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Showing posts with the label Hudson Taylor

How do you love a community that hates itself?

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Even when life is “easy” it is hard to show mercy to our fellow sinners. When enjoying order, safety, and congeniality, serving others can still be a challenge. But when you are drowning in poverty, murder, violence, lawlessness, sickness, injustice, pain, and desperation, showing mercy to sinners amplifies the sin in yourself. As a sinner, it is difficult to love someone who doesn’t return your love. So how do you respond when the one you hope to serve desires to kill you? Our full-time team of a dozen missionaries serves in Honduras . This country is incredibly hard to live in, let alone minister to. For five years running Honduras has been the most murderous country in the world. Its people are the second-poorest in the Western Hemisphere. The average first birth occurs at 15 years of age. Hospitals are closed, police are outgunned, pastors are driven from the country, babies starve, treatable illnesses lead to death, and indifference and apathy are endemic. Our fences have ba

The pioneering Missionaries

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China Inland Mission. Rev. J. Hudson Taylor & Wife, with Group of Christians (Photo credit: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library ) Hudson Taylor almost killed (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) From The Story of The China Inland Mission; Mary Geraldine Guinness; 1893 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) From the Jubilee Story of the China Inland Mission; Marshall Broomhall 1915 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Hudson Taylor circa 1865 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The missionary spirit is utterly contagious. Even just one life burning brightly for the gospel can ignite the hearts of hundreds of others for generations to come. What a powerful thing it is to contemplate that reality in the history of missionary work! Consider, for example, the following chain of gospel influence: 1. John Elliott (1604–1690) was a Puritan settler in New England who began evangelizing the native Americans. Known as the “apostle to the Indians,” he translated the Bible into their native language, helped to establish churches, and