The Power of a Consistent Life, pt 1

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Teddy James, and we're going to just take a quick look at a book that is a collection of sermons at a conference of missionaries.

And the missionaries met in a region of China called Shanxi, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, which there's not much chance of that.

Let's just say we're both, well, I'm from Mississippi, you're from Ohio, but been living in Mississippi long enough, we can claim you as a native.

The Southern accent is just going to come through strong. Yeah. So if there's any Mississippians in China right now, they will, they'll be able to understand.

Sure. So this is a Northern province in China where few missionaries were, but there was a conference of missionaries, all of whom belong to the

China Inland Mission, which is the old name for what is now called the Overseas Missionary Fellowship.

It was the missionary organization started by Hudson Taylor in the mid to late 1800s.

And in 1886, he met with these missionaries in the

Northern province there and held a series of meetings where he wanted to encourage them and make sure they were on the same page spiritually.

I think he was nearing 50 years old when this meeting happened. This is a little book.

It's very rare. Days of Blessing in Inland China. You can find this book,

I believe, print on demand. Maybe. I know we can find it online and I'll have a link to the digitized version of the book in the show notes.

So the book is made up, as I mentioned, it's made up. It's not a book that Taylor wrote.

It's a series of talks that he gave and someone wrote them down and then edited them for print and he gave them permission and they released them.

So because of the nature of that, the book is not as kind of well thought out.

There's conversations in the middle of the chapters. It'll say, you know, Mr. Stanley, a missionary, said this and Mr.

So -and -so said this and Mr. So -and -so interjected this. And also it's not just the main talks that Taylor planned to have, but there are some preliminary talks because when he got there after a long time of traveling by foot, by boat, you know, by donkey, by cart up to the

Northern province, some of the missionaries in the region couldn't make it because they were nursing another missionary who had a very dangerously high fever.

So they didn't want those men who were giving themselves to, you know, save the life of one of their fellow missionaries to miss out on the gathering.

So they did preliminary meetings. And then when those missionaries were freed up and that man was healthy enough, then they came down and they did the main meetings.

We're only going to be talking about one of the talks that came. The book is not only unique in that sense that it's a series of talks written down by somebody else.

So it's not quite as carefully laid out as you would expect a book to be. It's a bit, it jumps around a lot.

But the other thing about Hudson Taylor is his writing is not my favorite writing.

If someone were to say to me, do you recommend that I read everything Hudson Taylor wrote?

Well, you can read everything Hudson Taylor wrote. He didn't write a lot, but I think there are better books on every topic that he wrote on.

I don't think there are better lives or examples of following Christ than Hudson Taylor.

There are guys that I would rank and ladies like Amy Carmichael on the same level with Taylor, but I don't think there are many that I would think, well, they excel

Taylor. He just is such a sterling example of Christ likeness.

According to his understanding of scripture. But there are some holes in his theology.

He was part of the Keswick movement and that emphasized holiness by kind of, you know, surrendering everything over to Jesus Christ in like one great crisis event that follows conversion at some time.

And then you are maybe live on a plateau of holiness instead of kind of the older Puritan Protestant view of holiness being kind of, you know, a general progression, but there's a lot of ups and downs.

There are strengths to the Keswick movement and weaknesses and the weaknesses and strengths are both viewed in Hudson Taylor's writings.

But having said that, that it's not a book that is really carefully thought through.

It's a collection of talks and there are some weaknesses in Taylor's theology.

Having said that, I would say that the talks he gives are worth reading.

And the one we're going to cover this week and next week is the best of them.

And he just says things that I find reformed guys are not saying. It's like we come to a text, we explain the text.

We give great quotes from Puritans and the 18th century, you know, writers or modern reformed men, and it's all really good.

But if we're not careful, it's like, it doesn't get under the surface. And Taylor and some of the other men like him and women like Amy Carmichael, it's like they say things that get behind my armor.

And it's not just right words, which can be maybe a bit sterile, you know, clean, true, sharp, but sterile.

Taylor's is not as clean. There's some fuzzy edges on his theology at times, but his words get into us and they bother me.

And there are things that he says in the talk that we'll be looking at that I find really troubling.

And because of that, really helpful. Before we look at the book, though, you're going to give us an introduction to Taylor's life.

