Life + Faith

Tag: Quote

  • Hudson Taylor on Temptation and Forgiveness

    Hudson Taylor was one of a kind. He is remembered as a missionary to China and a great man of God. Yet, in his walk with God he battled with seasons of temptation and doubt about the forgiveness that comes through Jesus. At the age of 37 he wrote his mother the following:

    “My own position becomes continually more and more responsible, and my need greater of special grace to fill it; but I continually to mourn that I follow at such a distance and learn so slowly to imitate my precious Master. I cannot tell you how I am buffeted sometimes by temptation. I never knew how bad a heart I had. Yet I do know that I love God and love His work, and desire to serve Him only in all things. And I value above all things that precious Saviour in Whom alone I can be accepted. Often I am tempted to think that one so full of sin cannot be a child of God at all; but I try to throw it back, and rejoice all the more in the preciousness of Jesus, and in the riches of that grace that has made us “accepted in the Beloved.” Beloved He is of God; beloved He ought to be of us. But oh, how short I fall here again! May God help me to love Him more and serve Him better. Do pray for me. Pray that the Lord will keep me from sin, will sanctify me wholly, will use me more largely in His service.”

    After receiving an encouraging letter from another missionary some time later he came to understand the forgiving nature of salvation through Christ, declaring, “God has made me a new man! God has made me a new man!”

    The letter he received said:

    “To let my loving Saviour work in me His will, my sanctification is what I would live for by His grace. Abiding, not striving nor struggling; looking off onto him; trusting Him for present power; trusting Him to subdue all inward corruption; resting in the love of an Almighty Saviour, and the conscious joy of a complete salvation.”

    How encouraging!

  • Newton on Celebrity Preaching

    Perhaps a good word for those of us who follow and podcast the great preachers in this world…

    “A stated and regular attendance encourages the minister, affords a good example to the congregation; and a hearer is more likely to meet with what is directly suited to his own case, from a minister who knows him, and expects to see him, than he can be from one who is a stranger. Especially, I would not wish you to be absent for the sake of gratifying your curiosity, to hear some new preacher, who you have perhaps been told is a very extraordinary man; for in your way such occasions might possibly offer almost every week. What I have observed of many, who run about unseasonably after new preachers, has reminded me of Prov. 27:8: “As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is the man that wandereth from his place.” Such unsettled hearers seldom thrive: they usually grow wise in their own conceits, have their heads filled with notions, acquire a dry, critical, and censorious spirit; and are more intent upon disputing who is the best preacher, than upon obtaining benefit to themselves from what they hear. If you could find a man, indeed, who had a power in himself of dispensing a blessing to your soul, you might follow him from place to place; but as the blessing is in the Lord’s hands, you will be more likely to receive it by waiting where his providence has placed you, and where he has met with you before.”

    From John Newton’s On Hearing Sermons.

  • Richard Baxter On The Pastor and Recreation

    Richard Baxter on recreation for the minister:

    “Recreation to a minister must be as whetting is with the mower – that is, to be used only so far as is necessary for his work. May a physician in plague-time take any more relaxation or recreation than is necessary for his life, when so many are expecting his help in a case of life and death? Will you stand by and see sinners gasping under the pangs of death, and say : “Go, doth not require me to make myself a drudge to save them?” Is this the voice of ministerial or Christian compassion or rather of sensual laziness and diabolical cruelty?”