A young, unbelieving Lottie Moon told classmates her middle initial stood for “Devil.” She pulled pranks, missed chapel and scoffed at religion. Eventually, her questioning nature led her to choose Christ and to obey her Lord’s calling to China.
There, Lottie experienced isolation and loneliness. She had a chance to marry and return home. Her response: “God had first claim on my life, and since the two conflicted, there could be no question about the result.” Lottie persisted through war and famine; the Chinese needed to know her Lord.
She wrote home, “Please say to the missionaries they are coming to a life of hardship, responsibility and constant self-denial.”
Apparently that didn’t deter the thousands who've followed Lottie during these 100 years since her death — going just as boldly, obediently and sacrificially.
“You have such a love and burden for the people, there is a certain amount of trust you have to give away to God,” says a modern-day missionary in East Asia. “It’s hard … to let go.” But God gave this young woman a clear “Yes, this is where I want you to go.”
And, like Lottie, she’s dependent on Southern Baptists’ gifts to support her.
Lottie said it best more than 100 years ago: “How many there are ... who imagine that because Jesus paid it all, they need pay nothing, forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in bringing back a lost world to God.”
Pray Southern Baptists will obediently and sacrificially give and go.
Pray that each and every one of our churches will BE His heart, His hands, His voice!
taken from the imb website
Lottie Moon wrote missions support letters from China and inspired
Southern Baptists to pray, give and go. “Oh! that my words could be as a
trumpet call stirring the hearts of my brethren and sisters to pray, to
labor, to give themselves to this people,” she wrote in the late 1800s.
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