WILL YOU GO?

I have therefore whereof I may glory through Jesus Christ in those things which pertain to God. For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed,

Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation. (Romans 15:17-20)

My soul sometimes pants and longs for the liberty to preach Christ where he was never preached before; not to build upon another man’s foundation, but to go to some untrodden land, some waste where the foot of Christ’s minister was never seen, that there “the solitary place might be glad for [us] and the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose” (Isaiah 35:1 KJV).

I have made it a solemn question whether I might not testify in China or India the grace of Jesus, and in the sight of God I have answered it.

I solemnly feel that my position in England will not permit my leaving the sphere in which I now am, or else tomorrow I would offer myself as a missionary.

You who are free from so great a work as that which is cast upon me—you who have talents as yet undevoted to any special end, and powers of being as yet unconsecrated to any given purpose, and unconfined to any one sphere; do you not hear my Master saying, in tones of plaintive sorrow, blended with an authority that is not to be denied, ” (Matthew 28:19 KJV)? ((Charles SpurgeonAt the Master’s Feet [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], June 16.))

Charles Spurgeon

Further reading