Real Missionaries Never Make a Sacrifice

I feel I need to reemphasize something that I didn't emphasize enough in the post I made a few days ago.  Surely Christians and missionaries do "die to themselves" in this life, but not in any ultimate sense, even in this life!  Christians die to this fleeting vapor of a life in order to obtain TRUE LIFE with God, starting now and lasting forever!

Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundred-fold now in this time, house and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life."  - Mark 10:28-30.

What we give up, God will be for us - 100 times and more for us, as we follow Him.


David Livingstone, missionary to Africa, once said,

"For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa.  Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice."

Taken from Desiring God by John Piper.  You can read his chapter on missions online here, or the whole book here!  (I cannot recommend this chapter and book enough to you.)