Yes. So just for context of this. All right. I had to bring a little show and tell.

So this is the two volume Hudson Taylor biography. And you can tell when

I'm when I'm reading a book, I was removed the dust jacket. This is what it looks like when you buy it. And then when you take that off, there's this nice, beautiful orange that just stands out on the bookshelf that my wife is not a super big fan of.

But this is a book that I am three quarters of the way through.

And and I find that I am reading this book incredibly slowly because there is so much that you just kind of have to stop and think and and do some some very much soul searching in it, because as I can't remember who it was that said it, but this is certainly a life worth looking into.

So Hudson Taylor was born in 1832, and his story really begins back with his grandfather, who was a

Methodist back when the term was just someone who was so methodical about the faith.

So not necessarily all the way back in John Wesley and George Williams. Yes. Those days he was a an evangelist who would go around and during the great, great, the

Great Awakening. People would follow him and they tried to smash glass into his eyes to blind him to prevent him from preaching.

So Hudson comes from a long legacy of of strong Christians. But as a teenager, he had no interest whatsoever in Christ.

And one day as he's home alone, his mom is away. She's at a ladies meeting for study and for prayer.

He's home. He's in his house by himself and he's bored and he picks up a book called or pamphlet called

Poor Richard, picks it up and starts reading it. At the same time, his mother is she feels impressed that she must be praying for her son.

So she locks herself into a room and makes a decision. She's not going to leave that room until she has peace that the

Lord has met her son or met with her son. And so she spends hours in there. He's totally unaware.

And he's picking up Poor Richard, reads it and is converted through that. And and so he was a rebellious teenager.

And this just very sweet change happens. Growing up during family worship, his father would always consistently would cry out for the lost souls in China.

And those fell didn't really make a big impact on Hudson Taylor until his conversion.

And now he started having a desire to go to China.

Hudson was always kind of a weak, sickly child. And so the idea of medicine, he wanted to study.

He wanted to help people with that. And he decided he was going to pursue chemistry, what we would call pharmaceuticals, understanding medicine.

He never he did not at this point study to become a doctor, but he did study to be able to prescribe medicine.

And his dad was a pharmacist. His dad was a pharmacist as well. And so he worked for his dad and they eventually went into London, went into training.

And I'm skipping a lot of the stories here and in partly in hopes that you will go and get this two volume biography because it is so incredible.

And we'll put a link to it in the show notes. But there are so many stories.

There's one in particular where he decided that he was working for a pharmacist and he said,

I'm not going to remind him of my pay. I'm going to trust the Lord to remind him. And it ended up that the man forgot to pay him.

His rent was due and he had no money for rent. And so the man, his boss came through and said, oh,

Hudson, I, I forgotten to pay you. And he says, yes, yes, you have. And my rent is due today.

And the guy says, well, if I'd had only known, I just sent all of the cash out to the bank. So I have nothing to pay you.

Well, at that time, one of their clients, one of the patients comes in, normally he would pay, you know, earlier in the day.

He just so happened to come and he paid right then so that the Hudson's boss was able to give him the money and he was able to pay rent and buy some food.

So there's so many trials. And as we talked about in the last series, being a person with weighty words,

Hudson Taylor is that man, but his weightiness didn't come when he was in China. It came when he was preparing, when he was training, when he was studying, because he sought opportunities to test the faithfulness of the

Lord. And by that, I don't mean in a, in a, in a sinful way, you know, that we test the

Lord, but I mean, he gave the Lord opportunity to show his faithfulness and the Lord proved himself faithful time and time and time again.

On the way to China, Hudson Taylor, he's sick. There's a ship, well, almost a shipwreck.

There's terrible storm. Every, all of the sailors are scared and Hudson was fine until he saw that the sailors were scared.

And that's when he got scared. But at the same time, he said, I'm not going to die here. I have to go to China to preach the gospel.

So he had full faith that he would be going to China, that he would be preaching there. When he gets there, it's a terrible time.

There's a civil war happening. And England had just signed a bunch of treaties with China so that they could conduct business in the port cities.

So there was some level of protection, but there wasn't a lot. Hudson Taylor comes in, he sees so much death, so much destruction.

And it was an opportunity where as I'm reading and I'm thinking of myself, that would be so easy for me to become cynical, to see the wickedness of man on just full display day after day.

