James Hudson Taylor (1832 – 1905)
Christian missionary to China in the Methodist tradition, and founder of the China Inland Mission (renamed as Overseas Missionary Fellowship, OMF International in 1964).
When you need it, rest in body; rest always in spirit.
Let there be no reservation; give yourselves up fully and wholly to Him whose you are and whom you wish to serve in this work; and then there can be no disappointment.
If we could offer to the ungodly a worldly plan which would ensure their prospering in all that they undertake, how eagerly they would embrace it! And yet when GOD Himself reveals an effectual plan to His people how few avail themselves of it!.
Satan may build a hedge about us and fence us in and hinder our movements, but he cannot roof us in and prevent our looking up.
All God’s giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.
Some are jealous of being successors of the Apostles. I would rather be a successor of the Samaritan woman, who, while the Apostles went for meat and forgot souls, forgot her water pot in her zeal to spread the good tidings.
The vine . . . is not the root merely, but all - root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit: and Jesus is not only that: He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we ever dreamed, wished for, or needed.
Wave after wave of trial rolled over us; but at the end of the year some of us were constrained to confess, that we had learned more of the loving-kindness of the Lord than in any previous year of our lives.
The work of a true missionary is work indeed, often very monotonous, apparently not very successful, and carried on through great and varied but unceasing difficulties.
The Apostolic plan was not to raise ways and means, but to go and do the work.
Many there are who fail to see that there can be but one lord, and that those who do not make GOD Lord of all do not make Him Lord at all.
Our eyes must be upon the Lord, not upon His people. His means – not ours, not theirs, but His means are large; and to a faithful steward He will prove a faithful master.
If this is a real work for God it is a real conflict with Satan.
The use of means ought not to lessen our faith in GOD; and our faith in GOD ought not to hinder our using whatever means He has given us for the accomplishment of His own purposes.
I so want you to realise this principle of working with God and asking Him for everything. If the work is at the command of God, then we can go to Him in full confidence for workers; and when God gives the workers, we can go to Him for means to supply their needs.
With GOD all things are possible, and no conviction ever takes place save by the almighty power of the HOLY GHOST. The great need, therefore, of every Christian worker is to know GOD.
If I had a thousand pounds, China should have it. If I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him?
After proving God’s faithfulness for many years, I can testify that times of want have ever been times of spiritual blessing, or have led to them.
Where the need is greatest let us be found gladly obeying the MASTER’S command. For it is in the harvest-field, it is among the reapers, that we shall find Him.
A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in little things is a great thing.