The Promiser and Mr. Taylor

We have a hard time believing promises until they are kept because we have we have seen them broken too many times. In that way, we think promises aren't are to be broken, but they can be broken as simply as they are made.

Promises do not seem to be worth basing our lives on.

I just finished reading Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret for the 5th or 6th time. My uncle gave it to me to read around 20 years ago but I was much too young and much too fearful to understand the message. I was too immature to "get" the missionary's life and the joys and agonies that came with his gift of faith in a Faithful God.

Mr. Taylor's story didn't resonate with me until I needed to hear it. It isn't that I have grown "older" or "more mature" necessarily, just more desperate.

That's where I am again. Needing someone to constantly remind me with his life that I can trust the promises of the Father. Slow hearted as I am so often, I need someone around that says "see, I told you our Father could be trusted!" Many times that is my wife or a good friend, but this time it was a man long gone Home whose life reminds me that the world of radical, deep [read: normal] trust is the REAL world in Gods kingdom.

Oh, how much the Father would do if we would give him room by giving up fear that leads to small heartedness?! Fear begets more fear, but one act of restful faith in Gods promises dissipates fear and opens our eyes (even if too slowly) to a world where we are free to risk big things that would show how faithful the Father really is. What a big world that is!

Promises, though, are not all sweet and milk toasty. Many seem to inspire deeper fear ("the world will hate you" "I will show him how much he must suffer for my name"), but that isn't a new fear. It's the same old fear that was only awakened when it was heard.

But even in that, the Father beckons us to draw near to him with a faith the people entrenched in the thinking of this world would call foolish and reckless. Those who live the faith of Jesus and who feast on his promises see that the World is an illusion set up by the workers of darkness to draw our attention away from the Jesus who can master the elements of nature by walking on water and fearfully fix our gaze on the wind and the waves.

So, in finishing this book, I am sad to miss out on meeting with my deceased mentor in the life of Christ. So many times the Lord has used Mr. Taylor's story to remind me that He is in our story... at just the right time. I guess now it is time to live what I have been taught.

More than anything, though, I long to know that breaking promises is not in God's character. If that is true, then I can bet my life and everything I care about on them.

Father, show your faithfulness by giving us a heart-felt faith in who you say you are. Make your words more real to us than the narrative spoken to us by the world. May we not depend on faithless, worldly means to live out the lives you have given us. For your names sake, show your strength in our weakness. May your Word by our deepest encouragement and may praying in fellowship with you be the place where we depend on you and know you are coming through. Proclaim your faithfulness to your promises and your character in our lives so that everyone around us will know you are alive and that you for us because of Jesus.

In Jesus' name, for his sake in the hearts of all around us (including us)

Walking while Waiting

Hudson Taylor from "Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret" (pg. 187)

"It is no small comfort to me to know that God has called me to my work, putting me where I am and as I am. I have not sought the position and I dare not leave it. He knows why he places me here- whether to do, or learn, or suffer. 'He that believeth shall not make haste.' That is no easy lesson for you or me; but I honestly think that ten years would be well spent, and we should have our full value for them, if we thoroughly learned it in them...Moses seems to have been taken aside for forty years to learn it.... Meanwhile, let us beware alike of the hate of the impatient, impetuous flesh, and of disappointment and weariness."

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living! Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!
(Psalm 27:13-14 ESV)

The Words I Wish I Had

Sometimes I need words. These are the words I wish I had to write down because it is exactly how Adrienne and I feel right now. His past tense is our present tense. This is a lot, but it is worth reading...because I know we aren't the only ones who need these words:

From Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret:

     "Well...my mind has been greatly exercised for six to eight months past, feeling the need personally and for our Mission of more holiness, life and power in our souls. But personal need stood first and was the greatest. I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living nearer to God. I prayed, agonized, fasted, strove, made resolutions, read the Word more diligently, sought more time for meditation- but all without avail. Everyday, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me.
     I knew that if only I could abide in Christ all would be well, but I could not. I would be gin the day with prayer, determined not to take my eye off him for a moment, but the pressure of duties, sometimes often very trying, and constant interruptions apt to be so wearying, caused me to forget him...
     Then came the question, is there no rescue? Must it be thus  to the end- constant conflict, and too often defeat? How could I preach with sincerity that, to those who receive Jesus, 'to them he gave the power to become the sons of God' (i.e. Godlike) when it was not so in my experience?...I felt i was a child of God. His Spirit in my heart would cry, in spite of all, 'Abba, Father.' But to rise to my privileges as a child, I was utterly powerless.
     ...There was nothing I so much desired as holiness, nothing I so much needed; but far from in any measure attaining it, the more I strove after it, the more it alluded my grasp, until hope itself almost died out, and I began to think that- perhaps to make heaven the sweeter- God would not give it down here...
     I would not give you the impression that this was the only experience of those long, weary months. It was a too frequent state of soul, and that towards which I was tending, which almost ended in despair. And yet, never did Christ seem more precious; a Saviour who could and would save such a sinner!...And sometimes there were seasons not only of peace but of joy in the Lord; but they were transitory, and at best there was a sad lack of power...
     All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical questions was- how to get it out. He was rich truly, but I was poor; He was strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it into my puny branch was the question. As gradually light dawned, I saw that faith was the only requisite-was the hand to lay hold on His fullness and make it mine. But I had not this faith." [Bolding is my emphasis]

The truth I cling to now:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 ESV)

Hudson Taylor and the Shepherd of His Soul

In a letter to his children, Hudson Taylor wrote:

"I wish you, my precious children, knew what it was to give your hearts to Jesus to keep everyday. I used to try to keep my own heart right, but it would always be going wrong. So at last I had to give up trying myself, and to accept the Lord's offer to keep it for me. Don't you think that is the best way?"

-Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, page 178

For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:25)

A Promise to Thirst With

John 7:37-38:

On the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

Hudson Taylor, in a letter to a friend:

“‘Come to me and drink’. Not, come and take a hasty draught; not, come and slightly alleviate, or for a short time remove one’s thirst. No! ‘drink,’ or ‘be drinking’ constantly, habitually. The cause of thirst may be irremediable. One coming, one drinking may refresh and comfort: but we are to be ever coming, ever drinking. No fear of emptying the fountain or exhausting the river!"

Unafraidness

Jesus wasn’t ever afraid to express the way he was affected by people and his circumstances. He wasn’t ever afraid.

Thursday of this week was our last day traveling to Seattle and our first day arriving. My emotions were at times boiling over with fear and frustration and other times bottled up behind fear of who I know I can be when those emotions take over.

So, after 2200 miles plus driving, a week of being in different beds while longing for our own, missing heart friends and seeing only unfamiliar faces, and looking forward to an unknown (and often scary) future, I almost broke down completely at Palouse Falls State Park in Washington.

I am with my favorite people in the world in some of the most beautiful places in the world and I am emotionally stunted, frustrated and not present. The reflected Beauty of the falls can’t move my immovable heart. My wife and daughter pick up on how I am feeling and decide just to let me be so I don’t overreact towards them.

The hardest thing of all: I am completely aware of all of this. I am completely aware of my sinful self-absorption and how my faith-drained thoughts are fueling my emotional disconnectedness.

These are not my finest moments.

On my mind the entire time is Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

If I am “crucified with Christ” and “Christ lives in me” then why am I still a man who can get to this place?  Where is his power not to live this way? Where is his power not to be afraid and, even better, to live in Jesus’ unafraidness?

I guess you call that “faith.” Unafriadness is called faith.

Somehwere between Palouse Falls and the Columbia River on I-90, considering these precious words from Paul’s letter, the Spirit took me to the heart of it: I know how much we need the Father to come through in so many ways, but I do not always believe he will come through. Desperation with out the feeling of hope.

I turned to my sweet wife and shared these things with her and, for the first time in too long, I started to cry. Not the kind that makes our faces look different the rest of the day, but the kind that helps me express the deepest part of what I am feeling: I want to live trusting Jesus.

The kind of trust that sees the deep need in front of us and rests in knowing that, if the Father didn’t spare his Son, how will he hold back anything else that is good? (see Rom 8:31-32)

What if I could stop striving (especially on the inside) and willfully let go and hold on to the One who made promises to us because of who we are in Christ?

What if the crucified life is not even a life of trying to stir up preciously small amounts of faith, but living out Jesus’ very own faith?

As missionary to inland China, Hudson Taylor once wrote to his sister:

“All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was-how do I get it out…I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it in my puny branch was the question…I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has not He promised to abide with me- never to leave me, never to fail me?”

Jesus was never afraid to express himself because he knew, not that he had it altogether (which he did, but that’s another story), but because he knew the Father was with him. He trusted the Father by the Spirit to shape his responses to people and to circumstances.

He knew he wasn’t alone in engaging the world and loving people. 

So my heart question is “what would our lives look like if we lived Jesus’ faith and didn’t rely on our own?” How would we feel waking up and what would we see in people as we passed them on the street? How would my words be more gentle…or more confrontative?

I want the kind of life where I no longer live, but I know Christ lives in me…and can rest in that. Where all of life is rest, and that is where my Savior shows his glory in ways that make us all marvel.

Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret

I never want to exalt the life of one person in a way that seems to draw our attention away from all that Jesus is and all he is for us, but sometimes, I do want to draw attention to how the Spirit has worked in the life of someone else to encourage us that He is still working and not merely confined to the pages and time of scripture.

 (How amazing it would be if I actually fully trusted that precious truth!!)

So, with that being said, I want to share what I have read about the life of J. Hudson Taylor, child of the Father, husband, father and missionary to the inland China in the 19th century. His life is portrayed in the book his son and daughter-in-law wrote about him called Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret.

From the Introduction by Doctor Doctor Terry L. Miethe (two PhD.s):

“But Hudson Taylor did not start out to impact ‘millions.’ He started out to love God, to honor Him, and to share His love with individual sinners who needed so desperately to know Him.  Jesus called Taylor (and us) to be ‘faithful,’ not 'successful.’ And God added the increase. So shall it be with us, I pray."

J. Hudson Taylor