And you see so much suffering and so much death. And yet Hudson Taylor held on to, it wasn't an innocence and it wasn't a naivety.

It was a hopefulness of faith. And that alone added so much weight to everything that followed in the book for me.

One of the things that Hudson Taylor is so famous for is quote unquote, going native.

So the historic, the traditional practice when you were a missionary is you would hold on to your kind of cultural custom.

So you would wear, you know, all the missionaries who were in China, they wore English dress, they had English haircuts, they ate

English food, all the things, they were kind of a colony. Well, Hudson Taylor rejected that.

He wanted to go to, he wanted to go inland beyond the ports, beyond the safety of the treaty.

And he did so. And he came under great scrutiny and got into some trouble.

They were threatening to kick him out of China and send him back to England because he kept going inland.

Yeah. Not the Chinese, but the missionaries who felt that he would cause problems for them.

They wrote letters back home saying your missionary is a troublemaker because he's dressing like a

Chinaman. He keeps going inland. Right. And when he first cut his hair in the

Chinese way, he dyed his hair black. He took on the traditional Chinese dress.

I remember him saying that he was amazed and comforted because he was able to walk the streets with no one noticing.

So he was able to live like an actual Chinese man. Yeah. I remember also an account when he and the famous Scottish missionary,

William Burns, when they were working together for a string of time, which was a significant theological benefit to Hudson Taylor.

Burns helped him get a more balanced grasp of scripture. Taylor noted that Burns, who still at that point had not yet become

Chinese in his culture and dress, Burns was dressed like a

Scot and Taylor was dressed like a Chinese. And so they go to a new town and Burns would get large crowds because he was different than any person they'd ever seen before.

You know, they had not seen white men, Westerners in that part. And Hudson Taylor looks like he's

Chinese, so he had small crowds when he was preaching. And Taylor and Burns both recognized the benefit of not drawing large crowds of curious people who are not interested in the gospel.

They just wanted to see what a British person looked like. Right. Because you have to think, this was long before photos were even a big thing.

Yeah. So they wanted to see this white thing, you know, wow, this person looks different than anyone we've ever seen, anyone than our parents had ever seen.

And so they kind of came like, you know, people go into a circus act, you know, it was entertainment. Taylor would have the small group who wanted to know more about this gospel, this

Christ. So yeah, interesting to see the impact that embracing the

Chinese culture in every way that wasn't sinful and that it had.

And we're going to talk about that in the coming chapter. Yeah, we will. So very quickly, because we definitely want to keep going.

So Hudson Taylor then gets married. He has a number of children, many of whom die, had a son who died in infancy.

Grace was his eldest daughter, and she passed away from meningitis as a young lady.

But even in that, so Hudson Taylor had taken her to England where they had some more kids, they come back.

And it was her death that kind of strengthened the mission, the missionaries when they saw his suffering and his faithfulness in the suffering.

Because a lot of people had started to question Taylor when they saw that they were strengthened and encouraged and they moved forward in the work.

So there was a lot more conflict and a lot more going on. And just to give a context to of when all of this was going on, one of the trips when

Taylor came into England, he made 11 trips to China and one furlough, he met with Charles Spurgeon.

Spurgeon was so impressed is the wrong word, but he was so encouraged by the life and the work of Hudson Taylor that he became a lifelong supporter of China Inland Mission.

Yeah. As did George Mueller. Yeah. The three of them. And Spurgeon also supported

Mueller's work. Yes. So there is so much more that we could go into.

And again, I haven't finished and I'm just, and it's kind of intentional.

I want to work through these very slowly. They're worth the time of going through.

And again, link will be in the description. Well, on Thursday evening,

July 8th, 1886, Taylor gathers together the missionaries and he gives a talk that evening that we're going to be looking at.

And the talk, I guess we could, he didn't give a title, but I think

I would entitle it the power of a consistent life.

So Taylor reads from the book of Acts. He's focusing in on Paul, particularly in Acts chapter 16 and how

Paul is successful. Even if the success is opposition from the world, nobody can meet

Paul and remain kind of neutral. They, you know, they either embrace the Christ that Paul has embraced, or they hate that Christ and hate

Paul. And Taylor points out that one of the great secrets of the life of Paul was that his life, not just his words, were consistent with scripture, his message and his life were consistent.

