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)

For Your Name's Sake

Father,

Until now I believe we have asked you only to do those things that we can handle in our own.

I am afraid to be overwhelmed in thinking that I have to carry the burden of all that you might do in your love.

Please give us a vision of what you want to do that is so great that it is too much for us! But also, please give us the grace to be able to trust you with the moment by moment of it. For your name's sake.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7 ESV)

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21 ESV)

The Mountains are Still There

Today is the first day in a few days that I cannot stop and gawk at Mr. Rainier. There are times when people have asked “Is that it?” unsure if what they are seeing is The Mountain or not. But, when you look South through the Seattle skyline and actually see The Mountain, you know that it is “it.”

This morning, the clouds that typically slowly crawl over the horizon are hiding the mountains. The marvels of sculpted granite sprinkled with snow are somewhere behind the rain.

Somewhere hidden from my sight.

I long to see the beauty behind the clouds. There is a comfort in seeing them, feeling small in compared to them. There is a sense of being put in my rightful place and, not only being okay with that, but longing for it.

But, today, I will not see them. I will have to remember that they are immovable. I will have to hold on to the truth my eyes have seen in the past: they are not going anywhere. It is in their very nature to not go anywhere.

There are days that I will simply have to remember the truth that the mountains do not go away because I cannot see them… and wait for the time when the clouds part and I can see again the Beauty that is hidden behind the storms.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…By faith [Moses] left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” Hebrews 11: 1, 27

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

636 and some change

That is how many miles we traveled to get to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The first few miles were the hardest by far.

Leaving the Mission House early Thursday morning was much harder than we expected. None of us were really ready to go. Each of us was tired from a too-late evening before and morning anxiety over the unknown future. Our things wouldn't all fit in the van like we planned and they seemed to multiply as I put them in.

The hardest part is what driving away represented: a page turned and a chapter closed. As we leave there is a feeling of being left behind.

But we had to drive away. We passed places that remind us of special times and even more special friends.

Within these miles were our daughter's only house so far. Within these miles were places where we had some of the most significant heart to heart conversations of our lives. Most of all, within these miles were places where we met with our God and heard his voice.

But we had to drive away. We had to leave. We had to drive forward toward towards the grace our Father has promised us in the future.

Jesus has already traveled this road. He had to leave home. There is something about hearing the Father's heart that is compelling...and leads us to faith-fully feel out of control.

We traveled 636 miles and some change in what one author calls "Future Grace." We believe that the One who calls, also compels, and also comes through.

 Though the grief of leaving stirs up old, long forgotten doubt, the faith of going opens up new territory in knowing the Father's faithfulness.

The next miles are a road we have never traveled before, but we travel with Immanuel. So many that we treasure are still around mile one, but the One who dwells with us is big enough to be with them and with us.

"By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." (Hebrews 11:8-10 ESV)