Pleasing God

BIOY on John 6:29...

"Do you realise that you can give God pleasure? Jesus says, ‘I always do what pleases him’ (v.29). This should be our aim in life – to please God."

So easy to forget that our main aim is to please God, not just tick all the boxes on the to-do list. It should be our delight to please God.

James Fraser on the Holy Spirit

"In earlier years, he had emphasised that regeneration was the work of God alone. This proved true in the new situation. No challenge, rebuke, persuasion, or comforting on his part alone made any difference to anyone, even if it seemed to at first. Only God's direct work would produce lasting fruit."

p158

"Although he had been in China ten years and had considerable experience with both the Chinese and the Lisu, he realised he could do little or nothing apart from God's going before and working among them."

p159

"James had a strong sense, borne out by events, that he was merely assisting in a work done wholly by God Himself."

p199

From Mountain Rain, The Biography of James O. Fraser

As holy as he wants

"Hudson Taylor observed that there is no possibility of power in a life which is easygoing and which shrinks from the Cross. This truth came home to James during these months. It would be costly to maintain a close walk with God, a deep and continual cost every day of his life ... 

     This led him on to an allied truth.

     'Everyone,' as A.W. Tozer, is just as holy as he wants to be.'

p154, Mountain Rain, The Biography of James O. Fraser

James Fraser on discouragement

"I have given way to discouragement, dark discouragement far too much in the past. Now I know rather better, and thoroughly agree with the assertion, 'all discouragement is of the devil.'

      'Discouragement is to be resisted just like sin,' he continued. 'To give way to one is just as bad and weakens us as much as to give way to the other."

p81-82, Mountain Rain, The Biography of James O. Fraser

James Fraser on the effectiveness of love

"You can hardly understand until you come into touch with them what simple, warm-hearted people the Shan and other Christians are. Sam Bwa told me that I could be of help to them even if I could say nothing ... the mere fact of your coming to see them, showing yourself genuinely pleased to sit with them in their houses, attend their services, share their food and generally make yourself one with them is enough to endear you to them ... If they see that you love them and like to be with them, they love you in return."

p41, Mountain Rain, The Biography of James O. Fraser

This feels like a definite hint on how to reach into the lives of people we meet everyday — just enjoy being with them.

James Fraser on prayer

"He was feeling more and more that the prayers of God's people were what called down blessing on the work. It didn't matter whether those people were directly engaged in the work or not."

p35

"Because of this, James saw that Christians at home could do as much for foreign mission as those actually on the field. 'I believe it will only be known on the Last Day how much has been accomplished in missionary work by the prayers of earnest believers at home.'"

p36

"He had come to see that in past years he had wasted much time praying prayers that were not effective at all. Praying without faith was 'like trying to cut with a blunt knife — much labour is expended to little purpose.' The work accomplished by labour in prayer depended on faith. 'According to your faith,' not labour, 'be it unto you.'"

p78

'The wonderful promise of John 15:7 is prefixed by a far-reaching 'if'. I wonder if that verse might not be paraphrased; "If ye abide NOT in Me and My words abide NOT in you; DO NOT ask whatsoever ye will for it shall NOT be done unto you."'

p93

"Over and over again James was to realise the uselessness of human effort on its own. He could work himself into the ground and have no effect on the people."

p157

"I use to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel that prayer should have the first, second and third place and teaching the fourth."

p201

Doing God's work

James wrote: 'It has come home to me very forcibly of late that it matters little what the work in which we are engaged: so long as God has put it into our hands.'

James believed it was no more necessary to be faithful in preaching the Gospel than in doing something like washing up the dishes in the kitchen. 'I am no more doing the Lord's work in giving the Word of God to the Chinese,' he wrote, 'than you are, for example, in wrapping up a parcel to send to a tailor. It is not for us ... to chose our work. And if God has chosen it for us, hadn't we better go straight ahead and do it, without waiting for anything greater, better or 'nobler'?'

'Have we any right,' he asked, 'to be dissatisfied with our present condition, which God has ordained for us, that we hanker after something in the future?'

p18-19, Mountain Rain, The Biography of James O. Fraser

Faith and Provision

"After gaining his degree, James applied to the China Inland Mission. Everything about this society answered a chord in his heart. For one thing they never asked anyone for money, nor even seemed to mention it. No collections, no appeals, no needs advertised, yet within forty years they supported over a thousand members! The general director and the newest recruit had equal allowances. All their needs had been supplied. 'God means just what he says,' Hudson Taylor said, 'and He will do all that He has promised.'"

p10, Mountain Rain, The Biography of James O. Fraser

Earlier loves eclipsed

A description of James Fraser's desires being turned upside down by the Holy Spirit as a young man:

"There is no record that he felt he had renounced anything. He had quite simply found earlier loves eclipsed by a new passion. 'If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him' (1 John 2:15)"

p7, Mountain Rain, The Biography of James O. Fraser

Words from a booklet

Words from a booklet that was instrumental in redirecting the life of James Fraser towards missionary work:

"If our Master returned today to find millions of people unevangelized, and looked, as of course He would look, to us for and explanation, I cannot imagine what explanation we should have to give.

      Of one thing I am certain — that most of the excuses we are accustomed to make with such good conscience now, we shall be wholly ashamed of then."