And so there wasn't confusion. There wasn't a kind of declawing of the message because he said things that were very impressive, but then, you know, when you watched him live, he lived just like you.

I remember a quote that I read many years ago from Robert Murray McShane, who was talking to a young man who was,

I think, preparing for the ministry. And McShane said that he was talking about the significance of the life, not confusing people by being a contradiction of the sermon.

And he said that it is well known that people will allow you to say anything from the pulpit, you know, in a conservative biblical -ish church.

You can say anything you want from the pulpit. You can preach hard at them as long as you come down and talk and live the way that people talk and live.

And I remember reading that and being a bit confused as to what he meant by that, but it's obvious.

If we live like everyone around us, but we talk way up here, it won't bother them.

They will just think, well, you're paid to talk that way, but you're just like us.

So I don't have to take those words seriously. Well, he gives some examples in the life of Paul, and I'm going to read some quotes from his talk over these episodes.

So let me read one at the beginning of the talk. He says this, there was so very much in the character of the apostle

Paul, in harmony with his message, that it was not hard to receive that message from that man.

When the apostle preached Jesus Christ and told of one who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, there was in Paul's own poverty and in his calloused hand that he held forth, there was evidence of one who did not think it a hard path to become poor in order to seek man's salvation.

So Paul talked about Christ becoming poor to seek and save the lost. And then when they saw

Paul, they saw he was poor for the same reason. And he did not complain.

When he preached of the one who was despised and rejected, his own position despised by Jew and Gentile alike, it emphasized the message.

When he told of one who had shed his blood on behalf of his people, one who gave himself for his people, there was in the life of the apostle that which authenticated his word.

And when he spoke of his ministry as one that he received from Christ and therefore he did not faint, surely,

Taylor writes, there was enough to make a man faint in the life of Paul.

But Paul's consciousness that he had received a ministry of life and salvation, he's able to say, we faint not, but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

Well, stop right there. What Taylor is quoting from is 2

Corinthians 4, after Paul talks about the superiority of the new covenant and the fact that he himself has received mercy from that covenant and received ministry or labor within that covenant.

Because of that, he does not lose heart. And there are certain things that he refuses to do because he doesn't lose heart.

And there are certain things that he mentions that he does do. And we're going to look at that for some time because that's where Hudson Taylor really stops and parks there.

But I want to remind you that he's giving that example as an example of the greater principle that what

Paul said about Christ was matched by how Paul lived in front of the people.

And one thing to keep in mind too, he is speaking to missionaries who are in China, who are on the mission field, and they must hear that we have to continue on.

But the principles that he's using, the principles that he's pointing us to are applicable for every

Christian, every believer in every season of life. And no matter what we may be going through or have gone through, or will go through, these are applicable and necessary for us.

Yeah. And we'll talk about that at the end of our podcast, but they have application for a pastor, of course, but they have applications for Sunday school teachers, whether adults or children, they have applications for parents.

They have application to, you know, a Christian student who is representing

Jesus Christ at his school or in your, you know, community or on your soccer team.

Anyone who wants to speak on behalf of Christ and you want your words to have weight, again, think of the series that we've just concluded.

This is a perfect illustration of that. Who can God trust with the weightiness of his words?

And it is those who, because they know the superiority of the new covenant and the reality of a living

God, they are freed from so many temptations to pragmatism or to adjust or to be crafty.

Now, after making that general statement, Paul's life matches Paul's teachings.

And he gives those illustrations. He's like I said, he stays here at this issue of being confident in God and not needing to adjust the way you do ministry or you, the way you speak or the way you represent

Christ in order to be more effective. And the reason he says is because of what we believe about Christ.

Before we look at the positive aspect, let's look at the negative, what he doesn't do. Taylor points out that living a life that is consistent with what you say about God from scripture, it's not easy.

It requires the constant work of God within the soul. But it is even more difficult when you live in an area or in a culture where the culture is dominated.

The majority of people in that culture are unbelievers. So we could think of a nation that way. We could think of a community.

You know, we could think of a college classroom. We could think of a workplace or a family where you may be one

Christian surrounded by many who don't understand you. The reason he says it's more difficult is there is a constant natural pressure from the majority on the minority, the

Christian. The majority of unbelievers, how they view things, how they approach things, their methodology tends to rub off on the minority, the

Christian who's trying to represent Christ. So it will require a great carefulness if we are to remain unaltered in our methods and our attitudes year after year, bringing the truths of Christ to people.

