*“The building itself was a tall, two -story
house on the corner. A low stone wall ran around the property. I could see the
stump-ends of iron railings in it, the fence itself had no doubt been melted
for scrap during the war. Over the entrance, on a wooden archway, were the
words “Have Faith in God.” This I knew was the main purpose of the two- year
course at Glasgow: to help the student learn all he could about the nature of faith.
To learn from books. To learn from others. To learn from one’s own encounters.
With fresh enthusiasm I walked under the arch and up the white pebbled path to
the door.”
It was September
of 1953 when Andrew arrived in Glasgow, Scotland. He had come all the way from
Holland to learn about faith. It was a subject in which God had already begun
to train him and the words of the sign that stood over the path summarized what
his next lesson would be.
Have Faith in
God. Often we become so concentrated on the first two words of that command
that we neglect the second two without even realizing that we are. This mistake
renders faith useless. For we have not only to have faith but to have faith in
the right thing. Hebrew xi.6 tells us that without faith it is
impossible to please God. But it does not stop at that, it goes on to say, “he who
comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek Him.” We have not only to believe but to believe something very
specific. This tells us that the object of faith is of
equal importance to the presence of faith and the two only become pleasing to
God when they are coupled together.
In the first
post of this series, The Predetermined “Yes”, we talked about the connection
that exists between faith and trust. The two terms are synonymous. (I am going
to continue explaining the relationship between faith and that which it is
placed in but as I do, I want to switch terms from faith to trust. Because the
majority of us seem to be more familiar with how trust works than with how faith works.) In terms of trust then, we could say that you have not
only to trust, you must trust in something. The object in which your trust is
placed is as important as the trust itself. In fact, it is the object of your
trust that directly determines the outcome of it. For example, when you
jump out of an airplane, it is of the utmost importance what you trust in a parachute to carry you safely to the
ground. A parachute will do it, but a bed sheet will not. Now you must trust in
the parachute for it to save you, you must put it on, do up all the buckles,
and then pull on the string that causes it to open. Without the presence of
trust the parachute is unable to save. For this reason, you could rightly say
that it was your trust in the parachute which saved you. However, you would also be correct in saying that the parachute saved you. For, if you had put your trust in the bed sheet it would not have saved you. Not even if you had unfolded it, tied its ends around your wrists, and waved it over your head while you were falling. You were save by a combination of trust and what it was placed in. The parachute can not to its job without
being trusted, but the bed sheet can not do the parachute’s job no matter how
much it is trusted. In this, we see that the trust, if it is to work, can not
be separated from the object that is worthy of trust.
In the same way
the command to have faith cannot be separated from God Himself.
*“The real purpose of this training,” Mr. Dinnen
said, “Is to teach our students that they can trust God to do what He has said
He would do. We don’t go from here into the traditional missionary fields, but
into new territory. Our graduates are on their own. They can not be effective if
they are afraid, or if they doubt that God really means what He says in His
word. So here we teach not so much ideas as trusting. I hope this is what you
are looking for in a school, Andrew.”
“Yes, sir. Exactly.”
“As for finances – you know of course, Andy, that
we charge no tuition. That’s because we have no paid staff. The teachers, the
people who run things in London, myself – none of us receive a salary. Room and
board and other physical costs for the year come only to ninety pounds – a
little over two hundred and fifty dollars. It’s as low as this because the
students do the cooking, cleaning, everything themselves. But we do request the
ninety pounds in advance. Now, I understand that you will not be able to do
this.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, it’s also possible to pay in instalments,
thirty pounds at the start of each session. But for your sake and for ours we
like to insist that the instalments be paid on time.”
“Yes, sir. I altogether agree.”
I did agree too. This was going to be my first
experiment in trusting God for the material needs of life. I had thirty pounds
I had brought from Holland for the first semester’s fee. After that I really
looked forward to seeing how God was going to supply the money.
But during the first few weeks, something kept
happening that bothered me. At mealtimes the students would frequently discuss
inadequate funds. Sometimes after a whole night in prayer for a certain need, only
half of the request would be granted, or three quarters of it. If an old
peoples’ home, for example, where the students conducted services, needed ten
blankets, the students would perhaps receive enough to buy six. The Bible said
that we were workers in God’s vineyard. Was this the way the Lord of the vineyard
payed His hired men?
…I could not understand why this bothered me so.
Was I greedy? I didn’t think so. We had always been poor, and I had never worried
about it. What was it then?
I realised that the question was not one of money
at all. What I was really worried about was a relationship. When I was working
at the chocolate factory, I trusted Mr. Ringers to pay me in full and on time.
Surely, I said to myself, if an ordinary factory worker could be financially
secure, so could one of God’s workers.”
If we go back to
the illustration of the bed sheet and the parachute, we saw that it was of great
importance that the object in which trust was placed was trustworthy. The trust
itself can not equip an object to save you, it can only enable an object that
is already equipped to do so. The Christian’s trust or faith is meant to be
placed in God. But how do we know if He is worthy of that trust? How do we know
that a parachute is worthy of our trust, or that another person is? In
relationship with other people, trust comes with knowledge of the person you
are trusting. As you get to know someone better you see if you can or can’t
trust someone. In the same way, we know that we can trust a parachute because
we know about the parachute. We know how it works and why. Trust doesn’t just
appear, it is built with knowledge. The same is true of faith. God doesn’t
expect us to blindly have faith in Him just because He said to. Rather, He has
set about building our faith. He has set about making Himself known. To gain
faith in God, we must gain a knowledge of Him.
*“If I was going to give my life as a servant of
the King, I had to know that King. What was He like? In what way could I trust
Him? In the same way that I trusted a set of impersonal laws? Or could I trust
Him as a living leader, as a very present commander in battle? The question was
central. Because if He were a King in name only, I would rather go back to the
chocolate factory than continue on this way. I would remain a Christian, but I
would know that my religion was only a set of principles, excellent and to be
followed, but hardly demanding devotion. If, on the other hand, I were to
discover God to be a Person, in the sense that He committed and cared and loved
and led. That would be something quite different. That was the kind of a King I
would follow into any battle.”
It is here that
the question of God’s character becomes of the utmost importance. We not only
need to know to have faith in God, we need to know the God we have faith in. Leonard Ravenhill once said, “My goal is God
Himself. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing but Himself. The person of my
God.” Faith is not an attribute on its own. It is not something that we give God
in order to purchase His promises. Rather it is simply trust in God Himself.
That trust like any trust comes through a knowledge of Him. The more we know
God the more faith we will have in Him.
*“Somehow, sitting there in the moonlight that
September night in Glasgow, I knew that my probing into God’s nature was going
to begin with this issue of money. That night I knelt in front of the window
and made a covenant with Him.
“Lord,” I said, “I need to know that I can trust
You in the practical things. I thank You for letting me earn the fees for the
first semester. I ask You now to supply the rest of them. If I have to be so
much as a day late in paying, I shall know that I am supposed to go back to the
chocolate factory.”
It was a childish prayer, petulant and demanding.
But then I was still a child in the Christian life. The remarkable thing is
that God honoured my prayer. But not without first testing me in some rather
amusing ways…”
To be continued
In Christ
quiana
* Quotes, excerpts, and facts have
been taken from Brother Andrew's book God's Smuggler
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