Seeking Biblical Discernment

Missions Quotes

"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, founder of the Salvation Army

"I have but one passion - it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ."
Count Zinzindorf

"God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies."
J. Hudson Taylor

"He must increase, but I must decrease."
John the Baptist

"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

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

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

"The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is  a "field full of wheat and tares."
Amy Carmichael

"I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer  the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth."
James O. Fraser

"It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ's global cause has a Church as to say Christ's Church has a global  cause."
David Bryant

"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, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray."
Frederick Franson

"What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?"
Malla Moe

"I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver."
Robert Murray M'Cheyne

"It's amazing what can be accomplished if you don't worry about who gets the credit."
Clarence W. Jones  

Christian Quotes "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."            - Robert Moffat "The command has been to "go," but we have stayed - in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth…But 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland."            - Robert Savage "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 "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 "Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees."            - J. Hudson Taylor "The man…looking at him with a smile that only half concealed his contempt, inquired, "Now Mr. Morrison do you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the Chinese Empire?" "No sir," said Morrison, "but I expect that God will."            - Robert Morrison "Here am I. Send me."            - Isaiah "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 "Jehovah Witnesses don't believe in hell and neither do most Christians"            - Leonard Ravenhill "Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary."            - C.T. Studd "Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine."            - said to a young William Carey "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."            - Robert Moffat "We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God."            - John Stott "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."            - Jim Elliot "A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story."            - K.P. Yohannan "I have but one passion - it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home  where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ."            - Count Zinzindorf "God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies."            - J. Hudson Taylor "He must increase, but I must decrease."            - John the Baptist "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 "The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner."            - William Cameron Townsend "Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes."            - Robert E. Speer "The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is a "field full of wheat and tares."            - Amy Carmichael "I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth."            - James O. Fraser "It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ's global cause has a Church as to say Christ's Church has a global cause."            - David Bryant "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, if you have nothing to  eat, fast and pray."            - Frederick Franson "What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?"            - Malla Moe "I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver."            - Robert Murray M'Cheyne "It's amazing what can be accomplished if you don't worry about who gets the credit."            - Clarence W. Jones "Two distinguishing marks of the early church were: 1) Poverty 2) Power."            - T.J. Bach "Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give."            - David Livingstone "From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross."            - Sadhu Sundar Singh "I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been."            - Lottie Moon "All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient."            - William Carey "How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves."            - C.T. Studd "I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to."            - Wilfred Thomason Grenfell "The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something."            - Clarence W. Jones "Expect great things from God. Attempt great thing for God."            - William Carey "God's part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith."            - Andrew A. Bonar "All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!"            - Jonathan Goforth "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."            - E. Stanley Jones "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come."            - Jesus "All roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ."            - Keith Green "Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them"            - A.W. Tozer "I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares."            - Alexander Duff "Today Christians spend more money on dog food then missions"            - Leonard Ravenhill "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."            - J. Hudson Taylor "We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first."            - Oswald J. Smith "God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know."            - David Bryant "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 "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 "If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the  gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ  will continue on unchanged."            - C. Gordon Olson "I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in  fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!"            - George Miley "Oh dear, I couldn't say that my church is alive and I wouldn't want to call it dead. I guess it's just walking in its sleep!"            - Church member "When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen."            - said of John Geddie "At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer's love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself."            - John G. Paton "Save others, snatching them out of the fire."            - Jude "The evangelization of the world in this generation."            - Student Volunteer Movement Motto "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring"            - Jesus "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't."            - John Piper "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."            - John Stott "Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them."            - David Bryant "Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ."            - Francis Xavier "Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ."            - Luther Wishard "We who have Christ's eternal life need to throw away our own lives."            - George Verwer "Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell."            - C.T. Studd "When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone"            - J. Hudson Taylor "God has huge plans for the world today! He is not content to merely establish a handful of struggling churches among each tongue, tribe and nation.  Even now He is preparing and empowering His Church to carry the seeds of revival to the uttermost ends of the earth."            - David Smithers "The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity."            - Mike Stachura "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.

