Austin’s Reading

Austin’s writings for a change

Posted by wagardner - 09/03/08 at 11:03:04 pm

God has blessed our little book and sent buyers from several different states.  Some have purchased in bulk but mostly individual books.  A missionary dropped into Vision Baptist Church this morning and purchased a copy also. If you are a missionary looking for help with deputation then this is the book for you.  I remember being so afraid of deputation. How was I to raise my support?  I didn’t want to go around from church to church begging.  I wanted another way!  I talked to every mission board I could trying to find a way around this scary part of the ministry. But God allowed us to learn a great deal as we traveled across the US on deputation, meeting missionaries, preaching in churches etc.  Over the next 20 years God did a great work in my life and in this book Tony Howeth and I share with you what God has taught us. It has helped many missionaries and I believe will be a blessing to you. 

Preaching?

Posted by wagardner - 08/03/08 at 07:03:23 pm

“The emphasis today is not on the preaching of the Word. We’re told that nobody will listen to preaching any longer, that only images will suffice. Yet Scripture tells us in I Corinthians 1:21 that it is through the preaching of the Word that the Holy Spirit works to convert souls.

In our endless and expensive quest for cultural relevance, we are losing the heart of the Gospel message, which is to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Christ. Unlike what many religious broadcasters are airing today, Jesus is not a life-enhancement product.”

 Dr. Vic Eliason 

More Hudson Taylor

Posted by wagardner - 04/03/08 at 11:03:35 pm

We have need of patience, and our faithful God brings us into experiences which, improved by His blessing, may cultivate in us this grace.  Though we seem to be tried at times almost beyond endurance, we never find Him unable or unwilling to help and sustain us; and were our hearts entirely submissive to His will, desiring it and it only to be done, how much fewer and lighter would our afflictions seem.

 

I have been in much sorrow of late, but the principal cause I find to be want of willing submission to, and trustful repose in, God, my Strength.  Oh, to desire His will to be done with my whole heart.. to seek His glory with a single eye!  Oh, to realize more of the fullness of our precious Jesus.. to live more in the light of His countenance, to be satisfied with what He bestows..ever looking to Him, following in His footsteps and awaiting His glorious coming!

 

Continue to pray for me that God will supply all my need, Jesus be all my delight, His service be all my desire, rest with Him all my hope.

 

Hudson Taylor

Hudson Taylor

Posted by wagardner - 03/03/08 at 06:03:26 pm

John Pearson sent me the following quotes–I think that they are really worth reading: The cold was so great and other things so trying that I scarcely know what I was doing or saying at first.  Then, what it means to be so far from home, at the seat of war, and not able to understand or be understood by the people was fully realized.  Their utter wretchedness and misery, and my inability to help them or even point them to Jesus, powerfully affected me.  Satan came in as a flood, but there was One who lifted up a standard against him.  Jesus is here, and though unknown to the majority and uncared for by many who might know Him, He is present and precious to His own.

 

Hudson Taylor – early months in Shanghai, five years after his conversion.

 It was four or five months now since he had hunted for quarters on his first arrival without finding even a room available, and if anything the conditions seemed worse than before.  Nothing he could begin to think of was to be found, and but for a growing rest of heart in God, Hudson Taylor would have been almost in despair.  As it was, he was learning precious lessons of his own helplessness and of almighty strength.

 This makes me think of a great quote by a missionary friend in North Africa

 

“Neither jail nor death scare a preacher of the glorious gospel. For our lives are hidden forever with Christ. In fact, we welcome jail, expulsion, and death as the cost for preaching the gospel following the example of our father’s in the book of Acts. We do not seek prison or death but will accept it with joy if God allows it to come. Our prayer is not for safety but boldness.” 

Henry Martyn testimony

Posted by wagardner - 03/03/08 at 07:03:28 am

Whenever Martyn worked among the Europeans he found the same response, a scornful rejection of his message by the vast majority, but a handful of men who, often in secret, came to hear more. There was the corporal who slipped into his hand a letter begging for spiritual help, a request he dared not make in the open; there was the chief mate who, though unable to understand much of Martyn’s theology, stopped swearing, and became the chaplain’s loyal supporter; there were the faithful five who joined him in his cabin for daily worship; above all, there was Mackenzie, an officer of the cadets, who throughout the voyage was a constant visitor to the chaplain’s cabin, and incurred ridicule by attending the hymn-singing which Martyn introduced among the lower ranks.

A few did indeed find a true faith in Christ on that voyage; but the majority grew steadily more obstinate in their opposition. Much as they disliked his message, however, they could not deny the sincere love of [his fellow man].

It was love for the blaspheming sailors which kept him busy trying to awaken their consciences. Such love is not easily recognized by men of the world, but they could not disregard his unselfish care for the sick and dying, who were always to be found in plenty on the troop-ships of those days. From the captain, who died on the way to the Cape, to the merest ship’s boy, all claimed his unceasing care, and only when dysentery attacked Martyn himself was he forced to stop.

Imagine it: the sweat and the dirt, the foul smell and the unbearable heat of the lower decks, and the Cambridge don in his meticulously neat black clothes moving from hammock to hammock, from sick boy to dying man, with food and medicine, and always with the Word of God. The men had never seen anything like it; nor had the officers, and they wrote him off as a mad enthusiast.

Hudson Taylor

Posted by wagardner - 02/03/08 at 04:03:28 pm

John Pearson just sent me the following about Hudson Taylor.  It will make for good meditating! Hudson Taylor’s life at 19 at Charlotte street in the employ of Dr. Hardey was too comfortable, too easy going and failed in those accounts to provide the elements of missionary training that he needed.  In another part of town was a bare and unfurnished prophet’s chamber that provided neither companionship nor luxury.  Here he could live a stronger sterner lifestyle on the backside of the desert that seemed to do wonders for Joseph, Moses and Paul and provided much power with God.  That was the life Hudson Taylor needed and to which he was being led.  He did not choose it for himself, at any rate not at first or consciously.  The Lord chose it for him and so ordered circumstances that he was brought to see and to embrace it, finding in self denial and the daily cross a fellowship with his Master nothing else can yield.

Missionary Oath

Posted by wagardner - 01/03/08 at 01:03:01 pm

“Neither jail nor death scare a preacher of the glorious gospel. For our lives are hidden forever with Christ. In fact, we welcome jail, expulsion, and death as the cost for preaching the gospel following the example of our father’s in the book of Acts. We do not seek prison or death but will accept it with joy if God allows it to come. Our prayer is not for safety but boldness.”

I found this quote on a website of my friend in North Africa. What a statement! I will use this and think of this. I plan on memorizing it.

  

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