Encouraging Words About Missions
God has been doing an amazing work in our hearts over the past year and a half. We have felt convicted that missions work is where God is leading us, and that we should seek to serve His Kingdom. We have been hearing a lot of encouraging and motivating words from our Perspectives class, and also found many great words from famous and inspirational missionaries. We are going to start posting some of these to this blog when we come across them. We’re starting with this from Elisabeth Elliot. God has been working to help us surrender all of ourselves this year, and every time we encounter another area that God wants us to give up, we find encouragement and freedom.
Sometimes I am asked to speak to young people who are toying with the idea of being missionaries. They want to know how I discovered the will of God. The first thing was to settle once and for all the supremacy of Christ in my life, I tell them. I put myself utterly and forever at His disposal, which means turning over all the rights: to myself, my body, my self-image, my notions of how I am to serve my Master. Oswald Chambers calls it “breaking the husk of my individual independence of God.” Until that break comes, all the rest is “pious fraud.” I tell these earnest kids that the will of God is always different from what they expect, always bigger, and, ultimately, infinitely more glorious than their wildest imaginings.
But there will be deaths to die. Paul found that out—daily, he said. That is the price of following the way of the cross—of course. If our object is to save others we must be clear that we cannot save ourselves. Jesus couldn’t either.
This scares people. Yet what is there to fear when Christ holds first place in our lives? Where, other than in the will of the Father, shall we expect to find significance, security, and serenity?