"Well done, good and faithful servant" will ring throughout the heavens someday as millions receive their reward. This much we know. Our own energy will have produced nothing worth rewarding. But in God's power? Now that's a different story.
Whatever We Ask....
August 6, 2009
Yet, nothing is impossible, nothing, to men of faith and conviction.
T. S. Eliot CHORUSES FROM THE ROCK
Hudson Taylor was used of God to open up China to the gospel in the mid 1800's. As the demand for workers grew, in the year 1887 he felt lead to pray with others for the addition of 100 worker. Of course, adding that many workers would be a tremendous challenge financially.
In THE GROWTH OF A WORK OF GOD, Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor tell of the wonder of that request.
The story of the Hundred has often been told-it belongs to no one mission or land. We know how, with growing courage, Mr. Taylor and those associated with him were led to pray for ten thousand pounds of additional income, as necessary to meet the increased expenses ; and that it might be given in large gifts, so that the home staff should not be overwhelmed with correspondence.
We know that no fewer than six hundred men and women offered themselves to the Mission that year for service in China ; that one hundred and two, to be exact, were sent out ; and that not ten but eleven thousand pounds of extra income was received, no appeal having been made for financial help.
And we know, most wonderful perhaps of all, how definite prayer was answered as to the very form in which the money came ; the whole being received in just eleven gifts, involving little or no extra work to the office staff of the Mission. But such a story bears retelling, especially from Mr. Taylor's letters, to the glory not of man or methods, but of God.
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him. 1 John 5:14-15