Too often we attempt to work for God to the limit of our incompetency, rather than to the limit of God's omnipotency.
Interpretation
We often overestimate our own abilities while underestimating the power of God.
This quote by Hudson Taylor suggests that people frequently push themselves to the brink of their own limitations when trying to serve or work for God, rather than relying on God's infinite strength and capability. It encourages individuals to recognize that their efforts, when aligned with divine power, can lead to far greater outcomes than solely depending on their own competency.
In practice
In a sermon about faith and reliance on God.
We are not only to renounce evil, but to manifest the truth. We tell people the world is vain; let our lives manifest that it is so. We tell them that our home is above and that all these things are transitory. Does our dwelling look like it? O to live consistent lives!
If in the sight of God you cannot say you are sure that you have a special call to stay at home, why are you disobeying the Saviour's plain command to go?
Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.
When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone.
The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity...if we want to see mighty wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God's standing challenge, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not."
I have seen many men work without praying, though I have never seen any good come out of it; but I have never seen a man pray without working.
A true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle. No, it is an active, lively, restless principle; it fills the heart, so that it cannot be easy till it is doing something for Jesus Christ.
It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion.
Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, And looks to God alone; Laughs at impossibilities, And cries it shall be done.
Have faith. The Lord can magnify the words you speak and make them mighty. God doesnβt ask you to convert but rather to open your mouths.
Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish.
Faith is the root, the necessary beginning. Hope is the stem, the energy that makes the plant grow. Love is the fruit, the flower, the visible product, the bottom line. The plant of our new life in Christ is one; the life of God comes into us by faith, through us by hope, and out of us by the works of love.
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