Prayer Life

"Put your hope in the Lord. Travel steadily along his path. He will honor you by giving you the land. You will see the wicked destroyed." Psalm 37:34

Hudson Taylor was a nineteenth-century British physician and missionary who took the gospel to China at a dangerous time in history.

What God asked of him and the God-size success that he achieved required such incredible sacrifice, humility, perseverance, and prayer...that it seemed impossible to conceive how he sustained his faith during repeated bouts of poverty, loss, and personal tragedy. Both the continued legacy of his ministry and his underlying love for God seem beyond the reach of the average Christian. Yet the only explanation for Hudson Taylor's exceptional life is his exceptional prayer life. The record of Taylor's mission work is not just sprinkled with prayer; his achievements were documented in prayer. His prayer life was...

-the source of his endless passion for the lost,
-the power behind incredible miracles,
-the strength to sustain his waiting upon God,
-the balm to comfort the loss of a child and spouse to illness, and
-the secret to his clear vision.

If there is any lesson that the average Christian might learn from Hudson Taylor, it is that the prayer life of a man or woman holds the key to success or failure for God.

Without hearing God's voice or being sustained by His Holy Spirit you simply cannot travel steadily down a long road that will deliver risk or pain. Without prayer, you will lose hope. But if you remain in constant communication with God, you will break through impossible barriers.

From "Sacred Obsession Devotional" by Becky Tirabassi