A Looking to the Faithful One

I’ve been reading Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, which is an amazing book on the life of the great missionary in China and about halfway through this amazing book there is a section where Hudson receives a letter from a friend who has recently come to Christ. This letter’s content is a glorious example of true regeneration and a true God given faith that leans not on faith but on the glorious Object of faith…

“The Lord Jesus received is holiness begun; the Lord Jesus cherished is holiness advancing; the Lord Jesus counted upon as never absent would be holiness complete. He is most holy who has most of Christ within, and joys most fully in the finished work. It is defective faith which clogs the feet and causes many a fall.

This last sentence, I think I now fully endorse. 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, in the joy of a complete salvation, “from all sin” – this is not new, and yet ’tis new to me. I feel as though the dawning of a glorious day has risen upon me. I hail it with trembling, yet with trust. I seem to have got to the edge only, bit of a boundless sea; to have sipped only, but of that which fully satisfies.

Christ literally all seems to me, now, the power, the only power for service, the only ground for unchanging joy…

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 word, He Himself as revealed to us in the Word, to be the subject of our constant thoughts. Not a striving to have faith…but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need; a resting in the Loved One entirely, for time and for eternity.“

- From Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret