Missionary Vision
Smith, who was considered too frail to be a missionary made a commitment: "If I can't go myself, I will send someone else."
Since no opportunity opened for foreign service, Smith began to see that he could evangelize others who might go in his stead. He was gaining confidence as a speaker; he had spoken at numerous youth meetings and during his Chicago years had served effectively as student pastor in two different Presbyterian churches. as assistant pastor at Rev. Morrow's Dale Presbyterian church, he prayed and believed for revival. It was at this time that he wrote "A Revival Hymn" that has remained popular during the years. Even in those early years the evangelization of the world was the supreme challenge of his life. "Missionary work does not belong to any one organization, it is the work of the whole church," he maintained.
Oswald J. Smith and Daisy Billings were married on September 12, 1916 at Dale Presbyterian Church where she was a deaconess and he the assistant pastor. Daisy was considered the gracious and generous helpmate who made possible Smith's dedicated life. She was the one who "held the ropes," "tarried by the stuff," sublimating her career to his. In later years, when their children were grown, she often joined Smith on his travels until her death in 1972.
Read more about this topic: Oswald J. Smith
Famous quotes containing the words missionary and/or vision:
“The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us.... Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.”
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
“The difference between human vision and the image perceived by the faceted eye of an insect may be compared with the difference between a half-tone block made with the very finest screen and the corresponding picture as represented by the very coarse screening used in common newspaper pictorial reproduction. The same comparison holds good between the way Gogol saw things and the way average readers and average writers see things.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)