Exodus 3:10

God is seeking for a man and for the right man. Moses was most privileged among the children of Israel. He had been the up-bringing of a very religious home and the education of a royal prince. God heard the sighs of the children of Israel. He wanted to send a man for their deliverance but Moses was refusing to go back to Egypt.

God is heading for co-operation. God says, "I will do everything. You just stand in my stead. But we resist Him. Our strength and our intelligence have been given to us of God. Your body and mind are the gifts of God. God has given to each of us a particular training. When you look back on your life, you will wonder why you did not die when so close to death. Many died but you survived. Why did you not perish with the wicked? God’s mystic hand was behind you like it was behind Moses. Your body, mind and spirit are vast fields to be used for God. Moses was refusing God’s assignment. God often has to go back from us, hanging His head in sorrow, because we refuse to co-operate with Him. God speaks to Moses, "I watched over you in your mother’s house, I was with you in the palace and saved your life from danger and from sin. I saved you from Pharaoh when he wanted to kill you. I have given you a wife and a peace-loving father-in-law. I have appeared to you in fire. That fire has already prepared you. But Moses was still not willing. Does not the same situation occur in your life? There are so many people oppressed by wrong ideas and wrong religion that give no relief. God is looking for men and women who have a burden. God says you are His co-workers. He has been watching you from the cradle so that God’s potentialities, which He has put in you may blossom and benefit all those around you. God has watched over you and given you various experiences, that have shaped you to be fit for His service.

God is pleading with us to whom He has given every good thing. Your healthy body is a gift of God. Does God have to come and plead as a beggar pleads for food? We forget what a great God we have and how much power is with Him. Seldom any Christian family wants Him in their home. Unless you see the Lord’s loving hand working mystically throughout your life, you will not be grateful to Him. His eye is on you though you live with thousands around you. If Moses had not yielded he would have perished as one of the Midianites.

By your faith, you must overcome the evil one in your flesh during the days of your youth. God had to plead and plead with Moses. Six hundred thousand people were being persecuted and one young man was satisfied with his peaceful, quiet family life. He had a few thousand sheep, a good wife, and two children to make him happy. He had plenty of meat to eat and milk to drink, and life was quiet and peaceful. He did not know as yet the power of God to deliver a people that were oppressed. Mark 12:24 "Do you not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God." If you know the scriptures you will know what a mighty God you have. Let us not keep Jesus at an arm’s length, begging.

- Late Mr. N. Daniel

When Hudson and Maria stored away their meager worldly goods, bundled up little Gracie, and boarded the ship headed for England in 1860, they had no idea it would be nearly six years before they returned to their beloved China. As delighted as they were to be among friends and family in England, their thoughts and hearts were always far away in Shanghai and Ningpo and other places where their work had taken them. They had come home to England to refresh their health and to appeal for others to join them in their work. Without any hard feelings on either side, Hudson had separated from the Chinese Evangelization Society which had originally sent him to China. The Society, with its strict procedures and limitations, confined itself to the coastal towns of China. The burden burning in the hearts of Hudson and Maria was to evangelize the inland areas of that country.

Their time in England was well spent. Together with a Chinese Christian, who had accompanied them on their voyage, Hudson worked on a revision of the Chinese New Testament. He was also invited to write various articles about China and its needs. He was very glad to do this since his articles and the talks he gave would surely interest others in the work being left undone in China. During these years, five workers were recruited and sailed for China even though the Taylors could not yet return themselves. Hudson and Maria also added three little sons to their family during these years.

Despite progress in all these areas, in 1865, after being in England for five long years, Hudson was discouraged, wondering if there would ever be enough missionaries for China. Rather than increasing, the number of Protestant missionaries in China was dropping every year, and those who were there generally stayed close to the coastal towns. Very few ventured into the heart of the country.

Maria could only stand by and watch her husband withdraw. She tried to let him know in quiet ways that she would gladly listen if he wanted to talk, but he only seemed to keep to himself more and more. For several months, he slept only an hour at a time during the night. Maria tried to keep the four small children from bothering their papa too much and continued the family’s routine as cheerfully as possible.

When the invitation came for them to spend time at Brighton, a sea town, Maria was delighted. Surely this was just what Hudson needed!

As soon as they arrived at Brighton, little Gracie ran squealing across the sand. "Papa! Papa! Take me to play in the water! Please! Please!"

Hudson could not help smiling down at his adorable daughter. But he did not feel ready to play in the water with the children. He stroked her fine hair as he explained, "we’ll have plenty of time for that, Gracie. Right now, Papa wants to take a walk by himself. Would that be all right?"

It was a bright Sunday morning when Hudson yanked off his shoes and socks, rolled his pants, and let the sand ooze between his toes and be washed away by the gentle tide pulling back out to sea. It was a perfect, peaceful picture- except that Hudson did not feel peaceful. Even coming to Brighton had not eased his inner torment. His steps quickened and he began to run along the edge of the water.

Over and over again, he reminded himself that he had no funds to support the missionaries he wanted to send to China. If he asked people to go, they would face danger and perhaps starvation. Was that fair?

He knew he was too ill to try to run in the sand. Maria would surely scold him if she saw him. Yet he kept moving, his thoughts churning and swirling constantly. Even if the missionaries did die of starvation, they would go straight to heaven, and if just one Chinese was saved, wouldn’t that be worth the sacrifice? But could he really ask missionaries to make that sacrifice?

Exhausted, Hudson sank down in the sand and rested against a piece of driftwood. The sun was shining brilliantly, and he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. The warmth of the day seeped into his skin and he almost felt that he could give in to his desperate need for sleep.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright. If these missionaries went to China, it would not be because Hudson Taylor asked them to go. It would be because God himself asked them to go. Sitting in the sand with no one to hear him, Hudson said aloud, "Why, if we are obeying the Lord, the responsibility rests with Him, not with us!"

He raised his hands and looked to the sky. "The burden is Yours, Lord! As Your servant, I will continue to work, leaving the results to You!"

Hudson now felt immense relief. The burden was no longer on his shoulders - it never had been! The five missionaries whom he had sent to China were doing the work of the Lord, not the work of Hudson Taylor. The conviction he felt about evangelizing inland China was a conviction from God Himself.

With the ocean waves breaking at his feet and the sun beaming down on his shoulders, Hudson took a pencil and his Bible from his pocket. He found a clean spot in the margin and wrote simply, "Prayed for twenty-four willing, skillful laborers at Brighton, June 25, 1865." Twenty-four new missionaries, including those recently gone to China, would work in teams of two to reach the remote parts of the country.

With renewed energy, Hudson took long strides in the sand toward the house at Brighton where his family and friends were waiting for him. When Maria saw him coming she knew immediately that something tremendously important had happened. They stayed up long into the night talking in excited, hushed voices about what this experience would mean for their family and for the work in China.

First thing in the morning, Hudson went into London and, with a small deposit opened a bank account in the name of China Inland Mission.

Maria and Hudson stayed in England for almost another year, spurred on by their goal of returning to China with enough teams to reach into the inner areas rather than staying in the safety of the coast. Hudson completed work on an influential book, China’s Spiritual Needs and Claims, which attracted many people to his cause. The bank account opened in such a humble manner grew through generous contributions at a rate more rapid than anyone could have imagined.

On May 26, 1866, the Taylors and their four children were accompanied by one married couple, five single men, and nine single women when they boarded the ship called the Lammermuir and sailed once again for China.

The China Inland Mission had been born of faith on a sunny Brighton day.

- Excerpt from Hudson Taylor, by Susan Martins Miller. Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., Uhrichsville, Ohio, 1993.

THE apostles knew the necessity and worth of prayer to their ministry. They knew that their high commission as apostles, instead of relieving them from the necessity of prayer, committed them to it by a more urgent need; so that they were exceedingly jealous else some other important work should exhaust their time and prevent their praying as they ought; so they appointed laymen to look after the delicate and engrossing duties of ministering to the poor, that they (the apostles) might, unhindered, "give themselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word." Prayer is put first, and their relation to prayer is put most strongly -- "give themselves to it," making a business of it, surrendering themselves to praying, putting fervor, urgency, perseverance, and time in it.

