These words come from a letter from Hudson Taylor to a close friend. You’ll find them in Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. As I’ve posted before, I highly recommend this book. And there’s more here. Enjoy…
I do wish I could have a talk with you now about the way of holiness.
At the time you were speaking to me about it, it was the subject of all others occupying my thoughts, not from anything I had read…so much as from a consciousness of failure—a constant falling short of that which I felt should be aimed at; an unrest; a perpetual striving to find some way by which one might continually enjoy that communion, that fellowship, at times so real but more often so visionary, so far off!…
Do you know, I now think that this striving, longing, hoping for better days to come is not the true way to holiness, happiness, or usefulness. It is better, no doubt, far better than being satisfied with poor attainments, but not the best way after all. I have been struck with a passage from a book…entitled Christ Is All. It says, “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 must 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, but 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 work, 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.
If that moves you, maybe spend some time thinking about it, while you mull over Romans 8:1-6 and Galatians 2:20.