12 Lessons

You can do something other than working with God in His purpose, but it will always be something lesser, and you couldn't come up with something better.

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.

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."

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."

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.

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

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.

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

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.

He must increase, but I must decrease.

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

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."

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.

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

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

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.

I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been.

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.

The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something.

God's part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith.

I feel now, that Arabia could easily be evangelized within the next thirty years if it were not for the wicked selfishness of Christians.

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.

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

I have said that there is nothing in the world or the Church, except it's disobedience, to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility.

Today Christians spend more money on dog food than missions.

We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first.

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.

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.

God provides the men and women needed for each generation.

When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.

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.

The evangelization of the world in this generation.

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

Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them.

Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ.

Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.

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.

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.'

I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God; first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.

The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn't.

The world is my parish.

I am willing to go anywhere, at anytime, to do anything for Jesus.

God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him... When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.

When God's finger points, God's hand will open the door.

None but women can reach Muslim Women... So we have a solemn duty in this matter that we cannot shift. The blood of souls is on our skirts, and God will demand them at our hands.

As long as there are millions destitute of the word of God and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, it will be impossible for me to devote my time and energy to those who have both.

We have a God who delights in impossibilities.

The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph.