No Money. No Guarantees. Just God. - The Hudson Taylor Story

Who was Hudson Taylor, and why is he considered one of the most influential missionaries in Christian history? In this episode of LEV 3:16, we explore the remarkable life of Hudson Taylor—the pioneering missionary who risked everything to bring the Gospel to inland China. From his dramatic conversion and radical trust in God to the founding of the China Inland Mission, Taylor's story is one of extraordinary faith, sacrifice, perseverance, and unwavering obedience to Christ. Discover how one man's prayer for workers helped launch a movement that transformed Christian missions and carried the Gospel to millions. If you're interested in missionary biographies, Christian history, faith-in-action stories, the origins of modern missions, and inspiring examples of courageous discipleship, this powerful story will challenge and encourage you. Subscribe for more stories of missionaries, Christian heroes, and believers who changed the world through faith in Jesus Christ.

Transcript

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Welcome to Leviticus 3.16. We're gonna talk about a man named Hudson Taylor. He didn't just believe in God, he bet his whole life on God. That's what we're gonna talk about today. He was a Methodist preacher and he was a pharmacist, and his upbringing was religious. Even though he had a spiritual upbringing, by the time he was a teenager, he had kind of turned astray. Well, he got a hold of a gospel track, and that gospel track, he thought it was going to be boring, but somewhere in the middle of it, God got a hold of his heart. And he says about it, about that experience, that it he just completely surrendered his life to the Lord in the middle of that reading that track, that it changed his life completely. He says that it was a time of total surrender to the Lord and to his will. And he he left reading that track wanting to know what God wanted to do with his life. So immediately he started thinking about missions. And the place that he felt like God was calling him to go to was China. The China inland, inland parts of China, where missionaries weren't even allowed to go at that time. Missionaries at that time were allowed to go to the uh edge of China, just the edge. They weren't allowed to go to the inland parts of China where everybody uh nobody knew even the name of Jesus in the inland parts of China in the 1800s. So he had a radical conversion. Well, there were probably hundred million people in the inland parts of China that had never even heard of Jesus at that time. So he he just became consumed with the idea of going to China. So much so, now he's a he's an older teenage young man at this time in his life, and he he was so consumed with going to China that he felt like he needed to prepare to become a missionary. So what he did, he he moved to a part of England that was very poor, so that he could get accustomed to poverty. So he started living in a poverty-stricken area. He started studying medicine, he he started learning the Mandarin language, so that he that was the language that was spoken in China, so that he could speak Chinese before he ever got to China, which just was unheard of at the time. And uh he he he believed that faith and preparation put together was the best way to prepare for the mission field. All right. He when he was 21 years old, he set sail for China. Now, there were no airplanes, of course, no airplanes, so he had to take a ship. And it took five months for him to go from England to China. He it was very dangerous for missionaries to travel to the mission field back then, and he almost didn't make it, almost didn't get to China on that ship. That he encountered many storms along the way, and some of those storms nearly killed him and everybody on that ship. But uh thankfully he survived and he got to Shanghai, China, and it wasn't at all what he was expecting. They were in the middle of a civil war when he got there, and so the mission board that sent him was underfunded, they they didn't have any money to support him when he got there. Uh he didn't have his things, he didn't have supplies, he he was in danger constantly because of the civil war. It was unstable, and so it was just not at all what he expected. Uh, he made a decision. Well, the decision was not like any other missionaries were making at the time. He decided that he would dress and look, make change his appearance to look like a Chinese Han a Han Chinese man, young man. So what he did was he grew his hair out, he dyed it black, he shaved his head, he grew out a pigtail, um, just like the other Han Chinese men, and uh he wore the uh traditional Han Chinese men's clothing that the rest of them were wearing, and that way he fit in with all the other Chinese men, but he didn't fit in with the missionaries, so he didn't look like a white missionary man, he looked like a Chinese man, so he got made fun of and teased and uh mocked by the missionaries, but he fit in with the uh Chinese. Well, some of the Chinese made fun of him also and didn't accept him, so um he got he had hostility from both sides, but uh for the most part he was accepted by the Chinese, the poor Chinese. Also, because of his medical training, he would go into a village. Uh he he liked to go into the inland parts of China where it was so poor and where they didn't know about Jesus. He would go into the inland parts of China, he would set up in a village, he would treat the sick, and then he would tell them about Jesus. He would treat the sick, tell them about Jesus. That was what he would do constantly, so much so that he was exposed to illnesses himself. He would get sick, and then he would fall ill. It was just a vicious cycle because he would go into these villages, he would treat the sick, he would get sick, then he would go to another village, he would treat the sick, he would get sick. Eventually, he met a lady uh named Maria Dyer in 1858, and he got married. And uh they had uh several children, but they seemed to lose most of the children that they had. They lost four children I know of. They lost four right away, and he had to bury all four of the children that that they lost. So uh not long after, not long after that, he had a complete uh collapse of his health, and uh so much so that he had to return to England. And most people didn't think that he would ever get to go back to China. They thought that was going to be the end of his time in China, his mission work. But the mission work, the the unreached people in China pressed so heavy on his heart that all he could think about was these people don't know Jesus, and these people don't even have a Bible. I need to do something about it. And he's recovering already from the illnesses that he had contracted while he was in China. So while he's recovering, he translated the New Testament in the Ningbo dialect while he was recovering. I can't even imagine that, but that's what he did. He was uh praying about it, and God put it on his heart, this fantastic idea of starting the China Inland Mission, and it had two um radical, crazy principles. And the first principle was any Protestant denomination was allowed to be a missionary with the China Inland Mission. So it wasn't just for Baptists, it wasn't just for Methodists or Presbyterian, it was it would allow any Protestant missionary to any Protestant denomination to apply. Okay, number two, and this was probably the biggest um difference with this mission organization than when any with any other organization, uh they would not ask for fundraising, they would not ask for donations. The missionaries would simply pray and trust God and go, and uh they would trust God for the funds, which was unheard of at the time. So this was radical, but um most people called it crazy. They called they called him out of his mind for um starting an organization like this. So he was walking along a beach in Brighton, England, and he was praying, God, uh, I know this is of you, so if if you would just send me 24 missionaries to start this organization, that would be there were there were 11 provinces in China, and then there was Mongolia in inland China, there were 11 provinces, and then there was Mongolia. So if that would give uh two missionaries for each of the 11 provinces and two missionaries for Mongolia, so 24 missionaries. If you would send me 24 missionaries, then we can get started with China Inland Mission, the organization. Well, when it was time for him to go back, he had 24 missionaries, what he had prayed for on that beach, which was just amazing. When when he went back over the years, uh he went back and forth, back and forth. Um the mission grew to over 800 missionaries. China in the mission in his lifetime, in his lifetime, uh, it grew to over 800 missionaries, so it just grew exponentially. Um, he uh his his beloved wife Maria died in 1870. Um she was only 33 years old, she did not live a long life. So he had buried his wife and his four children in just a short time, and he had to bury them himself. He had to carry a heavy load of grief, but he also believed that he needed to trust God and carry on in obedience, and so he did. Um, he married Jenny Falding in 1871. She was a fellow missionary with the China Inland Mission, and she shared the same vision that he did, and so uh they had a partnership, and he went back and forth to England and also to the to America, um, tried to get missionaries. In 1880 and 1890, in China there was a rise of um anti-foreign feelings or sentiment, and so the feeling there in China was that they didn't like foreigners, and missionaries are foreigners, and so that there was this feeling that we don't like foreigners. Well, in 1900, there was something called the Boxer Rebellion, and a lot of missionaries were killed during the Boxer Rebellion. This impacted the China Inland mission. Uh, 58 China Inland mission missionaries and 21 of their children were martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. Um, Hudson Taylor at this time, he refused to hold the Chinese government responsible for this or to ask for any kind of compensation for their deaths, which many times, whenever a government in this situation you might ask for the government um to be responsible for that. But um Hudson Taylor didn't do that, he felt like they died in love. Um he felt like he needed to show forgiveness, show love, and to trust God and carry on, and that's what he did. Just trust God. Hudson Taylor, I mentioned that he died in 1905. There were 100 825 missionaries, 205 mission stations in his lifetime, and when he died, there he they had trained 849 missionary workers and over 125,000 Chinese converts to Christianity by the time he died in 1905, which is just astounding. It all started with one man on one beach with one prayer. So it all started uh because he didn't hold anything back. So my question then to you would be: are you holding anything back? Are you holding anything back from God? Or is your hand open with him? Hudson Taylor had no guarantees when he went to China. He had no income, he had no mission organization, he he had no safety, he had no protection, he just went with an open hand and uh let God, trusted God, to do the work. So it was all about faith. And we've talked about faith before in other episodes. Faith requires movement before certainty. It's kind of like a staircase in the dark. Um, you take a step at a time, but you don't see the next step until you take the first step, and then once you take a step, uh you see the next step, and then you see the next step, and then you see the next step, but you don't see the whole staircase all at once. That's kind of like faith. You see a step at a time. Well, real faith includes risk. Hudson Taylor wrote, unless there's an element of risk in our exploits for God, there's no need for faith. Well, his whole life was about elements of risk. Our whole life might not be about elements of risk, but some of it needs to be a little bit of risk. What are you holding back from God? You see, God still calls people to trust him fully, and I think a lot of times, especially here in America, we don't trust God fully with our lives. Uh, we trust him with this part of our life and this part of our life, but maybe not the whole thing. And that's what God's calling us to do is trust him with the whole thing. See, faith is active, it's not a theory. And um, God, if he's real, then he's inviting you to surrender, to obey, and to follow him wherever that leads. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd like you to share it. Share it with somebody. Click that share button, send it to somebody that needs to hear it or would enjoy it, maybe somebody that does has never heard of Hudson Taylor before, talk about it, like, subscribe, hit that notification button so you find out about it when we do another one. Uh, if you want, if you've never read anything about Hudson Taylor, well, there's the the book, uh Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secrets. There'll be a link to it in the in the description. There's also his autobiography, a link to that will be in the description. You can comment and I'll get back to you on it. Think about what part of Hudson Taylor's story hit you the hardest this week. Is there any part of Hudson Taylor's story that was most interesting to you? Comment below and tell me, and we'll talk about it. This week, go deep, go bold, and go in faith. And until next week, this is Leviticus 3 16, and we'll see you next time. God bless.