It would just be natural if we're not careful to still have the same doctrines officially and not to, you know, perhaps slip into some ugly, very shameful sin, but just to kind of adjust ourselves and to become like our culture.

And it is so important to think too, that what we're talking about is not you just wake up one day and just decide to give up.

I think if that were the case, like that would be a little easier to say, no, we don't do that. It is the drift. It is slow and it's the day -to -day decisions.

And it's a drift within a culture that you're drifting toward. So it's not as if you stick out like a sore thumb.

Well, it's easier because all you have to do is nothing, right? If you're in the, if you're in a river and that river's current is taking you downstream, all you have to do is nothing and you'll be carried downstream.

It requires effort to fight it. Yeah. So let me give you, Taylor obviously applies this to Chinese culture.

We'll apply it to ours. But this is what he says. He says, we are among a crafty people.

And he says that because Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 verses 1 and 2, we've renounced these kind of behind the scenes dealings, these deceitful dealings.

We've renounced things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating or altering the word of God.

So he talks about craftiness. He said, well, the Chinese are crafty. Not to be tempted to meet crafty culture with our own craft.

He said, that is not human. It requires divine grace. To be guileless among a guileful culture requires faith in God.

If God is the great worker and the work of God is the great thing in our heart, we will never seek to please

God by guileful and crafty ways. We can afford to renounce all the hidden things of dishonesty, the guile and all the craftiness of the crafty.

In preaching God's truth, we can afford not to handle the word of God deceitfully to adulterate it.

And that I think is something we need to stop and think about. When we think of our present culture, wherever you may live, whatever culture you're in,

I would say for Western evangelicals, we tend to live in the states, uh, the

Southern half, the Bible belt, we tend to live in a, in a basically conservative culture.

Or if you don't live in a conservative culture, if you live in a place where the culture has shifted and what might be labeled a liberal culture all around you, when you go on your iPad and your phone, and when you watch the news and you listen to your favorite, you know, pundits, it's conservatives you're listening to.

So you can, you can be influenced by American conservativism, which has some values, which overlap with scripture, but it has so many that contradict the teachings and the life of Christ.

It may not be easy to spot because you're comparing it to maybe what's called a liberal culture, which openly contradicts a great deal in ways that you'd have to be blind not to see.

But the conservative culture contradicts in a way that maybe is more difficult.

I remember seeing a book on religion and politics many years ago. I thought it was an interesting title, but I haven't bought and read the book and not recommending it.

It's, I don't think it's a Christian that wrote it, but the title is pretty perceptive. It said this, God, why the conservatives don't get him right.

And second part of the title, why the liberals don't get him at all. So I think that that title is pretty perceptive.

There's a lot about American conservativism, which we live among as evangelicals, that would bend us and reshape us in its image.

And at times in ways that it directly contradicts the pattern of Christ, the attitude of Christ, the teachings of Christ.

And so we become very confusing teachers when we quote Jesus, and then we align ourselves with a system that may contradict the things that we're saying.

And Paul says, we don't have to be molded by that culture. We don't have to be crafty to reach the crafty.

We don't have to be deceitful to reach deceitful. We don't have to use their tools in the way that they use their tools because we belong to a living

God and belonging to this living God, Paul points out, and Hudson Taylor pointed out and demonstrated.

We're free to limit ourselves to the things that God would have us do. So to use the tools that Christ gives us, to use the truths that Christ gives us, and not to step outside of that and begin to use the world's crafty methods, which go against Christ.

We don't have to give into that temptation because we have a living God. If we had no living

God, then it would be up to us to somehow manipulate our culture toward morality or Christian, uh, you know, thinking.

And for that, we would have to be crafty. Right. But, but consider the faith that it takes to really do that.

I mean, when we are, so I've, I've lived the, the conservative kind of, I I'm a news junkie.

I like following a lot of these things. And what I hear consistently from all of the sources that I read and all the sources that I watch, um, is, okay, we've got to, we got to get this guy into office to turn the culture around, to turn the country around.

