High Hopes
Hopes were high as Hudson Taylor set sail for England following a fruitful season of missionary service. In the midst of seemingly impenetrable obstacles, the gospel was advancing and bearing fruit. The China Inland Mission was growing, but more laborers were needed to meet the massive needs of the harvest. Provinces previously closed to foreigners were beginning to open up. The church at home was experiencing a season of spiritual renewal that Taylor hoped to see turn into missionary channels. Undoubtedly, the time was ripe for Taylor to return home and present the need for China’s unreached millions.
Unexpected Calamity
Taylor’s expectations for usefulness in the homeland soon took a sharp turn for the worse as a result of a fall that took place during his commute. Extreme pain disabled him for several days. Gradually, paralysis of the lower limbs set in, leaving him motionless from the waist down. When he arrived in London, the doctors immediately consigned him to bedrest and offered him little hope that he would ever recover. Thus, in the prime of his life and with so many pressing needs beckoning for his attention, Taylor found himself an invalid. He could only lie in bed… and pray.
Although his plans seemed thwarted, God’s purposes for Taylor’s life and mission certainly weren’t. The Lord was using this season of suffering and intense pain to deepen the faith and fruitfulness of this missionary leader in ways that would far exceed his wildest imaginations.
Power in Weakness
Taylor could have bemoaned his situation. But he didn’t. Although an invalid, Taylor was hardly inactive. In that small upstairs apartment in London, Taylor took up what would be the most strenuous, effectual work of his ministry: prayer. In a letter to a colleague, Taylor wrote,
“When I came home, I hoped to have done much for China. God soon put that out of the question, as you know, and for many months there was little I could do but pray. And what has been the result? Far more done by God, far more is being done, far more will be done by Him than my most sanguine hopes ventured to anticipate.
And shall we learn no lesson from this? Shall we not each one of us determine to labor more in prayer; to cultivate more intimate communion with God by His help; thinking less of our work and more of His working, that He may in very deed be glorified in and through us? If we can and will do this, I am quite sure ere long there will be abundance evidence of it in the improved state of our congregations and churches, in the preparedness of the people for the message, and in the power with which it is delivered. More souls will be saved; the believers will lead more holy lives, and our own knowledge of God and joy in Him more multiplied.
Surely we ought to lead beautiful, glorious lives, if we are really with Him Who is the Chiefest among Ten Thousand, the Altogether Lovely! ‘The people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits.’”[1]
The Power of Prayer
Taylor eventually did recover and continue his labor in China. But the lessons he learned while confined to a bed would not soon be forgotten. Exploits indeed were the result of the mighty work of prayer that took place during Taylor’s season of suffering. But isn’t that the way of our Lord? Is it not in our weakness that His power is more wonderfully made known? Taylor’s biographer noted, “It was not until many years later, when Taylor could look back over all the ways in which the Lord had led him, that he was impressed with the fact that every important advance in the development of the Mission had sprung from or been directly connected with times of sickness or suffering which had cast him in a special way upon God.”[2]
More Than a Last Resort
Prayer is not a perfunctory thing we do when “real” work isn’t possible. Rather, prayer is the essential work that activates God’s power on behalf of God’s people. As Taylor notes, “To deal with God is at least as real as to deal with man; when we get to prayer we get to work, and work of the most practical kind.”[3] Let us then get to work, knowing that “the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man has great power as it is working” (James 5:16).
[1] Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission The Growth of a Work of God. OMF Special Printing for The Elijah Company, 1998, p. 275
[2] Ibid, p. 253
[3] Ibid, p. 55
