Missionary quotes are a great way turn your congregation’s thoughts towards missions. Put a few in your church bulletin during a missions emphasis Sunday or accent your Missions Conference booklet with these wonderful missionary quotes that speak volumes about having a burden for souls.
William Borden, Missionary to China
- “No reserves. No retreats. No regrets”
David Brainerd, Missionary to the Seneca and Delaware Indians (1744-1747)
- “I cared not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls to Christ.”
William Carey, who is called the “Father of Modern Missions”
- “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God”
Amy Carmichael, Missionary to India
- “You can give without loving. But you cannot love without giving.”
Tanna Collins, Missionary to Tibet
- “Lord, here in your precious Word I give myself, my husband, my children, and all that I have or ever shall posses, all to you. I will follow your will, even to China. Lord, open doors, and I will go and tell the Chinese of your great love. In time of need, supply for us; in time of sorrow, give us peace; in times of joy, send someone to share. Help me to never murmur nor complain. I love you Lord Jesus.”
Jim Elliot, Missionary Martyr Among the Auca Indians of Ecuador
- “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose”
John Keith Falconer, Missionary Among the Arabs
- “I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light”
Jonathan Goforth, Missionary to China
- “All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!”
Adoniram Judson, Missionary to Burma
- “If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated suffering.”
David Livingston, Missionary to Africa
- “If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?”
Robert Moffat, Missionary to Africa
- “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.”
- “I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages–villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in this world.”
- “In the vast plain to the north I have sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been”
Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia
- “The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become.”
Nate Saint, Missionary Martyr – Served with Jim Elliot
- “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.”
Amy Carmichael, Missionary to India
- “You can give without loving. But you cannot love without giving.”
- “If I am content to heal a hurt slightly, saying “Peace, peace,” where is no peace; if I forget the poignant word “Let love be without dissimulation” and blunt the edge of truth, speaking not right things but smooth things, then I know nothing of Calvary love.”
- “‘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.’”
C.T. Studd, Missionary to China, India, and Africa. (1860-1931)
- “Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary.”
- “Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell; I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell.”
- “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
- “For five years we never went outside our doors without a volley of curses from our neighbours.”
- “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.”
Oswald J. Smith, Pastor and Evangelist (1889-1986)
- “No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.”
- “Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist.”
- “The mission of the church is missions”
- “We talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first.”
- “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
Charles Spurgeon – (1834-1892) English Baptist Preacher
- “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.’”
Hudson Taylor, Missionary to China
- “God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply”
- “God isn’t looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him”
- “The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed”
- “If I had 1,000 lives, I’d give them all for China”
- “God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him.”
- “Would that God would make hell so real to us that we cannot rest; heaven so real that we must have men there, Christ so real that our supreme motive and aim shall be to make the Man of Sorrows the Man of Joy by the conversion to him of many.”
- “We did not come to China because missionary work here was either safe or easy, but because He has called us. We did not enter upon our present positions under a guarantee of human protection, but relying on the promise of His presence. The accidents of ease or difficulty, of apparent safety or danger, of man’s approval or disapproval, in no wise affect our duty. Should circumstances arise involving us in what may seem special danger, we shall have grace, I trust, to manifest the depth and reality of our confidence in Him, and by faithfulness to our charge to prove that we are followers of the Good Shepherd who did not flee from death itself…”
- “Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.”
- “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.”
- “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”