We got to get this guy into presidency, this guy into the governorship, this guy into the mayor, the DAs. When we understand that our salvation that the country salvation even is not based on who's in political power, not saying that it's not important.

We certainly need to vote obviously. But when we don't have to rely on the, on the strengths of men, on the pragmatism of men, when we don't have to try and be crafty, it requires such faith to let go of those things and to do the things that we are called to do.

So live the Christian life and trust that the Lord would use that to accomplish all the means that he has, that he said he wants to do.

Yeah. We're not talking about inactivity. If that's, if that's our view of the Christian life, then

I think that we've somehow, we've gotten that from somewhere other than scripture. So we should be active, but in the midst of our aggressive activity, we constantly return to scripture.

Particularly you think of the new Testament and the example of Christ and the example in the book of Acts, where we see the truths of Christ being brought to a multicultural society, which it's what we're living in more and more.

So how do you do that? I mean, we don't live in Israel. You know, we live among a people who have a thousand options for God.

So how do we bring the truth to bear on that culture and the example and the teaching of the new

Testament? It's everything we need is there. The question is, do we trust

God enough to really do it and to do only it and to avoid the very tempting, but dangerous sliding slope of pragmatism?

You know, if we do this, we'll be more effective, but that skews the message. Well, yeah, it undercuts it.

Yeah. So let's stop and kind of think of our own life. If in our culture, if we had no living

God at work, then we would definitely need to be as crafty, maybe more crafty, more guileful, you know, more clever than our opponents.

But with a living God at work, there is no need for us to use their weapons because what we need is to walk in harmony with a living

God who rules over everything, doing what he tells us to do with the attitude that he tells us to have and trusting that he will make it effective.

So, you know, if you think about when we begin to lose confidence in God and we lose confidence in his truth, and that's easy to do if we're not careful, it begins to show up.

Paul mentions the negative ways, you know, you become crafty, you change the word of God a little, you know, you shift the message, you end up being a bit deceitful.

So, Teddy, how do you think it shows up in the key areas of a religious person's life?

You know, we have church, family work, school. How do you see that occurring at times in one of those areas?

Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways, but I think that in one way, when just conversations that I've been having with my wife and when it comes to how do you do church is one big question that we've been having.

And because, again, just different conversations, but when you're pragmatic in your approach to, let's say, growing a church, you can make it as entertaining as possible to bring in all of the people.

And that's one way to grow a church. And it's a good way to kill the church as well. So when you're pragmatic like that, but I think even with the really good things, you can say, well, okay,

I'm going to homeschool my children, because if we do that, then the Lord will bless that.

And there's a way that you can homeschool your children and in a way that honors the

Lord. And I think there's a way that you can homeschool your children in a pragmatic way, because this will certainly see them saved.

Yeah, there are ways of being pragmatic and to have unbiblical expectations.

And if they don't work, then you can lose heart and you begin to think, well, that didn't work.

I'm going to need to use the world's methods. So a church, a church starts out with the determination to be biblical, whatever that is, as we search the scriptures, we will apply it.

But what happens if the church doesn't grow? You know, for the first couple of years here, almost no growth.

And people would come and visit a lot, but halfway through the sermon, you could see it on their face. They would never be back.

So, you know, the people, some of the people in the church began to get a bit nervous. You know, are we, are we going to remain 12 adults and, you know, and 10 kids or whatever it was at that time.

But if we trust the Lord and we obey, again, not inactive, passive approach, but a very active obedience, then we, we can trust that God will use our labor for his glory.

So a church doesn't have to adjust its message to the culture to get the culture in, and then later give them kind of the rest of the story.

Hudson Taylor points out that, you know, you can hide the cross. And he pointed actually to Jesuit missionaries,

Roman Catholic missionaries in China. So he said, look at the Jesuits. They, they don't talk about the cross until you already join the

Roman Catholic faith. And then they later talk about the cross. And he said, we don't have to do that.

We have a living God. We don't have to adjust the message to hide the cross, let them know the full cost of following Christ, but let them see the reality of Christ in us and in what we teach, you know, and they will embrace.

So you can do that with church, but that's pretty obvious. I think less obvious, but equally dangerous is how we can lose heart with God and the truth of the scripture as our children go from being, you know, nine and 10 year olds to 19 and 20 year olds.