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! --Henry Ward Beecher

Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It's a way to live. --Jackie Windspear

Who does not thank for little will not thank for much. --Estonian Proverb

You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. --G.K. Chesterton

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say "thank you?" --William A. Ward

O Lord that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness! -- William Shakespeare

Gratitude consists of being more aware of what you have, than what you don’t. –Unknown

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude. --Cynthia Ozick

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. --Harper Lee

To know the value of generosity, it is necessary to have suffered from the cold indifference of others. --Eugene Cloutier

Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things. --Horace

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart. --Henry Clay

How wonderful it would be if we could help our children and grandchildren to learn thanksgiving at an early age. Thanksgiving opens the doors. It changes a child's personality. A child is resentful, negative—or thankful. Thankful children want to give, they radiate happiness, they draw people. -- Sir John Templeton

Gratitude ... goes beyond the "mine" and "thine" and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy. --Henri J. M. Nouwen

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. --Thornton Wilder

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it --William Arthur Ward

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. --Melody Beattie

Thank God every day when you get up that you have something to do that day which must be done whether you like it or not. Being forced to work and forced to do your best will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know. -- Basil Carpenter:

When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them. --Chinese Proverb

Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don't unravel. --Author Unknown

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls. -- Aesop Fables

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving. --H.U. Westermayer

When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep? --George Canning

Some complain that roses have thorns—others rejoice that thorns have roses! --Unknown

Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world: It is not he who prays most or fasts most, it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. --William Law

If you count all your assets, you always show a profit. --Robert Quillen

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. --Kahlil Gibran

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. -- selected

Thanksgiving to God is an exuberant response to giving me HIS everything . . . by giving Him MY everything. –Martha Kilpatrick

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving. --W.T. Purkiser

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. -- selected

From John MacArthur via Steve Camp 

http://stevenjcamp.blogspot.com/2006/04/resurrection-key-to-everythingby-john.html

The Resurrection Proves the Completion of the Salvation of God
Listen to Romans 4, wonderful truth, truth on which we build our lives. "He was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification." In order for God to justify us, in order for God to declare us righteous, He had to raise Jesus from the dead. When it says His name shall be called Jesus for He shall save His people from their sins, that's exactly what God wanted. But in order to accomplish it, He had to raise Christ from the dead. That was indispensable evidence of the completion and efficacious value of His death. It was the Father's way of saying...Your death accomplished its intended purpose. It was God raising Him from the dead to affirm that what He did on the cross satisfied God's holy justice. If He didn't rise, then all He is is Jesus Christ Superstar and His death is the death of an ordinary man and has no saving value. But He did rise from the dead and He was raised by the Father for our justification. He was raised in order that in the sight of God we might be made righteous, in order that in the sight of God we might be without sin, in order that our sin might be dismissed and forgiven.

And when He was raised it was as if God said...I accept the sacrifice...I accept it.

There are so many essential features in our salvation contingent on the resurrection. I can take Romans 4:25 and split it into component parts.

Jesus had to raise from the dead to:
1. To Bestow to Us Eternal Life
Our justification, first of all, includes bestowing eternal life, does it not? Part of being justified before God means that we receive eternal life. Well, the bestowing of eternal life is dependent on the resurrection. As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall be made alive. Because I live you shall live also In other words, it was in the death of Christ and His resurrection that He granted to us eternal life. If He never rose then He showed He couldn't conquer death. If He never rose He wouldn't be alive. If He wasn't alive He couldn't give us life. But He did arise and He said in John 11:25, "I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in Me even though he dies shall live again."

So, eternal life is dependent upon the resurrection. That's a component in the completion of God's salvation.

2. To Send the Holy Spirit
Secondly, the sending of the Holy Spirit. If Jesus hadn't risen from the grave He never would have ascended back to the Father. If He hadn't ascended back to the Father, He never would have sent the Holy Spirit. He Himself said that He could not send the Holy Spirit until He had gone back to the Father, John 16:7, "I tell you truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. If I do not go away the Holy Spirit will not come to you. But if I go, I'll send Him to you." And when He comes He'll convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. When He comes He'll lead you into all truth. When He comes He'll bring all things into remembrance. When He comes He will place you into the body of Christ. When He comes He will become the guarantee of your eternal life. When He comes He will take up residence in you and you will become His temple. When He comes He will empower you for service. When He comes He will guide you. When He comes He will instruct you in the Word of God. He will be the anointing that teaches you so that you need no human teacher.

The whole full-blown ministry of the Holy Spirit was dependent upon the resurrection of Christ. If He didn't rise He couldn't ascend. If He couldn't ascend, He couldn't send the Spirit. No resurrection--no ascension...no ascension--no Holy Spirit...no Holy Spirit--no church. When you talk about the resurrection proving the completion of the saving work of God, you're talking about the heart of Christianity. He had to rise to give us eternal life. He had to have the life to give it. He had to rise to go back to the Father to send us the Holy Spirit.

