The spiritual journey over the past several months...close to a year...has been an ongoing breaking of old ways, old self and building up in Him. But I found myself stuck for many many months. Intense struggle of soul that nobody can see on the outside but is of enormous consequence inside.
As I was reading Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, I fell upon a chapter that described exactly what I was going through in my own soul...
"I knew that if only I could abide in Christ all would be well, but I could not. I would begin the day with prayer, determined not to take my eye off him for a moment, but pressure of duties, sometimes very trying, and constant interruptions apt to be so wearing, cause me to forget him.... Each day brought its register of sin and failure, of lack of power. To will was indeed 'present with me,' but how to perform I found not.
"Then came the question, is there no rescue? Must it be thus to the end---constant conflict, and too often defeat? How could I preach with sincerity that, to those who receive Jesus, 'to them gave he power to become the sons of God' (John 1:12; i.e. godlike) when it was not so in my own experience? Instead of growing stronger, I seemed to be getting weaker and to have less power against sin; and no wonder, for faith and even hope were getting low. I hated myself; I hated my sin, yet gained no strength against it. I felt I was a child of God. His Spirit in my heart would cry, in spite of all, 'Abba, Father.' But to rise to my privileges as a child, I was utterly powerless.
"All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all that I needed, but the practical question was---how to get it out. He was rich truly, but I was poor; he was strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question. As gradually light dawned, I saw that faith was the only requisite---was the hand to lay hold of his fullness and make it mine. But I had not this faith.
"I strove for faith, but it would not come; I tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our precious Savior, my guilt and helplessness seemed to increase. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at his word, but rather made him a liar! unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world; yet I indulged in it. I prayed for faith, but it came not What was I to do?"
When I read those paragraphs, my heart found its words for the struggle that plagued me. Unbelief...the condemning sin of the world...and I, too, was indulging in it. My eyes flew quickly down the page, wanting to latch onto whatever "secret" Hudson Taylor had discovered that ended his struggle. I felt desperation at wanting...needing...this struggle of soul to find its victory. I needed my eyes to be opened to whatever the key was. I read on...
"When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure but saw the light before I did wrote (I quote from memory): 'But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the faithful one.'
"As I read, I saw it all! 'If we believe not, he abideth faithful (2 Tim 2:13). I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that he had said, 'I will never leave thee' (Heb. 13:5.)
" 'Ah, there is rest!' I thought. 'I have striven in vain to rest in him I'll strive no more. For has not he promised to abide with me--never to leave me, never to fail me'....
"Nor was this all he showed me, nor one half. As I thought of the vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in wishing to get the sap, the fullness out of him! I saw not only that Jesus will never leave me, but that I am a member of his body, of his flesh and of his bones....
"...Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves? Again, think of its bearing on prayer. Could a bank clerk say to a customer, 'It was only your hand, not you, that wrote that check'; can your prayer or mine be discredited if offered in the name of Jesus (i.e.not for the sake of Jesus merely, but on the ground that we are his, his members) so long as we keep within the limits of Christ's credit---a tolerably wide limit....
"The sweetest part, if one may speak of one part being sweeter than another, is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this; for he, I know is able to carry out his will, and his will is mine. It makes no matter where he places me, or how. That is rather for him to consider than for me; for in the easiest positions he must give me his grace, and in the most difficult his grace is sufficient. It little matters to my servant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things or the most expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money and brings me his purchases. So, if God should place me in serious perplexity, must he not give much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that his resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And his resources are mine, for he is mine and is with me and dwells in me.
"And since Christ has thus dwelt in my heart by faith, how happy I have been! ...But I am dead and buried with Christ---ay, and risen too!---And now Christ lives in me, and 'the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20)...."
I had found the key...the secret. But, maybe I am slow...or perhaps I was plagued with a bigger dose of unbelief than Hudson Taylor had...because it would be many months before my eyes were fully opened to this truth he had shared. It took reading and rereading that chapter...probably (with no exaggeration) at least 25 times. I had it practically memorized, but still no donning in my spirit. It wasn't for many months that I made that truth my very own...
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