Father Skills

It's interesting to read how totally influential the role of James Taylor was in shaping the life of his children, and in particular his son, James Hudson Taylor, who was one of the first missionaries to China. I guess it's an obvious point: the apple never falls far from the tree. Whether you like it or not, your character will be replicated in your children, for better or worse. I really feel God is saying "work on your character now, for shortly you'll be a father".

The thing about James Taylor is that he lead a very attainable life, one which you can actually see yourself leading. From the biography he appeared to be a great man leading a regular life. Nothing about it was overly remarkable. He was diligent, disciplined, loved God and loved his family. And in it he produced Hudson Taylor who was off the scale in the purposes God used him for. Hudson Taylor is one of the sole reasons why there's now 40 million Christians in China, when previously there were none. His dad, James Taylor, set a great standard for fatherhood.

Below are excerpts describing James Taylor from the 'Biography of James Hudson Taylor' by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor; pages 10 to 14.

A gifted speaker, he gave much care to the preparation of his discourses. He was an excellent chemist, too, and as a business man he was highly respected. So scrupulous was he in financial matters that he made it a rule to pay every debt the day it fell due.

'If I let it stand over a week,' he would say, 'I defraud my creditor of interest, if only a fractional sum.'

Possessed by a profound conviction of God's infinite faithfulness, he took the Bible very simply, believing it was of all books the most practical if put to the test of experience.

The children lived in touch with their father almost as much as with their mother, and he felt himself no less responsible for their training. Though he was stern and even quick-tempered at times, the influence James Taylor exerted in the life of his son can hardly be over-estimated. He was decidedly a disciplinarian. But without some such element in his early training who can tell whether Hudson would ever have become the man that he was? With James Taylor, to keep the children moderately happy and good-tempered was not the point. He was a man with a supreme sense of duty. The thing that ought to be done was the thing he put first, always. Ease, pleasure, self-improvement, had to take whatever place they could. He was a man of faith that went hand in hand with works of the most practical kind.

Family worship he conducted regularly, after both breakfast and tea. Every member of the household had to be present, and the passage read was explained in such practical fashion that even the children could not fail to see it's application. He was very particular about giving them the whole of the Word of God, omitting nothing. The Old Testament as well as the New was taken in regular course, and at the close of every day's reading the date was carefully entered in the family Bible.

He explained to them the necessity for maintaining the life of the soul by prayer and Bible study, as the life of the body is maintained by exercise and food. To omit this was to neglect the one thing needful. He spoke of it frequently as a matter of vital importance, and arranged for everyone in the house to have at least half an hour daily, alone with God. The result was that even the little ones began to discover the secret of a happy day.

China held the first place in their father's sympathies, and he often used to lament the indifference of the Church to its appalling need. It especially troubled him that the denomination to which he belonged should be doing nothing for its evangelisation.

Working Backwards

I watched the film "Knowing" last week (the film with Nicolas Cage, with the picture of the world in meltdown). It was a rubbish film so don't watch it! But one part really stuck out. It was a scene where we encountered a woman who had known the exact date of her death all her life. She was a young woman and the date was close at hand. And it was accurate to the exact day.

If we knew our exact death date, like "Thursday 10th October 2019", that would change everything. After you got over the initial freaking out period, you would probably plan everything around that date. You might think of everything you wanted to do and work backwards from the day you die.

When you're young you don't think like that. We're naive enough to think that time is on our side and we'll actually do something with our lives later on. But maybe working back from our death is the exact approach we need to take. How do we want to serve God for the next 50 or 60 years? What do we want to achieve in the next three years? Maybe we need to put actual dates in the diary and work backwards. Otherwise we'll wake up when we're 60 and say an almighty "D'oh!".

Trajectory

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
Ephesians 2:10

This is nothing to do with salvation (which is a free gift by grace alone); it's about the purposes of God for your life, the path you walk and the works you actually complete. It's like you can start out walking the path and completing the works God prepared for you to do. But maybe something in your trajectory is slightly off.

Maybe it's something in your mindset, habitual sin, or a lack of zeal. Slowly but surely, if you don't course-correct, you end up miles off course. You might not even notice until you're 40 or 50, and you realise that you've missed much of the purposes God had for your life. The gap from what might have been is larger than ever. And perhaps unobtainable.

James Hudson Taylor seemed to course-correct very early on. And he walked this way throughout his life. His trajectory was probably very very similar to God's plan A for his life.

At church last Sunday (15.11.09) Andrew Wilson was speaking and read a verse from Genesis 5. It was 5:23-24 and reads "all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him".

That key phrase for me was "Enoch walked with God". It fires off a real ache in your gut. A real desire to have that. If there was one line written about you after you're gone surely it would be "[your name] walked with God".

James Hudson Taylor and the threat of a mediocre Christian life

I've just started re-reading the Biography of James Hudson Taylor by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, which I first read when I was about 19. It's without a doubt one of the best books I've ever read. Unfortunately it's out of print, but I got an old copy off Amazon.co.uk for £2.75. Not bad!

I'm on chapter 1, which details his teenage conversion to Christ in the summer of 1849. What follows is almost an immediate cooling off period from the emotion, passion and joy of his conversion; and the onset of lethargy.

What I find incredibly impressive is how utterly devastated he was by the threat of a mediocre Christian life. He was horrified with his lack of desire to pray and read his bible. He was also desperately aware of the sin in his life, and his failure to overcome it.

