EVANGELISM-PASSION
I care not
where I go, or how I live, or what I endure so that I may save souls. When I
sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts…no amount of
scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and
stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic
love for human souls.
I cared not
where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but
gain souls to Christ.
David Brainerd
David
Brainerd prayed with fasting for the Lord’s leadership regarding his entry into
ministry. He said of his experience during that day, “I felt the power of
intercession for precious, immortal souls; for the advancement of the kingdom
of my dear Lord and Saviour in the world; and withal,
a most sweet resignation and even consolation and joy in the thoughts of
suffering hardships, distresses, and even death itself, in the promotion of it…
My soul was drawn out very much for the world, for multitudes of souls. I think
I had more enlargement for sinners than for the
children of God, though I felt as if I could spend my life in cries for both. I
enjoyed great sweetness in communion with my dear Saviour. I think I never in my life felt such an
entire weanedness from this world and so much
resigned to God in everything.
Jonathan Edwards
Revised edition ed. by Philip E.
Howard Jr., The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, Moody Press, 1949, p. 81.
A broken,
leaping heart will love like Jesus. And the power of the love will be
proportionate to the felt fearfulness of our nearness to destruction. The
keener the memory of our awful rescue, the more naturally we pity those in a
similar plight. The more deeply we feel how undeserved and free was the grace
that plucked us from the flames; the freer will be our benevolence to sinners.
We do not love as passionately as we ought because our belief in these things
is not real. So our pride is not broken and our demeanor not lowly. And we do
not look with aching and longing on the crowds that pass us in the airport or
the straying members of our flock.
John Piper
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem
Baptist Church, 2002, p. 117.
If sinners
will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they
will perish, let them perish with our arms around their knees, imploring them
to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled with the teeth of
our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed
for.
C.H. Spurgeon
Sermons, 7.11.
To be
laughter at is no great hardship to me. I can delight in scoffs and jeers
Caricatures, lampoons, and slanders are my glory. But that you should turn from
your own mercy, that is my sorrow. Spit on me, but,
oh, repent! Laugh at me, but, oh, believe in my Master! Make my body as the
dirt of the streets, but damn not your own souls!
C.H. Spurgeon
Sermons, 4.56.
Love your
fellowmen, and cry about them if you cannot bring them to Christ. If you cannot
save them, you can weep over them. If you cannot give
them a drop of cold water in hell, you can give them your heart's tears while
they are still in this body.
C.H. Spurgeon
If then, you
will be damned, let me have this one thing as a consolation for your misery,
that you are not damned for the lack of calling after; you are not lost for the
lack of weeping after, and not lost for the lack of praying after.
C.H. Spurgeon
If I never
won souls, I would sigh till I did. I would break my heart over them if I could
not break their hearts. Though I can understand the possibility of an earnest
sower never reaping, I cannot understand the possibility of an earnest sower
being content not to reap. I cannot comprehend any one of you Christian people
trying to win souls and not having results, and being satisfied without
results.
C.H. Spurgeon
Tearful Sowing and Joyful Reaping,
Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1869, v. 15, p. 237
If a church
truly loves God and the fame of His
name, it is jealous for more and more people to know and praise Him. Every
conversion means one more mouth is praising God, and every church planted is a
chorus of mouths. Our love for the world is born out of our love for God. The greater our love for God, the greater our desire for others to
display God’s glory by enjoying Him.
Jonathan Leeman
Reverberation,
Moody Publishers, 2011, p. 193.
It gave me no
pleasure to see people drink in my opinions if they seemed ignorant of Jesus
Christ and the value of being saved by Him. Sound conviction for sin,
especially the sin of unbelief, and a heart set on fire to be saved by Christ,
with a strong yearning for a truly sanctified soul-this was what delighted me;
those were the souls I considered blessed.
John Bunyan
Some
want to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell; I want to run a rescue
shop within a yard of hell.
C.T. Studd
While women
weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, I’ll fight;
while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight;
while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the
streets, where there remains one dark soul without the light of God – I’ll
fight! I’ll fight to the very end!
William Booth
The end of his very last speech.
I am
contented to consume my body, to sacrifice to God’s service, and to spend all
that I have, and to be spent myself, for the souls of men.
Richard Baxter
Quoted in: True Shepherding by Joel R.
Beeke, Tabletalk, April 2007, p. 55, Used by
Permission.
To preach the eternal lostness
of unbelievers without tears would be a cold and dead orthodoxy indeed. And to
teach it without a great emphasis upon our own responsibility, in the light of
hell, to do all we can, regardless of the cost, so that men might know the
gospel – that would be totally ugly and opposed to this biblical message that
those who are lost are my kind.
Francis Schaeffer
Letter to David Bryson, January, 14, 1983.
Lost people
matter to God, and so they must matter to us.
Keith Wright
The glory of
God, and, as our only means to glorifying Him, the salvation of human souls, is
the real business of life.
C.S. Lewis