A Truth Oft-Overlooked

Recently I began reading Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor (his son and daughter-in-law), and this section particularly struck me.  Hudson was still living in England, but understood the call to China, so he began preparing ambitiously.

Whatever it may have been in summer, toward the close of November when Hudson Taylor made it his home Drainside must have seemed dreary enough. To add to the changed conditions he was boarding himself, which meant that he bought his meagre supplies as he returned from the surgery and rarely sat down to a proper meal.  His walks were solitary, his evenings spent alone, and Sundays brought long hours of work in his district or among the crowds who frequented the Humber Dock.

Having now the twofold object in view [he recalled] of accustoming myself to endure hardness, and of economizing in order to help those among whom I was labouring in the Gospel, I soon found that I could live upon very mcuh less than I had previously thought possible.  Butter, milk and other luxuries I ceased to use, and found that by living mainly on oatmeal and rice, with occasional variations, a very small sum was sufficient for my needs.  In this way I had more than two-thirds of my income available for other purposes, and my experience was that the less I spent on myself and the more I gave to others, the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become.

For God is no man's debtor, and here in his solitude Hudson Taylor was learning something of what He can be to the one who follows hard after Him.  In these days of easy-going Christianity, is it not well to remind ourselves that it really does cost to be a man or woman whom God can use?  One cannot obtain a Christlike character for nothing; one cannot do a Christlike work save at a great price.  "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized?"

I know this is a long quotation, but it sums up far more than I could say.  This book was published in 1935, and Hudson Taylor arrived in China in 1854, but these words very well could be written to our American Christian culture—a culture of easy Christianity indeed.

What might it look like if the Body of Christ in the United States chose, each and every member part of the whole, to let her faith be costly?  How much more vibrantly might God's glory be reflected and how much more powerfully His kingdom furthered?

What if we let go of all our "rights" (so-called) for Christ?  What if?