Message of the Month by Pastor Paul May 2020
LEARNING FROM A SPIRITUAL GIANT
Three years ago I moved from Norfolk in the Southeast of England where I had been ministering for over 40 years, to Barnsley in the North of England. When I did that, people kept asking me “Why Barnsley?” If I had a £1 for every time I was asked that, I would be a rich man!
Of course, the spiritual answer would have been “The Lord told me to go there” - but He didn’t – He doesn’t communicate with me like that. However, I had prayed for guidance and looking back I can see that He led me every step of the way.
I am truly grateful to God for the lovely new-build house I’m living in now – even though I found it through Google - the Lord can use modern methods! That’s because He is the most modern person in the universe - He’s already a billion, zillion+ years in the future! Anyway, the point is that I ended up in Yorkshire and I started exploring my new hometown of Barnsley.
On one of the first Sunday mornings I was there, I was out early – praying and looking to see what churches were around and I discovered the HUDSON TAYLOR trail. James Hudson Taylor (1832 –1905), was a missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission (now OMF International). I was so excited to discover that he was born in Barnsley and grew up here with his mother and father, who was a pharmacist, and also had a great interest in missionary work in China.
Although Hudson Taylor turned out to be a spiritual giant, he did not look like one, he was small of stature with fair curly hair and although he was clever, he never completed his studies to become a medical doctor. This picture shows him at the age of just 21 before he left for China for the first time.
There were a number of missionaries already there, and he soon decided to dress in Chinese costume with a shaved forehead and pigtail - which caused shock and controversy with them - but he took the words of the apostle Paul “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” as his reason for doing this. In addition, he was a trained as a pharmacist and he used his medical skills in his ministry which gave him an opening to speak with many people.
He spent the rest of his life - 51 years in reaching out to the people of China with the gospel. In 1865 he started his own inter-denominational ‘China Inland Mission’ and began recruiting others to join him as missionaries - starting with 16 volunteers. By 1881 there were 100 missionaries and by 1883 this had risen to a total of 225 with 59 churches established and by 1888 there were 341 missionaries across China in the CIM. After his death, the China Inland Mission gained the notable distinction of being the largest Protestant mission agency in the world.
There are a lot of lessons that we can learn from him and the best way to do that is as much as possible, to listen to his own words...
PRAYER
“I myself, for instance, am not especially gifted, and am shy by nature, but my gracious and merciful God and Father inclined Himself to me, and when I was weak in faith He strengthened me while I was still young. He taught me in my helplessness to rest on Him, and to pray even about little things.”
“I have seen many men work without praying, though I have never seen any good come
out of it; but I have never seen a man pray without working.”
“The power of prayer has never been tried to its full capacity in any church. If we want to see mighty wonders of divine grace and power wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let the whole Church answer God’s standing challenge:
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee
great and mighty things, which thou knows not.”
“You must go forward on your knees.”
THE WORD
“Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards.
Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.”
"Whatever is your best time in the day, give that to communion with God."
“There are three great truths, 1st, That there is a God;
2nd, That He has spoken to us in the Bible;
3rd, That He means what He says.
FAITH
One of the major principles of Hudson Taylor’s ministry, was living by faith, following the example of his friend George Muller - never asking for money or telling anyone what his needs were. Those who joined his mission were expected to do the same:
“God isn’t looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him.”
“Depend on it. God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply.”
“God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him.”
SERVICE
All the great personalities who achieved great things in the history of the church – the Apostle Paul, Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Spurgeon (who became a friend of HT), had one thing in common – they worked extremely hard for the Kingdom of God and HT worked as hard as any of them.
As Ruth Tucker says in A Biographical History of Christian Missions: “No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more systematized plan of evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor.”
"The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed."
"I have found that there are 3 stages in every great work of God:
1. it is impossible, 2. it is difficult, 3. it is done."
"I used to ask God to help me.
Then I asked if I might help Him.
