Char
les Thomas Studd better known as C.T. Studd was born in
England in 1860. He had a great passion for cricket. In fact his older brother Kynaston Studd, was a member of the
Cambridge cricket team. C.T. himself went on to become a household name in
Great Britain and before long he captained of the
Cambridge cricket team.
But God saved CT in 1878 when he was eighteen years of age. CT came to the point in his conviction to live fully for the Lord. He was challenged by the great missionary Hudson Taylor to reach out to the millions of people in China.
CT felt he had to give up the promising career and a life of relative ease that lies ahead of him. He had set his heart to go to China.
But as he came to experience strong opposition came from within his own family. His father had died and he felt family pressure to not abandon his mother. When he broke the news to his mother she was devastated. His brother was shattered too. In the ensuing months, Studd went through a deep struggle. He loved the Lord but he loved his mother too and it deeply troubled him to see his mother's heart break like it did.
But he was determined that he must obey the Lord. And on the day before he was to leave, his mother fell into a deep depression and Studd had to pull together all he had to brace himself to honour the Lord to the end. He decided to take a walk that evening and he went to a tram-station. And there, under the light of the lamppost, he took out his pocket Bible and it fell opened at Micah 7:6, "a man's enemies are the men of his own house." With that he was on his way.
There comes a time when the takeover bid on our lives is made by those who are closest and dearest to us; a spouse who will not release you to the Lord; a mother or a brother who has other plans for your life.
But as Studd has written, "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him."
“The Church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the poor. The Church must trust the Gospel enough to come among the poor with nothing to offer the poor except the Gospel, except the power to discern and the courage to expose the Gospel as it is already mediated in the life of the poor…When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has that freedom, it will know also how to minister among the rich and powerful. When the Church has that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world. When the Church has the freedom to go out into the world with merely the Gospel to offer the world, then it will know how to use whatever else it has–money and talent and buildings and tapestries and power in politics–as sacraments of its gift of its own life to the world, as tokens of the ministry of Christ.”
– William Stringfellow - A Private and Public Faith (1962)
