The Influence of Missions-Minded Parents

I praise God for the blessing of being raised in a missions-minded home. From as early as I can remember, missions was a normal part of our family life. We grew up in a church where missions was regularly preached, prayed for, and promoted. We hosted missionaries in our home (I still vividly remember making baklava with missionaries who were preparing to go to Turkey when I was around 7 or 8 years old). But perhaps the most influential thing my parents did to instill within us a heart for missions was to read missionary biographies to us during our family worship times in the evening.  

Without question, the most memorable biography we read together was on the life and ministry of Hudson Taylor. Taylor was a pioneer missionary in China from 1854-1905. Taylor, who founded the China Inland Mission, was known for his life of faith, missionary zeal, and self-sacrifice. Like his friend George Muller, he never solicited funds, but instead sought to “move men by God through prayer alone.” Taylor firmly believed that “God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies.”[1]

Recently, I began re-reading Taylor’s two-volume biography written and composed by his son and daughter in law, Dr. Howard and Geraldine Taylor. Although there have been many things about this biography that have been deeply enriching and challenging, I noticed something Hudson Taylor said early on that encapsulated the holy ambitions that shaped his remarkable service to Christ.

Holy Ambitions

In a letter written to his sister shortly after his missionary call, a 19-year-old Hudson Taylor states, “I feel my need of more holiness and conformity to Him who has loved us and washed us in His blood. Love so amazing should indeed cause us to give our bodies and spirits to Him as living sacrifices… Pray for me, that I may be made more useful here and fitted for extended usefulness hereafter.” [2]

Conformity to Christ and usefulness for Christ. These desires were far more than pious but hollow sentiments. They were the life-long holy ambitions that shaped everything about Taylor’s life and ministry.

Ambition #1: Conformity to Christ

For Taylor, conformity to Christ was far more than the mere practice of spiritual disciplines (although Taylor assiduously did so). It was nearness and likeness to the One who in his eyes was altogether lovely. One cannot read Taylor’s biography without feeling his intense, all-consuming passion to know Christ intimately and abide in Him continually.

Nearness to Christ was indeed the foundation of his service to Christ. Taylor rightly understood that our labors for Christ must be the overflow of abiding communion with Him (John 15:1-11). Apart from Christ, we can do nothing. Everything we do apart from Him is nothing. Taylor states, “To let my loving Savior work in me His will, my sanctification, is what I would live for by His grace. Abiding, not striving nor struggling; looking off unto Him; trusting Him for present power; resting in the love of an almighty Savior.”[3] This indeed was the “secret” to Taylor’s enduring, far-reaching ministry.

Ambition #2: Usefulness for Christ

Shortly after his conversion, Taylor wrote, “I never can sufficiently praise God for all His mercies to me. The earnest desire of my heart is that He will sanctify me wholly and make me useful in His cause.”[4] Having tasted firsthand of God’s saving goodness, Taylor longed to “spend and be spent” spreading the good news of Christ where God’s glory was unknown. For Taylor, this meant missionary life in China’s vast but unreached interior. Everything Taylor did—both in preparation for China and while living and ministering there for nearly fifty years—he did with the aim of being most useful in the gospel’s advance.

To be useful for Christ, Taylor had to die to a life of ease, convenience, and acceptance by others, including some of his own missionary peers. Taylor famously stated, “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, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary.” Usefulness for Christ may have cost him everything, but in light of Christ’s surpassing worth, Taylor could joyfully affirm, “I never made a sacrifice.”[5]

Conclusion

Do you long for greater conformity to Christ and usefulness in His service? Are the distractions of this life sidetracking you from what really matters? If so, ponder this final challenge from a man driven by holy ambitions:

“May we all, while living down here, in the world, but not of it, find our home in the heavenly places to which we have been raised, and in which we are seated together with Christ. Sent into the world to witness for our Master, may we ever be strangers there, ready to confess Him the true object of our soul’s devotion.”[6]

[1] Taylor, F. H., & Taylor, G. (1995). Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God (p. 42). Littleton, CO; Mississauga, ON; Kent, TN: OMF Book

[2] Taylor, F. H., & Taylor, G. (1955). Hudson Taylor in Early Years: The Growth of a Soul (p.127). London: Lutterworth Press

[3] Taylor, Dr. and Mrs. Howard (2013-05-25). Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret (p. 144). Kindle Edition

[4] Hudson Taylor in the Early Years: The Growth of a Soul, p. 76.

[5] Ibid, p. 127

[6] Morgan and Scott (1981), ed. by J. Hudson Taylor. China’s Millions (p. 140)