist and Hindu Systems."

"I am very defective in all duties... In prayer I wander and am formal... I soon tire; devotion languishes; and I do not walk with God."

"There are grave difficulties on every hand, and more are looming ahead - therefore we must go forward."

"Expect great things from God.  Attempt great things for God."

Gladys Aylward

"... 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."

"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, 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."

Mary Slessor

"Oh Lord, I thank Thee that I can bring these people Thy Word.  But Lord, there are other villages back in the jungle where no white man has gone.  They need Jesus, too.  Help me reach them!"

"When you think of the woman's power, you forget the power of the woman's God.  I shall go on."

"In Christ, we become new creatures.  His life becomes ours.  Take that word 'life' and turn it over and over and press it and try to measure it, and see what it will yield.  Eternal life is a magnificent idea which comprises everything the heart can yearn after.  Do not your hearts yearn for this life, this blessed and eternal life, which the Son of God so freely offers?" 

J. Hudson Taylor

"Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees."

"Unless you intend your wife to be a true missionary, not merely a wife, home-maker, and friend, do not join us."

"Christ is either Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all."

"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." 

"I used to ask God to help me.  Then I asked if I might help Him.  I ended up by asking Him to do his work through me."

Robert Moffat

"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."

"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."

Rowland Bingham

"There is the constant invisible warfare that has to be waged against the powers of darkness...  It is fashionable in the Western world to relegate belief in demons and devils to the realm of mythology, and when mentioned at all it is a matter of jest.  But it is no jest in West Africa or any other mission field for that matter."

"I will open Africa to the Gospel or die trying."

Malla Moe

"What are we here for - to have a good time with the Christians or to save sinners?"

"There are many phases to a missionary's life.  The least of these is to preach, so you don't have to look for those who are especially gifted or learned to become missionaries.  Kindness is the big thing."

Adoniram Judson

"Permit us to labor on in obscurity, and at the end of twenty years you may hear from us again."

"We prefer one room in Rangoon to six in Boston.  We feel that we are highly blessed."

E. Stanley Jones

"An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body, and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul.  One is a ghost and the other is a corpse."

"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."

William Cameron Townsend

"The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue.  It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner."

"Proclaim the Word more and argue about it less."

"I love to live on the brink of eternity."- David Brainerd

"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

"I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether my body is eaten by cannibals or by worms." - John G. Paton

"Have we forgotten that there is a Holy Ghost, that we must insist upon walking on crutches when we might fly?" - A.B. Simpson

"I am a missionary, heart and soul.  God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician.  A poor, poor imitation of Him I am, or wish to be.  In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die." - David Livingstone

"The sense of being led by an unseen hand which takes mine, while another hand reaches ahead and prepares the way, grows upon me daily." - Frank Laubach

"Everything was ordered by our gracious God, to bring us to the shores of China in the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of CHRIST; just seeing that all we have to do is to recognize that we are nothing, CHRIST is all, and trusting in Him to enter into the rest that remains for the people of GOD - the rest of faith.  For surely God is strong enough to fight our battles.  And surely GOD is rich enough to supply our needs.  And surely GOD is wise enough to teach us and direct our paths." - Stanley Smith (and others)

"For us in the Pacific, in Asia, in India, and in Africa, Christian unity is not an optional extra.  It is an urgent necessity, for our divisions are a real stumbling-block to the proclamation of the Gospel...  Mission is at the heart of the divine reality.  It is the will of God and the Kingdom of God which are to be made known.  Wherever we are, our purpose is not to propagate the Church as an end in itself, but to proclaim Christ as Lord of all life and as Saviour of all men..." - John C. Vockler

"We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God." - John Stott

"Its exhilarating to have a new adventure every day.  And when I go to church or to a store, and find here and there a word I can really understand, I feel like shouting." - Monono Cheney

"Americans suffer from mono-lingual myopia - a disease of the tongue that affects the vision." - Tom Brewster

"Today Christians spend more money on dog food then missions." - Leonard Ravenhill

"It is a tragedy when a man has no invisible means of support." - T.J. Bach 

"Added to the difficulty of learning to speak the language was the greater difficulty of finding terms to express the ideas which the missionary had come to convey... in many languages the most precious truths of Christianity had to force their way by bending stubborn words to new ideas, and filling old terms with new content." - Helen Barrett Montgomery

"We must be willing to begin with positive teaching, not with negative prohibitions, and be content to wait and to watch whilst the native Christians slowly recreate their own customs as the Spirit of Christ gradually teaches them..." - Roland Allen

"Prepare for the worst; expect the best, and take what comes." - Robert E. Speer

"Our hearts are breaking.  All our Christians are dispersed.  We are lonely and deserted, sad and sick." - Alexander Mackay

"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; and if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray." - Frederik Franson 

"We talk of the second coming; half the world has never heard of the first." - Oswald J. Smith

"Good spiritual logistics demand that we use every means available to us today to reach a lost world that desperately needs Christ." - Clarence W. Jones

"Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church.  Worship is.  Missions exists because worship doesn't." - John Piper

"The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity." - Mike Stachura

"Charlie Studd has written me a delightful letter... He thinks the Chinese language was invented by the devil to prevent the Chinese from ever hearing the Gospel properly." - Ion Keith-Falconer

"I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been." - Lottie Moon

"I yesterday received your very welcome letter.  It is but the second that I have received, after having written at least two hundred." - Robert Morrison

"I hope you will be a missionary wherever your lot is cast ... it makes but little difference after all where we spend these few fleeting years, if they are only spent for the glory of God.  Be assured there is nothing else worth living for." - Elizabeth Freeman

World Missions