“Every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor.” – Charles Spurgeon1
“Prayer alone will overcome the gigantic difficulties which confront the workers in every field.” – John R. Mott
“I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship and the whole world for my mission field.” – John Wesley
“I’ve heard people say, ‘I want more of a heart for missions.’ I always respond, ‘Jesus tells you exactly how to get it. Put your money in missions – and in your church and the poor – and your heart will follow.’” – Randy Alcorn
“The mission of the Church is to seek and to save them that are lost.” – James H. Aughey
“The church which is not a missionary church will be a missing church when Jesus comes.” – F.B. Meyer
“The thing that makes a missionary is the sight of what Jesus did on the cross and to have heard Him say, ‘Go.’” – Oswald Chambers
“Every Christian a missionary; every non-Christian a mission-field.” – Winkie Pratney
“If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.” – Charles Spurgeon
“The history of missions is a history of prayer. Everything vital to the success of the world’s evangelization hinges on prayer.” – John R. Mott
“I’ve seen far too many Christians who are more than willing to travel halfway around the world to volunteer for a week in an orphanage, but who cannot bring themselves to take the personal risk of sharing Jesus with the co-worker who sits day after day in the cubicle right next to them.” – Lee Strobel
“Prayer is the way you defeat the devil, reach the lost, restore a backslider, strengthen the saints, send missionaries out, cure the sick, accomplish the impossible, and know the will of God.” – David Jeremiah
“God had only one Son, and He was a missionary.” – David Livingstone
“The motto of every missionary, whether preacher, printer, or schoolmaster, ought to be ‘Devoted for life.’” – Adoniram Judson
“‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.” – William Booth
“We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.” – John Stott
“God’s command ‘Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature’ was the categorical imperative. The question of personal safety was wholly irrelevant.” – Elisabeth Elliot
“No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.” – Oswald J. Smith
“Seek each day to do or say something to further Christianity among the heathen.” – Jonathan Goforth
“The only way the corporate Body of Christ will fulfill the mission Christ has given it is for individual Christians to have a vision for fulfilling that mission personally.” – David Jeremiah
“Some missionaries bound for Africa were laughed at by the boat captain. ‘You’ll only die over there,’ he said. But a missionary replied, ‘Captain, we died before we started.’” – Vance Havner
1 All of these quotes are from the websites below:
Meaning and Mission of Prayer: Mission is not sustained by hustle, guilt, or religious tourism, but instead by prayer that aligns believers with the will of God.
Missions Run on Their Knees.
By the numbers, Ethyl – go apologetic.
1. Missions are not church accessories. Matthew 28:19-20
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” This makes mission part of the Church’s marching orders, not an optional side ministry. The mission action is the Church in motion. Curt’s collected voices hammer the same nail. If Christ came seeking the lost, then His people do not get to sit at home polishing their doctrine like silverware.
2. Prayer is the engine room of mission success. Colossians 4:2-4 “Devote yourselves to prayer… praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word…”
…Paul explicitly links prayer to open doors for gospel ministry. Not branding, not sentiment, not conference fog machines. Prayer opens the line of obedience, supplies courage, and places human labor under divine command.
3. The mission field is both far away and right next to you. Acts 1:8 “…in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” That gives both the near field and the far field in one verse.
A Christian who dreams of Africa but cannot speak to the coworker in the next cubicle has confused distance with faithfulness.
Missions begins in the heart of God, not in the ambition of man. The church does not invent mission as a noble project. God sends. Christ came. The apostles were commanded to go.
The church is missionary because God’s nature is sending. So when missions cool, it is not merely a program problem. It is a theological fever breaking into apathy. A church that loses its missionary nerve has not become “balanced.” It has become forgetful.
Curt’s message: Mission is carried by prayer. Prayer is not decorative piety. It is wartime communication with God in occupied territory.
Prayer is communion, petition, and intercession. Communion keeps the missionary rightly related to Christ.
Petition asks for what is needed to do His will.
Intercession widens the heart beyond private comfort and turns it outward toward souls, nations, churches, laborers, and the battered.
Mission without prayer becomes activism with a cross necklace on. Prayer without mission becomes devout self-absorption. Biblical Christianity allows neither fraud.
Prayer is sometimes choked by sin, selfishness, and an unforgiving spirit.
That matters because mission failure is often blamed on a lack of resources, when the rot is moral and spiritual long before it is logistical.
God is not impressed by our clever plans if we are nursing rebellion in the heart.
The missionary enterprise is not fueled by adrenaline but by holiness, surrender, and attention to the will of God.
Satan can and will throw roadblocks on the field. Satan does not sever our divine connection. We usually do that ourselves, which is predictably human and consistent.
A personal Note.
Mission is not proved by travel. It is proved by obedience.
Some believers romanticize “the nations” because it sounds grand, while neglecting the plain command to witness, serve, forgive, and pray right where they are standing.
True missionary heart is not measured by passport stamps. It is measured by whether Christ’s command has become personal. The one who will not speak nearby should not flatter himself about speaking far away.
The gospel does not need tourists with lanyards. It needs servants who have already died to self.
…A few words for the children…
Kids, here is the plain truth. Jesus loves people everywhere, and He wants His people to help others know Him. You do not have to wait until you are older to care. You can pray for missionaries, pray for friends who do not know Jesus, and be brave enough to tell the truth about Him with kindness. Big mission work often starts with a small prayer and one obedient voice.
Short words.
Curt’s message lands where it should. Missions matter because Christ matters. Prayer matters, because without it we are trying to carry out heaven’s orders with earthbound strength.
The church does not win the field by noise. It advances by truth, sacrifice, and prayerful obedience. If mission is the march, prayer is the breath.
Leave the tip:
The church that will not kneel for the lost will eventually sit with the satisfied, and call that faithfulness.
Thank you, Mr. Blattman