“Were it not for the consciousness of Christ as my life, hour by hour, I could not go on. But He is teaching me the glorious lessons of His sufficiency, and each day I am carried onward with no feeling of strain or fear of collapse.”
–J. Hudson Taylor
Who is J. Hudson Taylor and how did he get to that place?
Okay, that very question should my naivete. Nothing like taking in my morning dose of Google. J. Hudson Taylor, for those of you who like me didn’t recognize the name, WAS (he lived from 1832 to 1905) “the most widely used missionary in China’s history. During his 51 years of service there, his China Inland Mission established 20 mission stations, brought 849 missionaries to the field (968 by 1911), trained some 700 Chinese workers, raised four million dollars by faith, and developed a witnessing Chinese church of 125,000.”
You can read the more here: http://www.eaec.org/faithhallfame/hudsontaylor.htm.
One of the things I came to discover early when I began sharing these morning ramblings is that the original source of my inspiration is not necessarily where I end up. This morning for example, as I was searching for who Hudson Taylor was, I came across these words attributed to him by Leslie T. Lyall:
“God’s work, done God’s way, will not lack God’s supply.”
Those words, for some reason, sound familiar. Yet they resonate with what I said yesterday about “more”. And I think these particular words may have been where God was leading me. He just wanted me to discover them. And he wants me to take that daily inventory:
Am I doing God’s work?
Am I doing God’s work His way?
Those are questions I need to be asking myself. The thing is that to answer the second question, the first question has to be specific. It can’t be answered “yes” or “no”. And then, once I can answer the first question, in a specific way, I give way to another quote from Hudson:
“I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God: first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.”
Who among us does not want to do a great work for God? I want to stand in judgment and declare that I did GREAT things. Not in order that I may boast, but that I may fulfill my heart’s desire for Him who has done unimaginable things for me.