I Have Arrived...in California

Well, I have made it to California. The four hour flight was uneventful, with no problems in security or anything else. I left Chicago (Midway) at 6:50 P.M., and arrived here in Sacramento at 9:00, CA time, which is 11:00 back home. On the plane ride, I started reading Mountain Rain, a biography about James O Fraser, a missionary to China in the early twentieth century. It was stirring! I could not put it down! I read about 130 pages, which is half of the book. He was truly a man with a selfless passion to win souls for Christ. The following are some quotes from the book that God drove home in my heart.

If our Master returned today to find millions of people unevangelized, and looked, as of course He would look, to us for an explanation, I cannot imagine what explanation we should have to give. Of one thing I am certain – that most of the excuses we are accustomed to make with such good conscience now, we shall be wholly ashamed of them.

About James: Certainly there weren’t any half measures. Only one thing mattered any more. There is no record that he felt he had renounced anything. He had quite simply found earlier loves eclipsed by a new passion.

“A little thing is a little thing,” Hudson Taylor said. “But faithfulness in a little thing is a great thing.”

It has come home to me very forcibly of late that it matters little what the work is in which we are engaged so long as God has put it into our hands.

It is all if and when. I believe the devil is fond of those conjunctions…The Lord bids us work, watch and pray; but Satan suggest, wait until a good opportunity for working, watching, and praying presents itself – and needless to say, this opportunity is always in the future…

There is no such thing as a spiritual victory if it is not in the present tense.

He was feeling more and more that the prayers of God’s people were what called down blessing on the work.

The Lord, I believe, permitted the trail just to show me how He could deliver me out of it.

It seemed as if God was saying, “You are crying to me to do a big work among the Lisu. I am wanting to do a big work in you yourself.”

He was impressed with the though that people failed in praying the prayer of faith because they did not believe God had answered, but only that he would answer their petitions. “They rise from their knees feeling that God will answer some time or other, but not that He has answered already.”

True faith glories in the present tense, and does not trouble itself about the future. God’s promises are in the present tense…

Give me Lisu converts…and I can truly say I will be happy in a pigsty.

Over-strained faith is not pure faith, there is a mixture of the carnal element in it. There is no strain in the “rest of faith.” It asks for definite blessing as God may lead; it does not hold back through carnal timidity, nor press ahead too far through carnal eagerness.

Unanswered prayers have taught me to seek the Lord’s will instead of my own.

Many “good desires” proceed from our uncrucified selves.

Much Christian work seemed to have the stamp of the carnal upon it. It might be “good,” might be outwardly successful, but the “Shekinah Glory” was not there.

God gives us the ground in answer to the prayer of faith, but not the harvest.

The constant prefixing of “if it be thy will” to our prayers is often a mere subterfuge of unbelief. True submission to God is not inconsistent with…boldness.

I have no confidence in anything but the gospel of Calvary to uplift these needy people.

I do not intend to be one of those who bemoan little results, while “resting in the faithfulness of God.” My cue is to take hold of the faithfulness of God and use the means necessary to secure big results.

Every time you take the earth standpoint – think as men think, talk as men talk, look as men look – you take a place below the powers of darkness.

Truly, these quotes are stirring my heart once again, and I have not even included any of the tremendous narrative in the biography! God gave James Fraser great insight in the area of prayer and spiritual warfare. I highly recommend this book as a “must read” for anyone who desires to draw nearer to God. He is already using it mightily in my heart. I will try to get a few pictures up as soon as I can. Please pray for God’s working, for the battle must be won on our knees!

Happy 4th of July!