Top 210 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Missionaries

While sitting on the bank of a river one day, I picked up a solid round stone from the water and broke it open. It was perfectly dry in spite of the fact that it had been immersed in water for centuries. The same is true of many people in the Western world. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity; they live immersed in the waters of its benefits. And yet it has not penetrated their hearts; they do not love it. The fault is not in Christianity, but in men's hearts, which have been hardened by materialism and intellectualism.

The trouble with nearly everybody who prays is that he says 'Amen' and runs away before God has a chance to reply. Listening to God is far more important than giving Him our ideas.

The way you discover your gifts is really by serving not by searching.

Christ never was in a hurry. There was no rushing forward, no anticipating, no fretting over what might be. Each day's duties were done as each day brought them, and the rest was left with God.

Only believe, don't fear. Our Master, Jesus, always watches over us, and no matter what the persecution, Jesus will surely overcome it.

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

I thought it reasonable that I should seek the work where the work was the most abundant and the workers fewest.

God provides the men and women needed for each generation.

If revival is being withheld from us it is because some idol remains still enthroned; because we still insist in placing our reliance in human schemes; because we still refuse to face the unchangeable truth that It is not by might, but by My Spirit.

God wants us to have soft hearts and hard feet. The trouble with so many of us is that we have hard hearts and soft feet.

I long to be filled with divine knowledge, divine wisdom, divine love, divine holiness, to the utmost extent of my capacity. I want to feel that all the currents of my soul are interfused in one channel deep and wide, and all flowing towards the heart of Christ.

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.

Oh God, here's my Bible, Here's my money. Here's me. Use me, God.

The Bible is full of ordinary people who went to impossible places and did wondrous things simply because they decided to obey God.

We need to look resolutely away from the impossibilities and to the Lord. His help will come.

One, gains an unmistakable impression that the Sky- God wanted to communicate with people of various folk religions all the time, but for His own mysterious reasons maintained a policy of restraint until the arrival of Yahweh's testimony! This is surely a powerful exta-biblical evidence for the authenticity of the Bible as revelation from the one true and universal God!

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

Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians.

Be merry, really merry. The life of a true Christian should be a perpetual jubilee, a prelude to the festivals of eternity.

In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant who is to move the whole machine means to regulate and manage the people is fear, by the servile dread of his power. But a free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue.

It is true that there is nothing too great for God's power; and it is just as true that there is nothing too small for His love.

There is something inexpressibly beautiful in the unused day, something beautiful in the fact that it is still untouched, unsoiled; and town and country share alike in this loveliness.

Do not worry at being worried; but accept worry peacefully. Difficult but not impossible.

You can't find the answers on the bottom of a whiskey glass, but if you look hard enough you'll forget the questions.

This is the unique element in the gospel, which tells us that what we could never do, God has done. We cannot climb up to heaven to discover God, but God has come down to earth, in the person of his Son, to reveal himself to us in the only way we could really understand: in terms of a human life.

Nothing is true and everything is permitted.

I will be led and taught of the Holy Spirit. God desires full development, use and activity of our faculties. The Holy Spirit can and will guide me in direct proportion to the time and effort I will expend to know and do the will of God. I must read the Bible to know God's will. At every point I will obey and do I will die to self. I will begin to ask God to put me in a service of constant circumstances where to live Christ I must die to self. I will be alive unto God. That I may learn to love Him with my heart, mind, soul, and body.

Lao-tze's Taoism is the exhibition of a way or method of living which men should cultivate as the highest and purest development of their nature.

The doctrine of the Trinity which was established in the church by the council of Nice, A. D. 325. This doctrine destroys the personality of God, and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

The man who does not learn to wait upon the Lord and have his thoughts molded by Him will never possess that steady purpose and calm trust, which is essential to the exercise of wise influence upon others, in times of crisis and difficulty.

It is as much our duty to live in the beauty of the presence of God on some mount of transfiguration until we become white with Christ as it is for us to go down where the needy people grope and grovel, and groan and lift them to new life.

Life is pitiful, death so familiar, suffering and pain so common, yet I would not be anywhere else. Do not wish me out of this or in any way seek to get me out, for I will not be got out while this trial is on. These are my people, God has given them to me, and I will live or die with for Him and His glory.

