Changing at Age 30: Hudson Taylor

In line with yesterday's post (What a Man Can Learn When He Turns 30), yesterday I came across Hudson Taylor's description of his similar spiritual condition in his early thirties. Here's an excerpt of a letter Hudson Taylor wrote to his mother in his thirties, roughly six months before experiencing a spiritual breakthrough that was to mark the rest of his life:

I cannot tell you how I am buffeted sometimes by temptation. I never knew how bad a heart I have. Yet I do know that I love God and love his work, and desire to serve him only and in all things. And I value above all else that precious Savior in whom alone I can be accepted. Often I am tempted to think that one so full of sin cannot be a child of God at all. But I try to throw it back, and rejoice all the more in the preciousness of Jesus and in the riches of the grace that has made us "accepted in the beloved." Beloved he is of God; beloved he ought to be of us. But oh, how short I fall here again! May God help me to love him more and serve him better. Do pray for me. Pray that the Lord would keep me from sin, will sanctify me wholly, will use me more largely in his service.

p. 128, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret