On William Burns...

Below are a few quotes describing William Burns, an awesome man of God and an early companion and mentor to Hudson Taylor:

"He did not consider that he had a warrant to proceed in any sacred duty without a consciousness of that Divine presence. Without it, he could not speak even to a handful of little children in a Sunday School; with it he could stand unabashed before the mightiest and wisest in the land."

"Prayer was a natural to him as breathing, and the word of God as necessary as daily food."

"He enjoyed quietness and the luxury of having few things to take care of, and thought the happiest state on earth for a Christian was that he should have few wants."

"'If a man have Christ in his heart' he used to say, 'Heaven before his eyes, and only as much of temporal blessing as is just needful to carry him safely through life, then pain and sorrow have little to shoot at'."

Biography of James Hudson Taylor, p160.

We'll soon be there

"The joys of heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows of earth. Hush, hush, my doubts! Death is but a narrow stream, and thou shalt soon have forded it. Time, how short – eternity, how long! Death, how brief – immortality, how endless! ... The road is so, so short! I shall soon be there"

Charles H. Spurgeon

Complete In Him

"You have no right to heaven in yourself; your right lies in Christ. If you are pardoned; it is through his blood; if you are justified; it is through his righteousness; if you are sanctified; it is because he is made of God unto you sanctification; if you shall be kept from falling, it will be because you are preserved in Christ Jesus; and if you are perfected at the last; it will be because you are complete in him."

Charles H. Spurgeon

Perpetual Communication

"The first thing for our soul's health, the first thing for His glory, and the first thing for our own usefulness, is to keep ourselves in perpetual communication with the Lord Jesus, and to see that the vital spirituality of our religion is maintained over and above everything else in the world."

Charles H. Spurgeon

Hard Cultivation

"The more spiritual the exercise, the sooner we tire in it. The choicest fruits are the hardest to rear: the most heavenly graces are the most difficult to cultivate. Beloved, while we do not neglect external things, which are good enough in themselves, we ought also to see to it that we enjoy living, personal fellowship with Jesus."

Charles H. Spurgeon

Footsteps of the Saviour

"Remember this, Christian, and let it comfort thee. However difficult and painful thy road, it is marked by the footsteps of thy Saviour; and even when thou reaches the dark valley of the shadow of death, and the deep waters of the swelling Jordan, thou wilt find his footprints there. In all places whithersoever we go, he has been our forerunner; each burden we have to carry, has once been laid on the shoulders of Immanuel."

Charles H. Spurgeon

You're Beautiful

"We we arrive at eternity's shore
Where death is a memory and tears are no more..."
You're Beautiful by Jamie Rodwell, Not Ashamed

I absolutely love this song, I think because it captures eternity and the presence of God so well. In particular this line paints a picture of that first moment we enter in – our first experience on the other side of death. That moment is going to be mind-blowing. We finally finish the race, our life's work complete, and we stand before the Great Designer, the greatest and most holy being in existence.

"What we will be has not yet appeared"
1 John 3:2

Death is a certainty and our day is coming. In a little while we'll be there.

Hudson Taylor on sickness and suffering

"It was not until many years later, when Taylor could look back over all the way in which the Lord had led him, that he was impressed with the fact that every important advance in the development of the Mission had sprung from or been directly connected with times of sickness or suffering which had cast him in a special way upon God."

Biography of James Hudson Taylor, p337

Suffering with the Saints

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea."
Psalm 46:1-2

At Life Group last week I downloaded and played the biography clips from The Rebel's Guide to Joy series taught by Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church, Seattle. We then discussed all the most interesting points that struck out at us from the subject's life, and discussed particular bible verses that related to pain and suffering. It was a surprisingly inspired evening.

This verse, above, really resonated with me for a number of reasons. Firstly it states that God is our help and is 'very present'. Two magnificent statements: that you could have the creator of the universe, the greatest and most holy being that ever existed, present and helping in your time of trouble. But what it doesn't state is that God is our solution to the problem at hand. We assume he could be, as he's sovereign, but he chooses not to. Interesting...

The second thing you notice is that even though he's present and helping, the earth is still removed and the mountains are still thrown into the sea. He may not stop massive devastation from happening in our lives, but he does help us through it.

One of the real interesting points that came up in this Life Group evening was that many of the people studied experienced suffering that didn't seem to be linked with the gospel in any way. They couldn't say they had the honour of suffering for Christ. It was just generalised pain, sickness and death that anyone might experience. That must have felt so purposeless at the time.

But yet it wasn't. They fought, didn't give in, and their lives comfort us and testify to God's grace.

"In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."
John 16:33

Adversity, a less severe trial

An awesome Spurgeon quote:

"The Christian far oftener disgraces his profession in prosperity than in adversity. It is a dangerous thing to be prosperous. The crucible of adversity is a less severe trial to the Christian than the refining pot of prosperity."

Is God outside of time? (Part 3)

"This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time."
2 Timothy 1:9

This is a very interesting verse when you really think about it. 'Before the beginning of time' – before God had created anything, he knew us personally. He also knew the exact unfolding of Genesis 3, that man would sin and fall. He knew that we would need grace and that Jesus Christ would have to die on the cross. Yet he decided to created everything and everyone anyway. Incredible.

