The preoccupations of seventeen-year-old girls – their looks, their clothes, their social life – don’t change much from generation to generation. But, in every generation there seem to be a few who make other choices. Amy Carmichael was one of the few.
– Elisabeth Elliot –
from A Chance to Die (biography about Amy Carmichael), 31
The popular notion that the first obligation of the church is to spread the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth is false. Her first obligation is to be spiritually worthy to spread it. Our Lord said “Go ye,” but He also said, “Tarry ye,” and the tarrying had to come before the going. Had the disciples gone forth as missionaries before the day of Pentecost it would have been an overwhelming spiritual disaster, for they could have done no more than make converts after their likeness, and this would have altered for the worse the whole history of the Western world and had consequences throughout the
ages to come.
– AW Tozer –
from Of God and Men, 35-37.
If to be feeling alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.
– William Wilberforce –
Were some watcher or holy one from the bright world above to come among us for a time with the power to diagnose the spiritual ills of church people, there is one entry which I am quite sure would appear on the vast majority of his reports: Definite evidence of chronic spiritual lassitude; level of moral enthusiasm extremely low.
– AW Tozer –
Until a humility which will rest in nothing less than the end and death of self; which gives up all the honor of men as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone; which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing, that God may be all, that the Lord alone may be exalted – until such a humility be what we seek in Christ above our chief joy, and welcome at any price, there is very little hope of a religion that will conquer the world.
– CS Lewis –
We are not only to renounce evil, but to manifest the truth. We tell people the world is vain; let our lives manifest that it is so. We tell them that our home is above and that all these things are transitory. Does our dwelling look like it? O to live consistent lives!
– Hudson Taylor –
These days of ours have sore need of a generation of praying men, a band of men and women through whom God can bring his great and his greatest movements more fully into the world. The Lord our God is not straitened within himself, but he is straitened in us, by reason of our little faith and weak praying. A breed of Christian is greatly needed who will seek tirelessly after God—who will give him no rest, day and night, until he hearkens to their cry. The times demand praying men who are all athirst for God’s glory, who are broad and unselfish in their desires, quenchless for God, who seek him late and early, and who will give themselves no rest until the whole earth be filled with his glory.
– E.M. Bounds –
Here lies the supreme missionary motivation. It is neither obedience to the Great Commission, nor compassion for the lost, nor excitement over the gospel, but zeal (even “jealousy”) for the honour of Christ’s name . . . no incentive is stronger than the longing that Christ should be given the honour that is due His Name.”
– John Stott –
The Holy Spirit is the immediate source of all holiness. The missionary must above all things be a holy man. The ideal teacher of the Chinese is a holy man. ” He is entirely sincere, and perfect in love. He is magnanimous, generous, benign, and full of forbearance. He is pure in heart, free from selfishness, and never swerves from the path of duty in his conduct. He is deep and active like a fountain, sending forth his virtues in due season. He is seen, and men revere him; he speaks, and men believe him; he acts, and men are gladdened by him. He possesses all heavenly virtues. He is one with Heaven.
– Griffith John –