On my recent holiday I read a book about the devotional life of Hudson Taylor. It was a means of grace from God to refresh my soul. I share some excerpts to help you see why.
“I thought that holiness, practical holiness, was to be gradually attained by a diligent use of the means of grace. There was nothing I so much desired as holiness, nothing I so much needed; but far from in any measure attaining it, the more I strove after it, the more it eluded my grasp, until hope itself almost died out…
When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known if before.”
Here is the sentence:- “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.”
Hudson Taylor continues:- ” Ah, there is rest!” I thought. “I have striven in vain to rest in him. I’ll strive no more. For has not he promised to abide with me – never to leave me, never to fail me? And he never will.”
“How then to have our faith increased? Only by thinking of all that Jesus is and all he is for us: his life, his death, his work, he himself as revealed to us in the Word, to be the subject of our constant thoughts. Not striving to have faith…but looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need; a resting in the Loved One entirely, for time and for eternity.”