And so they're no longer children, but adults, sons and daughters. And, you know, and they, they're coming to some very big decisions and you can see that love to Christ is not driving their decisions.

And it is so tempting as a parent because you care about their soul. It's so tempting to think, well, is there something we need to adjust in our

Christianity to make room for our adult kids or our teenage kids appetites?

You know, if we kind of make a compromise with them, then maybe they'll stay in church. Maybe they'll follow

Christ. And while we don't want to be foolhardy and, you know, try to offend them unnecessarily, we meet them where they're at, lovingly telling them the truth and living the truth in front of them.

But the way to avoid the temptation to adjust the truth and adjust the church to fit a worldly appetite, the way to avoid that is not the indifference that some people have toward the lost, but it is a confidence in God.

He will work using the means he has given us. If we will walk in harmony with him, make use of those means, the spirit of Christ will work.

Not everyone that we love is guaranteed to be saved, but God is guaranteed to be pleased and to use what we do.

And I think that that comes down to, yeah, what you just said, but, but where is your confidence? And I think this is such a good test for us because it is one of those areas where we can be so easily self -deceived where I can say, well, certainly

I have faith that God will do, you know, what he says he will do, that he will rescue, that he will redeem, that he will sanctify.

And yet what path are we walking on to actually see that happen?

When we, when I was talking about the biography of Hudson Taylor, he walked in such a way that gave

God opportunity to prove his faithfulness. And I think in so many areas of our lives, whether it is, you know, us dealing with our children or us serving in our church or us even looking out at our nation.

So no matter how small or how big, I think often, at least what I see in my own life is

I'll say, yes, I believe that God will, because he says he will in his word.

But then I also feel like I need to come alongside and kind of help him out, kind of prop him up.

And that's a, that's an area of repentance for me. But I think that that is so easy for us to, to fall into.

So it's a good test. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that when we see people be inactive, that demonstrates what they believe about God.

When I see people be active in a way that matches the culture rather than matches

Christ. So the sense of entitlement that all America has, and that stems from pride.

The Christian says, well, since I belong to Jesus, who is the rightful King of all, I am entitled.

And this nation needs to treat me appropriately. They don't need to ignore my rights.

I'm entitled to this. And in a sense, you know, there is a right and wrong, but what if the

Lord allows you to be put in a position at work or in a family or in a church or on a ball team or at school where your rights are overlooked because you love

Jesus Christ? Are you going to become a victim alongside everyone else in your culture who, who's yearning for victim status?

So Christians trusting God do not have to claim their rights.

Do not have to go around like people who are stung because they have not been given what they feel entitled to.

We are not entitled to our rights. We are entitled to everything God has promised.

We have lost our right in our sin to anything, but hell.

So we can say to God, my rights are in your hands and what you do with them is your right.

So I will not whine and complain. I will speak truth in love and take a stand, but I will not do it like the culture does whining and complaining that my country isn't giving me what

I deserve. And what an opportunity to be a testimony for the faithfulness of Christ.

Yeah. Yeah. We tell everyone he's worth it. He is life itself.

And then if someone takes away my freedom in one small area, you know, suddenly we're ready to take up arms and, you know, and behead the

Congressman because my rights, you know, and, and we, we make it a very Christian -ish thing.

You know, it's because I'm a Christian that, you know, they're making me wear my seatbelt or whatever it is, you know, and I'm being facetious, but you know, the complaints, so the complaining, whining, victim status, the entitlement, that shouldn't be there.

A Christian ought to be willing to take a stand and suffer the cultural consequence of it.

But without the whining, it is, it is your privilege to, for love of this lost dark world to do that.

And if Christ allows you to go to jail, to lose a job, to lose friends, to lose a marriage, to lose comforts and privileges that you enjoy for the sake of his honor and of the souls around you, then you'll have to trust him and not shift and say, wait, that didn't work.

That just led to loss. So I'm going to be more practical next time, more pragmatic.

What we'll look at next week is we will look at Hudson Taylor's talk as he continues looking at 2

Corinthians 4, 1 and 2, particularly turning toward what positive things have to be in a life that becomes a living manifestation of the truth.

We don't have to do these things, Paul says, because we trust God, but we will do these things because we trust

God. And these are the things that God uses and Hudson Taylor's life, such a wonderful picture of the truthfulness and effectiveness of that approach.