Cease Striving

 “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.              Psalm 46:10-11

Many great Christian believers do not find the fullness of a relationship with Christ as one who abides in Christ early in their walk with God, but it usually comes after years of trying to be the man or woman God wants him or her to be without being fully enveloped in the life of Christ – the exchanged life. Most often, the revelation comes after a period of the believer falling short of his expectation of how he should be living. One such example is Hudson Taylor.

One of the greatest missionaries of the modern Christian age is (James) Hudson Taylor, who spent 51 years in China and was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to the country and began 125 schools, which directly resulted in 18,000 Christian conversions, as well as the establishment of more than 300 stations of work with more than 500 local helpers in all eighteen provinces. 

According to Billy Graham, "Few men have been used to touch China for God as Hudson Taylor was. He willingly broke with tradition and adopted Chinese dress. Eagerly, he built teams across denominational lines. His vision was always to penetrate new frontiers with the gospel. His motivation was neither reckless adventure nor self-fulfillment, but a deep concern for those without Christ. His life was impelled by a growing confidence in the faithfulness of God. Kenneth Scott LaTourette said, “Hudson Taylor was...one of the greatest missionaries of all time, and... one of the four or five most influential foreigners who came to China in the nineteenth century for any purpose.”

After 15 years of serving in China, Taylor went through a spiritual crisis that created in him a deep depression regarding his relationship with God and victory over sin. In 1869, he stated, "I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living nearer to God." According to Roger Steer in his biography, J. Hudson Taylor, A Man in Christ, “He prayed, he agonized, he fasted, he tried to do better, he made resolutions. He read the Bible more carefully, he ordered his life to give more time for rest and meditation. But all this had little effect. He saw that both he himself and the China Inland Mission (CIM) needed more holiness, life, and power.”

Taylor stated, “Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me. I knew that if only I could abide in Christ, all would be well, but I could not." These thoughts created a spiral that brought him to a place of more weakness and failure. He remained passionate about his ministry, and Christ remained precious, but with constant feelings of personal failure. “I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how to get it out.” 

In 1869, Hudson read a book called “Christ is All” by Henry Law and was influenced by a passage on personal holiness sent to him by a fellow missionary, John McCarthy. "The Lord Jesus received is holiness begun; the Lord Jesus cherished is holiness advancing; the Lord Jesus counted upon as never absent would be holiness complete."  Taylor recalled, "As I read, I saw it all! 'If we believe not, He abideth faithful.’ I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, ‘I will never leave you.' Ah, there is rest!" I thought I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me – never to leave me, never to fail me?

This new understanding of continually abiding in Christ endured for the rest of his life. He had found true holiness not in human perfection but in a continual trusting in the power and plan of his abiding Christ. He found the reality that “It is finished!” At the time, he was quoted by fellow missionary Charles Henry Judd as saying: "Oh, Mr. Judd, God has made me a new man!" 

John Lennon of the Beatles wrote a song entitled “Rain” in which he clarifies the difference between rain and shine: “Can you hear me, that when it rains and shines, it’s just a state of mind.” God is calling us to Himself, a state of mind in which He is always with us so that we can rest in Him.