But how he totally blew past it. He ended up pleading with God. And God answered –  by giving him his life's mission and sending him to China. And yet at this point he's a 17 year old lad who's only been a Christian for a few months. Quite remarkable.

Below are extracts I pulled from pages 19 to 23 which detail this account:

The joy in the Lord and in His service was not the only experience as summer passed away. Coldness of heart crept in, forgetfulness, indifference. Somehow there seemed to be a gap between the power of the Lord Jesus to save 'to the uttermost' and the needs of everyday life in shop and home. The good he longed to do he did not, and the evil he hated too often had the mastery.

At such times two courses are open to the perplexed and troubled soul. One is to abandon the ideal, and gradually sink down to a low level Christian life is which there is neither joy nor power. The other is just to go on with the Lord, and because of His 'exceeding great and precious promises' to claim complete deliverance not from the guilt only, but also from the mastery of sin.

Nothing less than this could satisfy Hudson Taylor. Conversion with him had been no easy-going assent of the mind to abstract creed. The Cross of Christ had cut him off for ever from the old life, and from rest in anything the world could give. Nothing could satisfy him now but unbroken fellowship with God. Hence times of spiritual lethargy were and indifference were alarming. He could not take backsliding easily. It was nothing less than full deliverance upon which he had set his heart – real holiness, and daily victory over sin.

Outwardly things were much as usual, but inwardly he was almost driven to despair. A deadness of soul had begun to steal over him. Prayer was an effort and the bible devoid of interest. Christmas was close at hand and business correspondingly pressing. There seemed no time for quiet waiting upon God, even had the desire been present. But it was not. At times a terrible fear assailed him, that he was drifting he knew not whither and might miss the purpose of God for his life now, if not hereafter.

What was it that kept him from the life for which he longed? What was the secret of his frequent failure and backsliding in heart? Was there something not fully surrendered, some disobedience or unfaithfulness to light? Fervently he prayed that God would show him the hindrance whatever it might be, and enable him to put it away. He had come to an end of self, to a place where only God could deliver, where he must have His succour, His enlightenment, His aid. It was a life-and-death matter. Everything seemed at stake. Like one of old he was constrained to cry, 'I will not let thee go except thou bless me.'

And then, alone upon his knees, a great purpose arose within him. If only God would work on his behalf, would break the power of sin and save him, spirit soul and body, for time and eternity, he would renounce all earthly prospects and be utterly at His disposal. He would go anywhere, do anything, suffer whatever His cause might demand, and be wholly given to His will and service. This was the cry of his heart; nothing held back –  if only God would deliver him and keep him from falling.

'Never shall I forget', he wrote, 'the feeling that came over me then. Words can never describe it. I felt I was in the presence of God, entering into covenant with the Almightly. I felt as though I wished to withdraw my promise, but could not. Something seemed to say "Your prayer is answered, your conditions are accepted". And from that time the conviction never left me that I was called to China.'

Same old stuff

"If you're not satisfied with the permanent output of your life it could be that you're just spinning your wheels, never engaged in what really counts."
G Campbell White

Most of life just seems to be dealing with the same old stuff: busyness, temptations, struggles, tiredness and such. What sparked off this thought was reading my journal from 5 years ago. I read it, and I realised it's all the same old stuff! Over and over, round and round. It's easy to think "when I get past this issue [insert your issue] life will be better and I can really focus". But maybe those same struggles will be there for the rest of our lives. Maybe we'll never get past them, maybe we can only get on top of them.

Maybe we have to shape-up and realise that all of life is a fight. Rather than be all overcome, living a half-hearted Christian life, we have to get on top and beat all of that stuff into submission. Otherwise, in 20 years time, it's going to be the same old story.

Again, it seems to come down to this whole analogy of a fight, or a war. It's so easy to forget, yet so prominent in the bible:

"the whole world is under the control of the evil one"
1 John 5:19

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
Ephesians 6:12

The route word of "disciple" is "discipline"

Sometimes I think that we, in the love of the teachings on grace, are so afraid of being legalistic that we fail to be disciplined. We're so scared of having a structured, regimented approach to reading the bible and prayer that we only do them when we're in the mood. We inevitably forget about them altogether and lead a sloppy Christian life.

But then, the whole point of the Great Commission is to "go and make disciples", to make followers of Jesus who are disciplined. Being a Christian is like walking a narrow path along the summit of a great ridge. There's slopes either side, and the place you want to be is right in the middle.



Sometimes we back so far off from legalism (or moralism) that we can slip off the other side. Surely diligence in the spiritual disciplines is a very good thing. You don't earn any holy points by doing them. They simply put you in the right place to hear from God.

Your perception of things

It seems to be that your perception of things is never quite right. Through the process of thought, pretty much everything gets distorted to one degree or another. Like how your work college or spouse will react to a particular issue. Certain issues become much bigger in your mind, but when they actually play out in reality, it's different to what you expected, and not a big deal.

Other issues are perceived smaller. Maybe our perception of sin and particular habits become too small in our minds. They're placed to one side, when really they have a far greater influence in our lives than we would like to admit.

This all leads to a question –  do we ever perceive things clearly, as they actually are? Or are we always off?

Perhaps your mind and your patterns of thought is like a lens that distorts. And perhaps the written word of God is like a lens that corrects. We only see things as they are when we come back to the bible.

Loneliness

"The open discussion of loneliness is the most taboo subject in the world. Forget sex, politics or religion or even failure, loneliness is what clears out a room"
Douglas Coupland, Miss Wyoming, 1999

Sounds about right.