When I began researching Lottie Moon for my novel, I expected to uncover historical details about this legendary missionary to China. What I didn’t anticipate was how deeply her story would challenge and encourage my own faith. 

From her rebellious youth to her profound impact on global missions, Lottie’s journey reveals God’s patient work in even the most resistant hearts. As I pieced together the early years of her remarkable life, these five lessons emerged—timeless truths that speak not just to Lottie’s era in the mid-late 19th century, but directly to our modern struggles with purpose, patience, and perseverance in following God’s call.

1. Keep praying—even if it’s been years and you don’t see how God is answering yet.

When Lottie Moon was a teen, she hated church. The young intellectual once declared to her sweet friends who invited her to church that her time would be better spent reading Shakespeare (source). She pulled pranks to skip church at home and chapel at boarding school. Yet her friends kept inviting her and praying for her despite all the rejection and eye-rolling. When Lottie was 18, her friends invited her (again) to revival services in town, and surprisingly, she said yes. God gripped her heart that night. After a restless night, she surrendered to God’s grace. A few weeks later, she was baptized in a local river—in the middle of December! You know she meant it because it was probably freezing cold. She just couldn’t wait to show everyone that God had changed her life and now she was his. I love that about Lottie. And I love how God worked through her friends’ unwavering faithfulness and persistent prayers to finally reach Lottie’s heart with his transformative grace.

2. Say yes to God—even if it doesn’t make sense right now, because God is working in the details you can’t see. 

When Lottie became a Christian at 18, she did a complete 180 from church-hating rebel to all-in believer. After growing up listening to her mother’s missionary biographies and her uncle’s missionary plans, she had always been interested in missions. Now that she was a Christian, she wanted to be a missionary and share Jesus with people who had never heard of Him. But back then, Southern Baptists only sent married women with their husbands, not single women. With international missions seemingly off the table, God provided teaching jobs for her in Kentucky and Georgia. For ten years, her teaching career flourished.

What Lottie couldn’t see was how God was working behind the scenes, preparing her path. In Kentucky, retired missionaries regularly spoke at Lottie’s church, keeping her passion for missions alive. As for the Southern Baptist mission board, Henry Allen Tupper became its leader in 1872 and prioritized sending single women to the field. When Lottie heard single women were being sent, her younger sister Edmonia shocked Lottie and the rest of their family by announcing her appointment to China. Then one Sunday in Georgia, after Lottie’s pastor preached on missions, she surrendered to God’s call to international service. Surely, he was making a way for her. Lottie followed her sister a year later in God’s perfect timing—a beautiful reminder that saying yes to God’s call, even during those ten uncertain years, positioned her perfectly for the mission He had prepared all along.

3. The skills and interests God gave you are for you to glorify God, serve others, and enjoy. 

During Lottie’s decade of waiting, God wasn’t wasting time—He was preparing her. Her experience teaching girls and running a school came in handy when she got to China and built a school for girls.

God gave Lottie a gift for languages. By graduation, Lottie was fluent in four. When she arrived in China where language learning materials were scarce, her experience gave her strategies to learn Chinese in just two years—much quicker than expected.

After her knowledge about Christianity moved from head to heart, she studied harder than ever. Always a smart and hardworking student, now she was determined that no one would think Christians were any less academic than non-believers. In China, she kept studying. In addition to Scripture, she kept up with new science and learned Chinese history, using her God-given intellect to build bridges and share the gospel effectively.

4. The horrible things God brought you through matter and can be used to bless others. 

God not only brought Lottie through painful experiences growing up in Virginia but transformed them into avenues of empathy and hope for others facing similar situations in China.

Lottie was no stranger to grief, having lost people she loved—people she needed. In China, she spent much time with missionaries and Chinese people who grieved daily. She could walk beside them as a friend who truly understood that pain.

Lottie also lived through the Civil War as a young adult. She graduated in May 1861, weeks after Confederate soldiers in South Carolina fired the war’s first shot. She worked in Georgia when General Sherman cut his destructive path from Atlanta to the sea. This crash course in chaos prepared her for the wars and rumors of war in China, teaching her how to keep living when everything’s falling apart and showing her that God could still build his kingdom even in the middle of a battlefield.

5. Embrace partnership in God’s mission—even when it means admitting you can’t do it all yourself. (This is a major theme in the sequel to Becoming Lottie Moon.)

Lottie didn’t decide one day to trust and follow Jesus on her own. And she didn’t get to China by herself or stay there for 39 years, ministering till the end, without any help. 

Lottie’s mother and sister’s influence shaped her early faith. Mentors like John Broadus and missionaries to China who were recruiting in Kentucky nurtured her calling. The denomination she joined provided structure and support for God’s calling in her life.

In China, Lottie initially worked alongside a small team of missionaries. But when God drew her to work in Pingtu, she faced profound isolation. Without a consistent missionary partner, her letters home revealed her struggle: “I pray no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been,” (source).

Lottie recognized the limitations of solitary ministry—both in effectiveness and sustainability. From her arrival in China, she wrote compelling letters and articles, urging Southern Baptists to participate in missions through prayer, financial support, or by answering the call themselves. During her isolation in Pingtu, she wrote to Baptists in America, pleading for two more single women to join her work.

God transformed that heartfelt plea into something extraordinary. Annie Armstrong, moved by Lottie’s letter, organized what would become the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering—an annual collection dedicated exclusively to missionary support. That first offering in 1888 exceeded expectations, funding not just two but three new missionaries. God provided the teammates Lottie needed in Pingtu.

Her life story beautifully shows God using the faithfulness of many individuals, united in God’s global mission, to transform Lottie and so many others in China. Lottie’s greatest legacy wasn’t what she accomplished alone, but what God did by weaving her story into His greater narrative—turning one missionary’s lonely plea into a worldwide movement of prayer, giving, and going that continues to bring the gospel to the nations today.

Ready to walk alongside Lottie on her extraordinary journey? Grab Becoming Lottie Moon today and experience these lessons come to life! And sign up for my newsletter now to be first in line when the sequel drops—you won’t want to miss Lottie’s adventures in China where God’s purpose unfolds in dramatic and unexpected ways!