Mere Missions

T he H oly S pirit : E mpower • 69

stir your spirit to some form of action that will strengthen your resolve for missions. The fact that missions essentially is a ministry of the Holy Spirit is both a comfort and a challenge to us – a comfort in that we may trust Him fully to accomplish His work, a challenge in that only Spirit-filled people, Spirit-sanctioned means, and Spirit approvedmethods can be used effectively inmissionministries. The secret of saintliness (and service in missions) is not the destruction of the will but the submergence of it in the will of God. ~ A. W. Tozer, Incredible Christian. Acts does not begin with “The Lord Jesus said, ‘go’”; but with “Ye shall receive power, and ye shall be witnesses.” . . . He speaks not of men who, being what they were, strove to obey the last orders of a beloved Master, but of men who, receiving a Spirit, were driven by that Spirit to act in accordance with the nature of that Spirit. ~ Roland Allen, The Ministry of the Spirit. The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. ~ G.W. Peters, A Theology of Missions.

~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.