RESTLESS WORKS or RESTFUL WORSHIP
by Erwin Bourne
 

I am writing this MESSAGE OF ENCOURAGEMENT especially
for God’s missionaries and Christian workers around
the world who might be reading “SomebodyCares4u”
today.  I feel you need encouragement and guidance.
Do you recall the time that Jesus and His disciples
were on their way to Jerusalem and stopped over at the
house of Martha and Mary?  Mary sat at Jesus’ feet
while Martha did the serving.  Martha complained to
Jesus about this arrangement.  “Lord, doesn’t it seem
unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do
all the work?  Tell her to come and help me.”  Here
are Jesus’ words:  “My dear Martha, you are so upset
over all these details!  There is really one thing
worth being concerned about.  Mary has discovered
it—and I won’t take it away from her” (John 10:38-41
NLT).

I have two large volumes concerning Hudson Taylor and
the China Inland Mission.  The first volume is called:
THE GROWTH OF A MAN.  The second volume is:  THE
GROWTH OF A WORK.  The material that follows has been
gleaned from these two books.  Keep in mind that CIM
had over one-thousand missionaries scattered across
inland China.

The Work Is His, Not Mine
“The heart knows his own bitterness” (Prove. 14:10
KJV).  The load Hudson Taylor was carrying was almost
more than he could bear.  It was not the work with all
its difficulty and trial; when consciously in
communion with the Lord, these seemed light.  It was
not shortness of funds, nor anxiety about those
dearest to him.  It was just himself:  the unsatisfied
longing of his heart, the inward struggle to abide in
Christ; the frequent failure and disappointment.


Hudson was a joyous man now, a bright, happy
Christian.  He had been a toiling, burdened man
before, with lately not much rest of soul.  It was
resting in Jesus now, and letting Him do the
work—which makes all the difference!  “I have not to
seek Him now; He never leaves me.  At night He
smoothes my pillow; in the morning He wakes my heart
to His love,”

“This year has been by far the most painful one of my
life, but also by far the most blessed.  In all these
trials I have had the assured confidence that the work
is His, not mine.  Then again, it is no small comfort
to me to know that God has called me to my work,
putting me where I am and as I am.  I have not sought
the position, and I dare not leave it.  He knows why
He placed me here—whether to do, or learn, or suffer.”

“If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful.”  “Lord,
increase my faith!”  One more unworthy there could not
be.  And oh, how I feel my utter incapacity to carry
on the work aright!  May the mighty God of Jacob ever
be my help.  I can form no conception as to what our
course may be, or whether it will take us north,
south, east or west.  I never felt so fully and
utterly cast on the Lord.

It was not until many years later, when Mr. Taylor
could look back over all the way 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 or been directly connected with
times of sickness or suffering which had cast him in a
special way upon God.  — “Stricken down in the prime
of his days, he could only lie in that upstairs room
conscious of all there was to be done, of all that was
not attended to—to just lie there and rejoice in God

A little bed with four posts was now the sphere to
which Hudson Taylor found himself restricted—he who
had hoped to do so much on this visit to England.  If
ever strenuous, active effort had been needed, it was
surely at this juncture; and a little bed with four
posts was his prison, shall we say, or his
opportunity?  Between the posts at the foot of the bed
hung a map—though he hardly needed it—a map of China.
Certain it is that from that quiet room, that room of
suffering, sprang all the larger growth of the China
Inland Mission.