I ended up by asking Him to do His work through me"
"There are three indispensable requirements for a missionary:
1. Patience 2. Patience 3. Patience."
“As our Father makes many a flower to bloom unseen in the lonely desert,
[let us] do all that we can do, as under God’s eye, though no other eye ever take
note of it.”
“Let us never forget that what we ARE is more important than what we do.”
DIFFICULTIES
From the early days of his ministry to the end Hudson Taylor faced many deep difficulties including rejection by the Chinese people he was trying to reach, being caught up in civil wars, opposition from other missionaries, financial hardship, the loss
of his beloved wife Maria after just 12 years of marriage, the deaths in his own lifetime of 5 of his children plus 3 babies at birth and times of severe sickness himself.
Yet he never gave up or blamed God – he said: “It does not matter how great the pressure is. What really matters is where the pressure lies - whether it comes between you and God, or whether it presses you nearer His heart.”
“Carrying the cross does mean following in Jesus' footsteps.
And in His footsteps are rejection, broken heartedness, persecution and death.
There are not two Christs - an easy going one for easy going Christians,
and a suffering one for exceptional believers. There is only one Christ.
Are we willing to follow His lead?”
“All our difficulties are only platforms for the manifestations of His grace, power and love.”
"Jesus is our strength, and what we cannot do or bear, He can both do and bear in us."
“Many Christians estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources,
and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt.
All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God
because they reckoned on His power and presence with them.”
THE SPIRIT
Despite all that had been achieved over the years, in 1892 Hudson Taylor made this announcement to all the CIM workers:
“The supreme want of all missions in the present day is the manifested presence of the Holy Ghost. Hundreds of thousands of tracts and portions of Scripture have been put into circulation… tens of thousands of miles have been traversed in missionary journeys but how small has been the issue in the way of definite conversions!” So he called everyone “Let us accept by faith the filling and definitely receive the Holy Ghost.”
Hudson also said: “Since the days of Pentecost, has the whole church ever put aside every other work and waited upon Him for ten days, that the Spirit’s power might be manifested? We give too much attention to method and machinery and resources, and too little to the source of power.”
After they did that in their conference on April 16th 1892, it was reported that “God is working in our midst emptying and humbling one another and filling with the Holy Spirit. We are having frequent meetings
full of liberty and power.”
(My comment): Before He went back to heaven Jesus told His disciples to tarry for the Spirit (Acts 1:4). They had the most fantastic message – but they were not allowed to give it until they had received “power from on high” (Luke 24:49). We will only be truly effective when we combine preaching the Word with the power of the Spirit.
It’s not the Spirit OR the Word it’s the Spirit AND the Word.
The vast underground church in China today is estimated to be 25 million believers. Many of these have direct or indirect connections with the work of God’s humble servant Hudson Taylor and some of them have visited and continue to visit Barnsley to do the Trail in remembrance and gratitude to God for him.
Oh for more Hudson Taylor’s! As someone else has said: “It doesn’t take a trip to China to be an effective witness for the Lord. Start right outside of your door. Tell someone about Jesus today and get on fire for the Lord, just like Hudson Taylor.”
FOOTNOTE
After Hudson Taylor’s death in 1905 the CIM continued to expand - involved in starting churches, literature work, evangelism and running hospitals and schools. By 1915, 1,063 workers were located at 227 work stations throughout China. The mission’s peak was in 1934 with 1,368 missionaries serving 364 stations. The work of CIM continued until Communism took over China in 1949. Many missions left, but despite the difficulty for all foreign workers, the CIM first issued a call for missionaries to stay and then brought in 49 new workers in 1948 and 1949.
In 1950 the CIM General Director decided that further work in China was impossible and ordered all missionaries to leave. When this happened the CIM decided that the mission would continue and expand to new fields: Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan.
Today they are a team of over 2000 workers, from 40 nations, serving approximately 100 people groups in East Asia – and among the Asian Diaspora worldwide.
In 2015 OMF International celebrated 150 years of God’s faithfulness to the mission.
