The Missions Addiction Book Review

The Missions Addiction

By David Shibley

We tend to think that the only people who should be involved in missions are people who are interested in missions, but the fact is that every Christian has a part in the great commission. In fact, the great commission is the great adventure of Christianity. — Ron Luce

Let me ask you point-blank: is your heart still wrapped around lesser things? When is it going to end? When will your priorities line up with God‘s priorities? When?

Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ! — Francis Xavier

The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, and the nearer we get to Him, the more intensely Missionary we become. – Henry Martin

If there are indeed 3,884 billion unsaved individuals destined for eternal separation from God, our lives become bigger and more significant than utility bills and relational problems. – Larry Stockstill

In view of the constraining memories of the cross of Christ and the love wherewith He has loved us, let us rise and resolve, at whatever cost of self-denial, that live or die, we shall live or die for the evangelization of the world in our day. – John R. Mott

How tragic that we send people to seminary who are on fire but feel unprepared. Three years later, they feel prepared, but too often the fire has been doused.

In the eyes of most unbelievers we seem like Jonah – not really wanting the unrighteous to find forgiveness. We seem to be enjoy thundering God‘s judgment.

If we truly want to see the social order redeemed and morality restored, we had better get back to seeing people redeemed and restored.

While we might view Jonah’s actions as somewhat deranged, his attitude mirrors that of many more who are more concerned with their own shade and shelter then the impending doom of the city. A love of the world has short circuited love for the world.

Our hearts have room for only one all-embracing devotion, and we can cleave to only one Lord. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Winston Churchill defined a fanatic as “someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

God is ready and willing to give you a fresh baptism of compassion. He wants to perform “eye surgery” so you can see once again with clarity, sharpness and focus. Are you willing for the surgery?

I have known those who so enshrined family life and were so protective of “quality time” that the children never saw in their parents the kind of consuming love that made their parents’ faith attractive to them. Some have lost their children, not because they weren’t at their soccer games or didn’t take family vacations, but because they never transmitted a loyalty to Jesus that went deep enough to interrupt personal preferences.

God put you here on purpose – His purpose. Get in hot pursuit of the reason why Jesus took hold of you.

Give me the love that leads the way

The faith that nothing can dismay,

The hope no disappointments tire,

The passion that will burn like fire.

Let me not sink to be a clod;

Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.

Long before Jim Elliot laid down his life in the jungles of Ecuador, he built an altar of consecration in his dorm room one night at Wheaton College. On the altar he offered the carcasses of “success” and a “balanced life.” Journaling what he felt that night in 1948, he wrote: “God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like You, Lord Jesus.”

The church is God‘s instrument to communicate the message of Christ to the people of the world, and the local church is his primary instrument. – Larry Reesor

Jesus left us a Great Commission, not a limited contract with America. – Chuck Swindoll

The church should give at least 10% of it income to missions as a moral minimum. I frankly cannot understand how some pastors can so passionately exhort their members to tithe when the church itself doesn’t tithe! For almost any church in affluent America, 10% to missions should be a moral minimum. Many churches see a tithe of the general income as a starting point, adding faith promises on top of that.

An indigenous church is self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating and self-missionizing (be a missionary sending force itself).

What Tertullian wrote to secular authorities in the second century: “Your cruelty does not profit you, however exquisite. Instead, it tempts people to our sect. As often as you mow us down, the more we grow in number. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church… We have filled all you have – cities, islands, forts, towns, assembly halls, even military camps, tribes, town councils, the palace, senate, and forum. We have left you nothing but the temples.

According to missions statistician David Barrett, one in every two hundred Christians living today can expect to be murdered. “Martyrdom has been a standard accompaniment of Christian mission because Christians inevitably arouse hostilities, and they pay the price,” says Barrett. This ultimate gift to Jesus remains, in Ed Silvoso‘s words, “a possibility of standby” for every follower of Christ.

The Bible says that God keeps a record of our tears (Ps 56:8.). If tears are precious to God, how much more precious must be the blood of the martyrs.

Mincaye, one of the Waodani Indians that killed missionaries Jim Elliot and Steve Saint, gave this testimony: “When I killed Steve’s father, I didn’t know better. No one told us that he had come to show us God’s trail. My heart was black and sick in sin. But I heard [that] God sent His own Son, His blood dripping and dripping. He washed my heart clean… Now I see you God-followers from all over [the world]. I see well my brothers and sisters that God‘s blood has washed your hearts, too. Go speak [about God] all over the world. Let’s take many with us to God’s place in Heaven.”

He who has no vision of eternity will never get a true hold of time. – Thomas Carlyle

The first part of the commission – preaching the gospel to every person – is doable in our lifetime. We have enough money to do it, if we will allocate it. We have the human resources, if we will deploy them. The greater issue, greater than the need for money or manpower, is if we have the will.

World evangelization? Every tribe and nation? It can be done! Why? Because we have an Almighty Christ.

If you are not taking advantage of opportunities to share your faith where you are right now, it is very unlikely that an airplane ticket and a visa to another country will automatically transform you into an effective witness.

“God brings us to a point of climax. That is the Great Divide in life; from that point we either go toward a more and more dilatory and useless type of Christian life, or we become more and more ablaze for the glory of God – my upmost for His highest.” — Oswald Chambers

When John R. Mott wrote the book The Evangelization of the World in This Generation, he sent the manuscript to multiple people asking for their comments and suggestions. One of those manuscripts went to Hudson Taylor in China. Hudson Taylor wrote back to John R. Mott and said the following: “The evangelization of the world depends on the full surrender of every Christian both at home and abroad, so that the Holy Spirit may be unhindered. Appeal to every reader to unhesitatingly take this position.”

Whatever else you do, don’t die inch by inch, playing little games. Live for what matters! And what matters is the exaltation of the Son of God to the ends of the earth.