We'd rather have faithful Jews, Baptists or Buddhists than some of the Catholics who nearly run you over in the parking lot after Mass.

Hearing God is not all that difficult. If we know the Lord, we have already heard His voice - after all it was the inner leading that brought us to Him in the first place. But we can hear His voice and still miss His best if we don't keep on listening. After the what of guidance comes the when and how.

Should we not press it home upon our consciences that the sole object of our conversion was not the salvation of our own souls, but that we might become co-workers with our Lord and Master in the conversion of the world?

Prayer is continual abandonment to God.

Some people become tired at the end of ten minutes or half an hour of prayer. What will they do when they have to spend Eternity in the presence of God? We must begin the habit here and become used to being with God.

The empty tomb stands, a veritable rock, as an essential element in the evidence for the resurrection. To suggest that it was not in fact empty at all, as some have done, seems to me ridiculous.

When life's flight is over, and we unload our cargo at the other end, the fellow who got rid of unnecessary weight will have the most valuable cargo to present the Lord.

Praying without faith is like trying to cut with a blunt knife - much labor expended to little purpose.

Do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh? Cannot the same wonders be done now as of old? Do not the eyes of the Lord still run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those who put their trust in Him? Oh, that God would give me more practical faith in Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He is waiting for Elijah to call on Him.

If true happiness depended on the thoughts of man, then all philosophers and deep thinkers would be filled to overflowing with it.

If God would grant us the vision, the word sacrifice would disappear from our lips and thoughts; we would hate the things that seem now so dear to us; our lives would suddenly be too short, we would despise time-robbing distractions and charge the enemy with all our energies in the name of Christ. May God help us ourselves by the eternities that separate the Aucas from a Comprehension of Christmas and Him, who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor so that we might, through his poverty, be made rich.

I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. […] My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to His will. This seems to be all I need to think about.

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

Proclaim the Word more and argue about it less.

I go out as a missionary not that I may follow the dictates of common sense, but that I may obey that command of Christ.

In the desert the detachment of life from all normal intercourse imparts a sense of gravity to every rencontre, and each touch with human beings is fraught with a significance lacking in the too hurried intercourse of ordinary everyday life. On the desert track, there is no such thing as a casual meeting.

All during the day, in the chinks of time between the things we find ourselves obliged to do, there are the moments when our minds ask: 'What next?' In these chinks of time, ask Him: 'Lord, think Thy thoughts in my mind. What is on Thy mind for me to do now?' When we ask Christ, 'What next?' we tune in and give Him a chance to pour His ideas through our enkindled imagination. If we persist, it becomes a habit.

I banked my life on a miracle.

Oh, this thing of keeping in constant touch with God, of making him the object of my thought and the companion of my conversations, is the most amazing thing I ever ran across.

Should I worship Him from fear of hell, may I be cast into it. Should I serve Him from desire of gaining heaven, may He keep me out. But should I worship Him from love alone, He reveals Himself to me, that my whole heart may be filled with His love and presence.

We are in China in obedience to the command of our Lord; and the purpose of our Mission is to disciple and make Christians of this great nation.. . This is a great spiritual work, and to secure success in it we need the abiding presence of the Spirit, and through the Spirit such a full baptism of power as will perfectly fit each one of us for the special work which God has given him to do.

You never get bored with God in action.

Inclusivism: Whereas Exclusivists regard general revelation as informative only and special revelation as both informative and salvific, Inclusivists, by contrast, regard general revelation as both informative and salvific and special revelation as even mere deeply informative and even more effectively and widely salvific!

But I go out as a missionary not that I may follow the dictates of common sense, but that I may obey that command of Christ, 'Go into all the world and preach.' He who said 'preach,' said also, 'Go ye into and preach,' and what Christ hath joined together let not man put asunder.

At another house two women learned very fast; I say women, but one was a girl about twelve or thirteen, already married, however. There was a little child about three years old. My sister asked, 'Who is the True God's Son?' The little thing replied, in a very sweet voice, 'Jesus.'

The secret of all failure is disobedience.

I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done in 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.'

Salt, when dissolved in water, may disappear, but it does not cease to exist. We can be sure of its presence by tasting the water. Likewise, the indwelling Christ, though unseen, will be made evident to others from the love which he imparts to us.