Thinking back to my previous posts on time, and the notion that God is not bound by it in any way, it leads to some very personal applications to Jesus' atonement of sin.

Could it be that he didn't die for our sin in a vague and general sense, but he was punished in a precise and exact amount? Did God see, in advance, every day of your life and the sum total of all your sin?

When we say "Jesus died for you" perhaps he really, really did.

Finite Time

"You never get it back... waisted time"

This is a line from the film Benjamin Button which really jumped out at me. It echoes Psalm 144:4

"Man is like a breath;
his days are like a passing shadow."

We have a very small and finite amount of time in which we can live on this earth and serve God's purposes. We only get so many opportunities to walk in his plans, trusting and living by faith. Soon our days will be over and all those opportunities will be taken from us. The adventure that might have been slips by. Our life's work ended and recorded as we stand before the judgement seat of God.

We should dread the thought of waisted time – years spent asleep, drifting and spinning our wheels. How many of us have spent 5, 10, 20 years in this condition?

"For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,

"As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess to God."

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God."

Romans 14:10-12

Faith, Difficulties, and Hudson Taylor

Hudson Taylor seemed to treat every difficulty as an opportunity to test his faith and see what God would do. Like going for a two mile walk when only just recovering from a fever that nearly killed him. Most people would use their common sense and stay at home. Instead, like in this example and many others, "his weakness only provided another occasion to prove the efficacy of prayer" (p72). Insane. But awesome faith! Here are a few other quotes relating to faith and difficulties from the Biography of James Hudson Taylor. There's quite a lot here, but well worth reading:

"He knew that faith was the one power that could remove mountains, conquer every difficulty and accomplish the impossible ... He realised that the faith he longed for was a 'gift of God', and that it might 'grow exceedingly'. But for growth, exercise was needed, and exercise of faith was obviously impossible apart from trial. Then welcome trial, welcome anything that would increase and strengthen this precious gift, proving to his own heart at any rate that he had faith of the sort that would really stand and grow."
p48-9

"If we are faithful to God in little things, we shall gain experience and strength that will be helpful to us in the more serious trails of life."
p53

"Last autumn I was fretting and stewing, reckoning and puzzling about how to manage this and that –  like a person in water who cannot swim, or a fish out of it. But it all came to nothing. Now, when the Lord opens the way, though everything seems adverse, He first removes one difficulty and then another, plainly saying 'Be still and know that I am God"
p62

"So difficulties were permitted to gather about him, especially at first when every impression was vivid and lasting, difficulties attended by many a deliverance to encourage him".
p114

"But the way of faith was clearer, and he had learned to leave the future in the hands of God. One who knew the end from the beginning was guiding and would guide"
p166

"Hitherto hath the Lord helped us. The Lord will provide."
p206

"Than the greatness of the need, one thing is only greater –  the fact of God: His resources, purposes, faithfulness, His commands and promises ... That is enough; that alone could be enough."
p247

"God owns all the gold and silver in the world, and the cattle on a thousand hills. We need not be vegetarians."
p248

"We can afford to have as little as the Lord chooses to give, but we cannot afford to have unconsecrated money, or to have money placed in the wrong position. Far better have no money at all, even to buy food with; for there are plenty of ravens in China, and the Lord could send them again with bread and flesh."
p248

"Let us see that we keep God before our eyes; that we walk in His ways and seek to please and glorify Him in everything, great and small. Depend upon it, God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies."
p249

The Pursuit of Holiness (Part 3)

A brilliant quote from the Biography of James Hudson Taylor that further expands this concept:

"Where God is working the devil is sure to be busy; and the nearer one seeks to live to the Lord Himself, the more painful are the consequences of grieving Him"
p265

This perfectly echoes Ephesians 4:27

"do not give the devil a foothold"

The Pursuit of Holiness (Part 2)

"Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God"
1 John 3:21

Aside from the fact that we sin to some degree every hour of every day, in thought, word and deed, there are prominent and deliberate sins that even our own hearts condemn us for. I guess we call that our conscience.

A heavy conscience can so easily block you off from God. You know you could pray but instead you hang your head in shame until the feeling subsides. Your confidence is gone. It's always hard to talk to someone when you've got your back to them.

How free we can be when holiness is pursued and victory over sin attained. Nothing hangs on our heart or mind.

"For my yoke is easy and my burden is light"
Matthew 11:30

I can't help but think this is what Jesus has in mind for us.

The Holy Spirit and John Wesley

"James Harvey, the friend of Wesley at Oxford, described the change in Welsey through his anointing by the Spirit: 'His preaching was once like the firing of an arrow, all the speed and force depending on the strength of his arm in bending the bow. Thereafter it was like the firing of a rifle ball, the whole force depending on the powder and needing only a finger touch to let it off".

Great Revivals, Colin Whittaker, p47

The Pursuit of Holiness

Looking back at John Wesley in the English Revival of the 18th century, his pursuit of holiness was absolutely remarkable. And yet the foundation of his faith was the free and undeserved gift of salvation.

God's grace propels us into the pursuit of holiness. It doesn't score us extra points with God, yet you can't underestimate its importance. The pursuit of holiness is really the pursuit of unbroken communion with God.