How holy, apostolic men devoted themselves to this divine work of prayer! "Night and day praying exceedingly," says Paul. "We will give ourselves continually to prayer" is the consensus of apostolic devotement. How these New Testament preachers laid themselves out in prayer for God's people! How they put God in full force into their Churches by their praying! These holy apostles did not vainly fancy that they had met their high and solemn duties by delivering faithfully God's word, but their preaching was made to stick and tell by the ardor and insistence of their praying. Apostolic praying was as taxing, toilsome, and imperative as apostolic preaching. They prayed mightily day and night to bring their people to the highest regions of faith and holiness. They prayed mightier still to hold them to this high spiritual altitude. The preacher who has never learned in the school of Christ the high and divine art of intercession for his people will never learn the art of preaching, though homiletics be poured into him by the ton, and though he be the most gifted genius in sermon-making and sermon-delivery.

The prayers of apostolic, saintly leaders do much in making saints of those who are not apostles. If the Church leaders in after years had been as particular and fervent in praying for their people as the apostles were, the sad, dark times of worldliness and apostasy had not marred the history and eclipsed the glory and arrested the advance of the Church. Apostolic praying makes apostolic saints and keeps apostolic times of purity and power in the Church.

What loftiness of soul, what purity and elevation of motive, what unselfishness, what self-sacrifice, what exhaustive toil, what ardor of spirit, what divine tact are requisite to be an intercessor for men!

The preacher is to lay himself out in prayer for his people; not that they might be saved, simply, but that they be mightily saved. The apostles laid themselves out in prayer that their saints might be perfect; not that they should have a little relish for the things of God, but that they "might be filled with all the fullness of God." Paul did not rely on his apostolic preaching to secure this end, but "for this cause he bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul's praying carried Paul's converts farther along the highway of sainthood than Paul's preaching did. Epaphras did as much or more by prayer for the Colossian saints than by his preaching. He labored fervently always in prayer for them that "they might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God."

Preachers are preeminently God's leaders. They are primarily responsible for the condition of the Church. They shape its character, give tone and direction to its life.

Much every way depends on these leaders. They shape the times and the institutions. The Church is divine, the treasure it incases is heavenly, but it bears the imprint of the human. The treasure is in earthen vessels, and it smacks of the vessel. The Church of God makes, or is made by, its leaders. Whether it makes them or is made by them, it will be what its leaders are; spiritual if they are so, secular if they are, conglomerate if its leaders are. Israel's kings gave character to Israel's piety. A Church rarely revolts against or rises above the religion of its leaders. Strongly spiritual leaders; men of holy might, at the lead, are tokens of God's favor; disaster and weakness follow the wake of feeble or worldly leaders. Israel had fallen low when God gave children to be their princes and babes to rule over them. No happy state is predicted by the prophets when children oppress God's Israel and women rule over them. Times of spiritual leadership are times of great spiritual prosperity to the Church.

Prayer is one of the eminent characteristics of strong spiritual leadership. Men of mighty prayer are men of might and mold things. Their power with God has the conquering tread.

How can a man preach who does not get his message fresh from God in the closet? How can he preach without having his faith quickened, his vision cleared, and his heart warmed by his closeting with God? Alas, for the pulpit lips which are untouched by this closet flame. Dry and unctionless they will ever be, and truths divine will never come with power from such lips. As far as the real interests of religion are concerned, a pulpit without a closet will always be a barren thing.

A preacher may preach in an official, entertaining, or learned way without prayer, but between this kind of preaching and sowing God's precious seed with holy hands and prayerful, weeping hearts there is an immeasurable distance.

A prayerless ministry is the undertaker for all God's truth and for God's Church. He may have the most costly casket and the most beautiful flowers, but it is a funeral, notwithstanding the charmful array. A prayerless Christian will never learn God's truth; a prayerless ministry will never be able to teach God's truth. Ages of millennial glory have been lost by a prayerless Church. The coming of our Lord has been postponed indefinitely by a prayerless Church. Hell has enlarged herself and filled her dire caves in the presence of the dead service of a prayerless Church.

The best, the greatest offering is an offering of prayer. If the preachers of the twentieth century will learn well the lesson of prayer, and use fully the power of prayer, the millennium will come to its noon ere the century closes. "Pray without ceasing" is the trumpet call to the preachers of the twentieth century. If the twentieth century will get their texts, their thoughts, their words, their sermons in their closets, the next century will find a new heaven and a new earth. The old sin-stained and sin-eclipsed heaven and earth will pass away under the power of a praying ministry.

- E.M. Bounds