Tuesday, May 29, 2018

I Will Never Leave You

...As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will
never leave you nor forsake you.  Joshua 1:5b

I thought that holiness, practical holiness, was to be 
attained by a diligent use of the means of grace. 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 eluded 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 do not think that 
was striving to attain it in my own strength. I knew 
was powerless. I told the Lord so, and asked Him to 
give me help and strength. Sometimes I almost believed 
that He would keep me and uphold me; but on looking 
back in the evening--alas! there was but sin and failure 
to confess and mourn before God...All the time I felt 
assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the 
practical question 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 little 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. 

I strove for faith, but it would not come; I tried to exer-
cise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous 
supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our pre-
cious Savior, my guilt and helplessness seemed to in-
crease. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared 
with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which 
could not or would  prayed for faith, but it came not. 
What was I to do?

When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in 
a letter from (my dear friend) McCarthy was used to re-
move the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God re-
vealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had
never known it before. McCarthy, who had much been
exercised by the same sense of failure but saw the light
before I did, wrote (I quote from memory):

But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after
faith, but by resting in the Faithful One.

As I read, I saw it all! "If we believe not, he abideth faith-
ful" I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how
joy flowed!") that He said, "I will never leave thee."

"Ah, there is rest!" I thought. "I have striven in vain to
rest in Him. I'll strive no more. For has He not promised
to abide with me--never to leave me nor forsake me?"
And dearie, He never will!  Hudson Taylor

Reader, I believe that Taylor wrestled with this question
when he was one of the few missionaries living in China.
He was not married and was seeing practically no fruit.
I have posted his biography below. It is the wide view.
His biography--Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret-- is much
more personal and includes his many struggles. He was a
pioneer

When I was in nursing school I had a classmate whose
parents were with China Inland Mission which was begun
by Hudson Taylor. I wish I had spent more time with her
and listened to her stories of China and of also ending up
in Boarding School away from home.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/missionaries/hudson-taylor.html

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