"It is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world."
— Christopher J. H. Wright
Source: The Mission of God (2006)
Mission
Views: 571
"Our Lord's first obedience was to the will of His Father, not to the needs of men; the saving of men was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father. If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a door-mat."
— Oswald Chambers
Source: My Utmost for His Highest, "Service of Passionate Devotion"
Mission, love, failure
Views: 526
"Christianity has been introduced into the world as a plant which will thrive best confronting and contending with all the forces of its environment; not as a feeble exotic which can only live when nursed and sheltered. All unnecessary nursing will do it harm. A pine may be trained into a beautiful and fantastic shape so as to be an object of interest and curiosity, and may flourish in a way; but it will not tower heavenward as the king of the forest, unless from first to last it is subjected to the various and seemingly adverse influences of scorching sun, biting frost and raging tempest."
— John Livingston Nevius
Source: The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches (1886)
"Our mission is to love others without stopping to ask whether they are worthy; this love itself makes both us and our neighbors worthy. Because love is our true destiny, we cannot find the meaning of life alone, but only in fellowship with others."
— Thomas Merton
Source: Letter to Dorothy Day (in The Hidden Ground of Love); Love and Living
Mission, Love, Meaning, Others
Views: 427
"I feel pressed in spirit to do something for God. Every body is diligent, but I am idle; all employed in their proper work, but I tossed in uncertainty; I want nothing but grace; I want to be perfectly holy, and to save myself and those that hear me. I have hitherto lived to little purpose, more like a clod than a servant of God; now let me burn out for God."
— Henry Martyn
Source: Journals and Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn (1837), vol. 1, journal entry of May 17, 1806
Mission
Views: 408
"Surely if anything is to be learned from the teachings of history, if the saying of Tertullian that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church is a law of unwasting and perennial energy, and if the promises of God are still secure, a religion which has done so much for China, and the heralds of which have suffered so much from the Chinese, has a great work yet to do in the regeneration of that Empire."
— Arthur Henderson Smith
Source: China in Convulsion (1901), Vol. II, ch. XXXII "Foreigners in the Interior"