3. To Forgive Our Sins
Thirdly, He had to rise to forgive our sins. If He hadn't risen from the dead then we would know the Father was not pleased with His sacrifice, His sacrifice was not efficacious, it was not successful, it didn't work, it didn't atone for our sins and therefore the Father did not exalt Him and take Him to glory because He didn't do what He was supposed to do. On the other hand, if Jesus was raised from the dead, taken to the right hand of God, seated at the throne of God on His right hand, affirmed by God as having perfectly accomplished our redemption, then there is forgiveness of sins. Then it is accomplished. Then He who came for the expressed purpose of dying to put away death and sin accomplished His purpose. He, it says, was made like His brethren in all things that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of His people, that's Hebrews 2. Later on it says in Hebrews that He has perfected forever them that are sanctified by the offering of Himself, that His sacrifice did work, our sins were completely covered and the Father affirmed it in the resurrection.

4. To Intercede For Us
Fourthly, Jesus must rise from the dead in order to be at the right hand of God interceding for us. His resurrection is inseparably linked to His work of intercession as He presents His petitions on behalf of the weak and tempted Christians and intercedes for them before the throne of grace. John says in 1 John 1...1 John 2:1 and 2, we have an advocate with the Father who is always pleading our case. Hebrews chapter 4 and Hebrews chapter 7 says we have a merciful and faithful high priest, in all points tempted like we are yet without sin, and He ever lives to make intercession for us. He is always at the right hand of God. Satan is there accusing us. He is there defending us. He is our lawyer, our advocate, our defender. If He didn't rise from the dead He wouldn't have ascended. If He didn't ascend we have no defender there. We have no one there pleading our case. We don't have the Holy Spirit in us pleading our case with groanings which cannot be uttered because He couldn't go back and send the Spirit and we don't have Him there advocating on our behalf either. The resurrection therefore is necessary not only for forgiveness of sins but for perpetual intercession that we might never be tempted above that we are able and that there always will be a way of escape.

5. To Bestow Spiritual Gifts
Fifthly, the resurrection is crucial to the bestowal of spiritual gifts...to the bestowal of spiritual gifts. What are those? Those are the divine enabling abilities that the Spirit of God gives to every Christian so that we can serve God. In Ephesians chapter 4 it says that Christ ascended and after He ascended He gave some as apostles and some as prophets and evangelists and pastor/teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ. He went back to heaven and then He began to work through gifted men and spiritual gifts to built His church strong. To each one of us, verse 7 says, was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. And He gave us that gift when He ascended on high, when He led captivity a host of captives and gave gifts to men. Jesus, risen from the dead, ascends to heaven, sends back spiritual gifts, gifted men, so that we can serve God. That's all based on His resurrection. If He doesn't rise...arise, He doesn't ascend, He doesn't send gifts, nor the enabling Spirit.

6. To Grant Us Spiritual Power
Sixthly, the resurrection also grants spiritual power, spiritual power. Jesus said in Matthew 28:18, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and earth." Then in Acts 1:8 He says, "When the Spirit comes I'm passing it to you and you now are able to do exceeding, abundantly above all you can ask or think according to the power that works in you." You have the power, Ephesians 1 says, that raised Jesus from the dead working through you. Jesus Christ then sends us power, the enabling power and authority of the Spirit of God.

7. To Give Us A New Position of Blessing
I can give you a seventh component of the salvation of God and that is Jesus Christ in His resurrection has given to us a new position of blessing, a new position of blessing. In Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 3 it says we are blessed with all spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. Christ is in the heavenlies and because He is there He pours out all spiritual blessing on us. Chapter 2 of Ephesians and verse 7 says, "Forever He will pour out the surpassing riches of His grace in His kindness toward us."

What immense blessing. The salvation of God demanded eternal life, the coming of the Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, ongoing intercession, the bestowing of spiritual gifts, the granting of spiritual power and the outpouring of eternal blessing...and all of that hinges on the resurrection. If Christ doesn't rise, none of it happens...none of it.

The question then is not what proves the resurrection but what does the resurrection prove? It proves that the Word of God is true. It proves that the Son of God is deity. It proves that the salvation of God is complete.