Things that are stirring my heart…

My faith has been challenged lately the more I read the Bible and the more I’ve been reading stories of missionaries, martyrs and people of wild faith in Jesus who live in full surrender to God. 

This quote has stirred me deeply: 

“Learn to move man, through God, by prayer alone.” 

- Hudson Taylor, missionary to China.

Hudson Taylor knew that going off to another country would require him to have full faith and dependency on God. He also knew he needed greater opportunities to exercise his spiritual muscles and to grow deeper in his dependency on God before going. So he started praying about specific things, going to God alone about them (and not to others) to see if he really could solely trust the Lord alone. His story is pretty incredible. 

My spirit has been stirring within me as I seek the Lord. I want wild, fully surrendered faith in the Lord. But as I’ve been seeking Him, He has also been revealing areas that I hold too tightly in my need to control. He wants to take them from me. I tend to try to control things as a reaction to fear, pain, anxiety, overwhelm but the Lord is all about healing, restoration and redemption. Jesus equals true freedom. 

And so I’m taking baby steps towards complete surrender, even in the areas I’ve had a death grip on. He is trustworthy. He is good. He is more than able to carry all my worries and cares and to make something really beautiful from it all. 

And the greater I can learn this type of trust and true surrender to the Lord, not just in words and thoughts but in actions and truth, the better I can show my children to do the same. 

My greatest goal and aim in life is to know Jesus and make Him known, first in my home and then to the world. And it starts with my relationship with Jesus. 

Another inspiring quote showing Hudson Taylor’s passion for his calling:

“China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women... The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, souls first and foremost in everything and at every time - even life itself must be secondary.”

 -Hudson Taylor