"And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God" (Mark 11:22).
Hold God's faithfulness. Abraham held God's faith, and offered up Isaac, accounting that God was able to raise him up. Moses held God's faith, and led the millions of Israel into the waste howling wilderness. Joshua knew Israel well, and was ignorant neither of the fortifications of the Canaanites, nor of their martial prowess: but he held God's faithfulness, and led Israel across Jordan. The Apostles held God's faith, and were not daunted by the hatred of the Jews, nor by the hostility of the heathen. And what shall I saw more, for the time would fail me to tell "of those who, holding God's faithfulness, had faith, and by it subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of aliens."
All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them. See the cases of David, of Jonathan and his armour-bearer, of Asa, Jehoshaphat, and many others. Oh! beloved friends, if there is a living God, faithful and true, let us hold His faithfulness. Holding His faithfulness, we may go into every province of China. Holding His faithfulness, we may face, with calm and sober but confident assurance of victory, every difficulty and danger. We may count on grace for the work, on pecuniary aid, on needful facilities, and on ultimate success. Let us not give Him a partial trust, but daily, hourly serve Him, "holding God's faithfulness".
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James Hudson Taylor was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM) (now OMF International) who served there for 51 years, bringing over 800 missionaries to the country and directly resulting in 18,000 Chinese converts to Christianity by the time he died at age 73.
Taylor was born into a Christian home in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England, the son of "chemist" (pharmacist) and Methodist lay preacher James Taylor and his wife, Amelia (Hudson), but as a young man he moved away from the beliefs of his parents. At 17, upon reading an evangelistic tract pamphlet, he became a Christian, and in December of 1849, he committed himself to going to China as a missionary
In 1858, after working in a hospital for four years, he married the daughter of another missionary. He returned to England in 1860 and spent five years translating the New Testament into the Ningpo dialect. He returned to China in 1866 with sixteen other missionaries.