Calling Clairity...

I started reading "Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret" by Dr.&Mrs.Howard Taylor..
I love each and every page more and more. And I recommend that every believer reads it. It's available to read online here!
I feel that James Hudson Taylor and I would have been very best friends if we had been alive at the same time. What a man of faith!
There are whole pages where I feel like the author is writing my thoughts but better than I think them, but lo and behold they're someone elses thoughts entirely!
I guess one of the things God is encouraging me about through this biography is the preciousness of faith.
I am a quirky person, that's a given, but I often feel singular in my pursuit of knowing Christ..But singular is the wrong word, unique is the correct term and blessed is holding it's hand. The things God challenges me with and puts on my heart that allow me to know His heart, take up His burdens, look at people how He sees them and truly be loving are unique, but are very precious.
So I often wonder what God's long term plan for me looks like. If it's missions, if it's motherhood or nursing or what have you. and I wondered if the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before me ever felt as I feel and wondered as I wonder.
It is no coincidence that God has me studying through Joshua's Life and Abraham's life as well as Hudson Taylor's!
Joshua's life has taught me the importance of receiving a battle plan from the Lord and being in tune with the Commander of the Lord's army that I would know when sin is present.Like that of the dealing with Achan and his family. What a pity that Joshua lost men at Ai because he had not waited on the Lord to find out about the sin tainting the camp! That I'd know when He wants me to advance or yield. Even with run in's like Joshua had with the Gibbeonites!Joshua and the people did not ask counsel from the Lord (Josh 9:14) and they made a covenant in the Name of God and were totally duped by their lovely neighbors and had to go to battle for them. Even in this failure, Israel under Joshua's command defended this covenant and God was with them. God made the sun to stand still and all the enemies of His people (and now Gibeon too) to pay. And that I too would follow the admonition to be strong and courageous and MEDITATE on the Word.(Joshua 1:8)

Abraham's call, obedience, and even failures have shown me so much about faith. His call was less clear than Joshua's,in my own opinion. There wasn't an definitive end goal in sight like the Promise Land was for Joshua. But God gave him a SURE call to get up and go. And Abraham obeyed initially and was delayed and weighed down by poor choices and family. He showed great "faith failure" moments too like when he has his beautiful wife lie about her relation to him because of his irrational fear that Pharaoh would want her as his own. and didn't that backfire on him? Yet his faith was accounted to him as righteousness. He is the father of faith! What a call and promise he received and passed on.God has challenged me in my fears. Are they any different, are they not also a distrust for God's plan/purpose/intention/capability in those specific areas?

James Hudson Taylor wasn't a fan of religiosity. Yet this man was sold out for Christ and the calling that the Lord gave him. Even before he start China Inland Mission, even just at the prospect of getting to go for the sake of the Gospel he "exercised his spiritual muscles of faith" by giving 2/3 of his income to Gospel work in slums. He gave up the comforts living off his parents or with relatives and rented a room in an impoverished area to be better prepared for what he might encounter in life. He slept on a hard mattress and went months eating only bread and oatmeal..by choice! all that he might be better prepared and exercised for his calling to China. He made his own Chinese dictionary and put himself through a good portion of medical school depending only of God to provide for him and sustain him.He held on tight to Christ and His calling to missions in China. He is probably the most disciplined and exceptionally given to prayer that I have ever studied. it's genuinely inspiring..but look where he started:

"Though he had committed his entire life to God, Hudson continued to struggle with times of failure and discouragement. And it was in one such experience of defeat and discouragement that he called out to God for help. He so wanted to live a life pleasing to God in every way that he felt he would go anywhere, do anything, suffer however the Lord asked if only God would give him the assurance of his clear direction."
(pg 8, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret)

How I long for that! A clear calling to hold onto, a life that is pleasing to Christ in every single way. God has challenged me to start be disseminating fears that I have that potentially would limit me in ability to fulfill His calling. God has been bringing a new light to fear. It's sin! He's calling me to speak in front of people, to be graded and judged and to talk to strangers..all the time, things that I'm just not a fan of! ha! Having a fear of these isn't good enough.But what do I do about it? In regards to repentance, I am reminded of the great words of Thomas A Kempis in Imitation of Christ..

(on a long,long list of the sinful inconsistencies of humans..)
When you have confessed and deplored these and other faults with sorrow and great displeasure because of your weakness, be firmly determined to amend your life day by day and to advance in goodness. Then, with complete resignation and with your entire will offer yourself upon the altar of your heart as an everlasting sacrifice to the honor of My name, by entrusting with faith both body and soul to My care, that thus you may be considered worthy to draw near and offer sacrifice to God and profitably receive the Sacrament of My Body. For there is no more worthy offering, no greater satisfaction for washing away sin than to offer yourself purely and entirely to God..."(from The Examination of Conscience and the Resolution to Amend)

"For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry 'Abba Father!'The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs-heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him."
Romans 8:15-17